The Press.
London, England, 1858-11-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 27, 1858.

Are by no means likely to rise in insurrection for a
long time to come, simply because insurrection, except
there be foreign intervention, is sure to be put down
by the respective Governments with the strong hand ;
end no foreign intervention is possible so long as
France remains an Empire. A war between France
nod Austria may be " looming in the future," and
many eminent political men think that it is ; but the
future is certainly still distant, and neither France
nor Austria has interest in drawing it nearer. It
follows from this that the bounce of the newspapers
can safely be treated as only of small account. As
to the Pressc, notwithstanding its connection wish
Prince Napoleon, it is notoriously no authority at
all ; and the proof of this is that not long since it
was railing at, and insulting, and talking of fighting
England, though everybody who knows anything of
French politics is aware that the fundamental policy
of the Emperor is close, intimate, cordial alliance
with England. And as to the Government organs
properly so called, I can assure you that nothing can
be a greater mistake than to suppose that every
stupid article they contain is "inspired" by the
Government. lam personally acquainted with some
of the writers of these journals, and they complain
that the Government scarcely ever condescends to
"inspire " them at all, but leaves them to guess its
intention! as best they may—giving them no encou-
raoement when they happen to guess right, and
administering very severe rebukes to them when, as
frequently happens, they are wrong.
Letters have been received in this capital an-
nouncing that Russia a few days ago sent ships of
war and troops to take formal possession of the port
of Villafranca, which Sardinia some time back con-
ceded to her. This military display has occasioned
surprise in political circles, and has, I hear, led to
conferences between our ambassador, Lord Cowley,
and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and between the
Minister and the Russian Ambassador.
The visit of Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon
to the Emperor at Compiegne has excited no atten-
tion in political circles.
The Imperial visit at Compiegne is to last till the
2nd of next month, and then the Emperor and Eta-
press are to take up their residence at the Tuileries.
The 2nd of December is the anniversary of the
coup-d'etat, and it is not unlikely that, to do honour
to it, their Majesties may enter Paris in state. It is
a long time since the Parisians have been favoured
with an Imperial pageant, and one would really be
acceptable. Apropos of the sejour at Compiegne, I
notice that the number of English invited was extra-
ordinarily large, exceeding that of foreigners of
all other nations, and almost equalling that of the
French. But oh ! how French journalists mutilate
the names of noble lords and noble ladies ! From
names that begin with an H in particular they extir-
pate the A with all the savage ferocity of a London
alderman : even the Marquis of Hertford, whose
name, from his long residence in Paris, ought to
be familiar to them, they maka the arquis of
Arfort !

I have beard it said that several of the great
literary adversaries of the Imperial Government
think the moment not inopportune for trying to
batter it down by means of literary publications, and
have accordingly come to the resolution to write
book after book against it. M. Villemain, perpetual
secretary of the French Academy, who, since the
Empire was established, has hurled at it more than
one book, has, I hear, promised very shortly to bring
out another, of which the object is to show that
"Popular Enthusiasm," by which the Empire was
created, on which it is based, and by which it is
maintained, is a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.
M. Ampere, wbo some time ago made a great noise
by his articles on Imperial Rome in the Revue des
Deus Mondts—articles in which with wondrous art
Rome in its worst days was made to appear exactly
like modern France—has on his part undertaken to
produce a work which will demonstrate that many of
the most terrible passages of Tacitus are as appli-
cable to the rulers and people of this country
at this day as they were to those of old Rome. M.
Saint Marc Girardin, who in language decorous and
mild can, when be pleases, say things exceedingly
bitter, will, in his turn, if what is said be true, come
out with a work which while professing to treat of
the Danubian Principalities, will show that France is
going to wreck and ruin. And Count de Montalem-
ben, who, as becomes a true Papist, is an ardent
supporter of " authority," will perhaps go to Russia to
"take a bath" in despotism, and will afterwards write a
savage pamphlet to prove that the Napoleonic Empire
hills as far short of the beau-ideal of Russian des-
potism as it does of English liberty. But all these
threatened publications will not, I apprehend, do
at 4 great harm to the Empire—they will amuse and
agitate the salons of Paris, but will be unread and
unheard of by " the masses," who form the bulwark
of the Imperial Government.
M. Boulay de la Meurthe, a well-known personage
in theseiparts, and a great Imperialist, died yesterday.
When the Emperor was President of the Republic,
Ile was Vice President.

