The Press.
London, England, 1857-06-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

much, his friends might entertain hopes of
him. But we must come back to these
speeches of Lord Brougham.
Henry Brougham, when a young man, was
noted for his extraordinary powers. He was
better than a "book in breeches." He had
fiery passion, and a burning desire to dis-
tinguish himself. His mind was versatile
and acute ; his constitution was amazingly
strong ; his eloquence was facile, forcible, and
bold; his attainments were great, and his
ardour of character was still greater. In his
own qualities, apart from any training, young
Brougham had vast resources. How well he
justified the expectations formed of him by
Wilberforce, who knew him in early life, the
history of the last fifty years records.
The first volume of these speeches contains
some splendid specimens of Lord Brougham's
eloquence, and wo recommend this edition to
those who desire to have models of impas-
sioned oratory before them. The faults of
Lord Brougham as a speaker are also visible
on a critical perusal. As a forensic orator, as
a proficient in the qualities required for gain-
ing a verdict from twelve men in a jury-box,
we think that Lord Brougham could never be
compared with Saarlett or Follett, and we
would add with Sir F. Thesiger or Sir A.
Cockburn. He used to overpaint his case, and
he often took the wrong tone. He had no
oily persuasiveness; lie had no practical ac-
commodation of commonplace sentimentalism
fur the minds of an ordinary jury. He
hurled thunderbolts of declamation over their
heads, but he wanted vollies of small shot.
As a forensic orator he never could rank in
the first class. He wanted imagination and
pathcs. He could not dazzle the mind and
melt the heart like Erskine and Curran. The
tribute of tears was never paid to his power,
anti in this respect he was greatly below
the extraordinary powers of O'Connell. He
was often maladroit in his mode of defend-
ing a case. Nothing could well be worse in
this, way than the exordium of his speech in
the case of the Hunts:—
May it please your Lordships,—Gentlemen of the Jury,
—ln rising to support the cause of these defendants, I feel
abundantly sensible of the difficulties under which they
labour. 1t is not that they have to contend, with such
unequal force on my part, against the talents and learning
of the Attorney-General, and the high influence of his
office ; nor is it merely that they stand in the situation of
defendants prosecuted by the Crown, for in ordinary cases
they would have the common presumption of innocence to
work in their favour ; but the hardship of their case origin-
ates in the nature of the charge on which they are brought
before you,—a charge of libel, at a time when the licentious-
ness of the press has reached to a height which it certainly
never attained in any other country, nor even in this at
any other time. That licentiousness, indeed, has of late
years appeared to despise all the bounds which had once
been prescribed to the attacks on private character, inso-
much that there is not only no personage so important
or exalted—for of that I do not complain—but no person
so humble, harmless, and retired, as to escape the defama-
tion which is daily and hourly poured forth by a venal tribe
to gratify the idle curiosity, or the less excusable malignity,
of the public. To mark out for the indulgence of that
propensity individuals retiring into the privacy of domestic
life—to hunt them down for the gratification of their elle-
' mks, and drag them forth as a laughing-stock to the
vulgar—has become in our days, with some men, the road
even to popularity, but with multitudes the means of
earning a base subsistence. Gentlemen, the nature and
the causes of this evil it is unnecessary for me to point
out. Indeed, lam far from saying that there is nothing
to extenuate it. lam ready even to admit that this abuse
of the press in defaming private characters does derive no
small apology from the insatiable love of publicity which
preys upon a great part of the community, leading them
scarcely to value existence itself if it is not passed in the
eyes of the world, and to care but little what they do so
they he only stared at or talked of. It furnishes some-
what of excuse, too, that the public itself is insatiable in
its thirst for slander; swallows it with a foul, indiscrimi-
nate appetite ; and, liberal at least in its patronage of this
species of merit, largely rewards those whom it sends forth
to pander for those depraved tastes. lint in whatever way
arising, or however palliated, the fact of the abuse of the
press is certain, and the consequences are fatal to the
press itself; for the licentiousness of which I complain
has been the means of alienating the affections of those
who had ever stood forward as its fastest friends and its
firmest defenders.
Sir W. Follett or Sir F. Thesiger would never
have fallen into this fault. Here we have the
advocate painting the licentiousness of the
press (which should only have been glanced at
in a sentence or two, if mentioned at all), and
suggesting to the jury such a train of reflec-
tions as these,—" \Vell, you see what a case
" the Government is in ! Mr. Brougham ad-
" mits tho licentiousness, of the press, and the

631

" Hunts have been holding up the Prince
" Regent to ridicule. Examples must be
" made. If so, is it not fairer for the Govern-
" ment to come down on the Hunts, who are
" men of literary station, and whose example
" may be contagious, than on their humbler
" brethren? &c. &c." Reflections of such a
kind would be sure to influence an ordinary
London jury.
The (speech on the Queen's case was not a
fine piece of eloquence. It wanted arrange-
ment, and play of light and shade. Its tone
was defiant and arrogant ; it was deficient in
plausibility, and its interest is lost in petty
details. Here is its exordium :
May it please your Lordships,—The time is now come
when I feel that I shall truly stand in need of all your
indulgence. It is not merely the august presence of this
assembly which embarrasses me, for I hays oftentimes had
experience of its condescension,—nor the novelty of this
proceeding that perplexes me, for the mind gradually
gets reconciled to the strangest things,—nor the magnitude
of this cause that oppresses me, for 1 am borne up and
cheered by the conviction of its justice, which I share with
all mankind; but, my lords, it is the very force of that con-
viction, the knowledge that it operates universally, the
feeling that it operates rightly, which now dismays me with
the apprehension that my unworthy way of handling it may,
for the first time, injure it; and, while others have trembled
for a guilty client, or been anxious in a doubtful case, or
crippled with a consciousness of some hidden weakness,
or chilled by the influence, or dismayed by the hostility, of
public opinion, 1, knowing that here there is no guilti-
ness to conceal, nor anything, save the resources of perjury,
to dread, am haunted with the apprehension that my feeble
discharge of this duty may for the first time cast that cause
into doubt, and may turn against me for condemnation
those millions of your lordships' countrymen whose jealous
eyes are now watching us, and who will not fail to impute
it to me, if your lordships should reverse the judgment
which the case for the charge has extorted from them.
And I feel, my lords, under such a weights° troubled, that