lortija 10 Colonial

THE TRIAL OF THE COUNT
MONTALEMBERT.
THE memorable trial of Count Montalembert, and
of M. Dounoil, manager of the Correspondant, took
place on Wednesday, before the Sixth Chamber of
the Tribunal Correctional, on the charge of having
published in the Correspondant, of the 25th of
October, an article entitled '° Un Debat sur l'Ende
au Parlement Anglais."
Amongst the celebrities present were M. Villemain,
the Duke de Broglie, and M. Odillon Barrot. The
Government were represented by several function-
aries of distinction, and members of the Corps Diplo-
matique were also present. The defendant's wife,
Mme. de Montalembert, and Mme. de Meaux, her
daughter, also occupied seats in court. Precisely at
five minutes past twelve the ringing of a hell an.
flounced that the Judges were approaching. An
usher of the Court threw open the folding doors to
the rear of the bench, and announced in a loud voice
their presence. There were three of them, M.
Bertelin, M. I)eleveau, and M. Benoit, besides the
Procureur- Imperial and his substitute. When the
Judges made their appearance the Bar and audience
rose, uncovered, and remained standing until they
took their seats. The President announced that the
Court was opened, and invited the Bar and the
public to be seated.
THE INDICTMENT.
The President having warned the public against
any unseemly display of approbation or disapproba-
tion, the assignation, which charged the four follow-
ing offences, was read
Exciting to the hatred and contempt of the Emperor's
Government
1. I honestly confess that I am one of those persons ;
and I add that for this evil—from which it is so little the
fashion to suffer now-a-days—l have found a remedy.
When I feel that the stifling malady is gaining on me,
when my ears ring, now with the buzz of the gossips of
the antechamber, now with the din of the fanatics who
think themselves our masters, and of the hypocrites who
think us their dupes; when I choke with the weight of an
atmosphere charged with the pestilential vapours of ser-
vility and corruption, I hurry to breathe a purer air, and
take a bath of life in free .England.
9. In Canada a noble race of French Catholics, torn un-
happily from our own country, but still French in feelings
and manners, owes to England the preservation or acqui-
sition, not only of religious liberty, bat of all the political
and municipal liberties which France has rejected. Canada
has seen her population increased tenfold in less than a
century, and will serve as the basis of the new federation
which, from the mouths of the Oregon to those of the St.
Lawrence, will be one day the rival or the companion of
the great American federation.
3. We possess not only the habits, but even the instincts,
of those sober and orderly peoples, doomed to an eternal
minority, who sometimes indulge in frightful outbreaks,
but who speedily fall back into that state of civil impo-
tence, where no one dares to speak except by order, or by
permission, with the salutary terror of a warning from
authority hanging over his head, if he should be so rash as
to oppose ever so little the ideas of Government or the
ideas of the mob.
4. Whilst these reflections were made around me, I left
this grand spectacle with feelings of emotion and satisfac-
tion, such as any man would experience who sees in a
Government something besides an antechamber, and in a
civilized people something else than an indolent and
docile flock to be clipped and pastured under the silent
shades of an enervating security. I felt myself more than
ever attached to the liberal hopes and convictions which
have always animated, during the most painful periods of
our history, that chosen band of honest men whom errors
and defeats have never dejected, and who even in exile,
even on the scaffold, have preserved sufficient patriotism to
believe that France, even as England, could bear a rule of
justice, light, and liberty—a noble faith, worthy of in-
spiring the most painful sacrifices, and which, betrayed as
it has been by fortune, deserted by the crowd, and insulted
by cowards, does not the less hold its unconquerable em-
pire over pr9nd souls and generous minds.
Attack on the respect due to the laws:-
1. We possess not only the habits, but even the instincts,
of those sober and orderly peoples, doomed to an eternal
minority, who sometimes indulge in frightful outbreaks,
but who speedily fall back into that state of civil impo-
tence, where uo one dares to speak except by order, or by
permission, with the salutary terror of a warning from
authority hanging over his head, if he should be so rash as
to oppose ever so little the ideas of Government or the
ideas of the mob.
t I, for my part, was altogether amazed, so much had
' I lost familiarity with this rolling and alternate fire of
daily discussion, to which we ourselves were once accus-
tomed, and which we carried on, perhaps in excess, but
which is become impossible between organs, a few of which
only have the right to say everything, and are always led,
more or less involuntarily, to lure their adversaries upon
the ground where the official gag awaits them.
3. This is but the application of that grand principle of
common law in England by which every citizen can have
p recourse to a court of justice against a public officer—an
6 immense, but insufficiently known, guarantee of British

freedom, presenting a striking contrast to the inviolability
of the smallest of our functionaries ordained by the con•
stitution of the year VIII., which people have had the
simplicity, even under the constitutional system, to
number among the happy results of 1789.
111. Attack on the rights which the Emperor derives
from the Constitution, and on the principle of universal
suffrage
1. Besides, I readily grant that nothing—absolutely
nothing—in the institutions or the political personages of
France in the present day has any resemblance to the
things of which, and the men of whom, I wish here to give
a rapid sketch. Certainly I make no pretension to convert
those disciples of progress who regard Parliamentary
Government as advantageously replaced by universal ant.
frage, or those political optimists who maintain that the
final triumph of democracy consists in abdicating into the
hands of a sovereign the exclusive direction of the external
and internal affairs of a country. I write for my own
satisfaction, and that of a small number of invalids, of
triflers, of madmen, perhaps, like myself.
2. In a word, moral force had been openly and nobly pre-
ferred to material force by the organs of a great nation,
which is able and desirous of conducting its own affairs—
a nation that nothing dejects or alarms ; that, is mistaken
at times, but which urges to extremes neither men nor
things; and, lastly, knows how to arrange everything, to
repair everything without need of tutelage, or of seeking
safety in anything but her own masculine and intelligent

energy.
3. I have in these pages already indicated, and I again
refer to it with pleasure, the most significant and the most
consoling symptom in the actual state of England ; it is
the persevering ardour which induces the elite of the
English nation to prosecute social and administrative
reforms, to improve the state of prisons, of unhealthy
abodes, to propagate popular, professional, agricultural,
and domestic instruction, to increase the resources of
religions ministry, to simplify criminal and civil proce-
dure; to labour in everything for the moral and material
welfare of the lower classes, not by the humiliating tute-
lage of a power without control, but by the generous coali-
tion of every independent force and every spontaneous
sacrifice.

IV. Exciting to the hatred and contempt of the citizens
one against another :-
1. Besides, I readily grant that nothing—absolutely
nothing—in the institutions or the political personages of
France in the present day has any resemblance to the
things of which, and the men of whom, I wish here to give
a rapid sketch. Certainly I make no pretension to convert
those disciples of progress who regard Parliamentary
Government as advantageously replaced by universal suf.
frage, or those political optimists who maintain that the
final triumph of democracy consists in abdicating into the
hands of a sovereign the exclusive direction of the external
and internal affairs of a country. I write for my own
satisfaction, and that of a small number of invalids, of
triflers, of madmen, perhaps, like myself.
2. But if by chance it has been taken hold of by one of
those translators, authorized by the censorship, who feed
in so strange a manner the continental press, instantly all
the privileged detractors of liberty transcribe it, take note
of it, get furious over it, and cry aloud, "See how England
thinks, and what she says ;" and they proceed to deduce
consequences of an absurdly alarming cast, now for the
peace of the world, now for the security of British institu-
tions, although they are sure to be promptly and shame-
fully exposed in their falsehood by reflection and facts.
3. Whilst these reflections were made around me, I
left this grand spectacle with feelings of ewotion and
satisfaction, such as any man would experience who sees
in a Government something besides an antechamber, and
in a civilized people something else than an indolent and
docile flock to be clipped and pastured under the silent
shades of an enervating security. I felt myself more than
ever attached to the liberal hopes and convictions which
have always animated, during the most painful periods of
our history, that chosen band of honest men whom errors
and defeats have never dejected, and who even in exile,
even on the scaffold, have preserved sufficient patriotism
to believe that France, even as England, could bear a rule
of justice, light, and liberty—a noble faith, worthy of in-
spiring the most painful sacrifices, and which, betrayed as
it has been by fortune, deserted by the crowd, and insulted
by cowards, does not the less hold its unconquerable em-
pire over proud souls and generous minds.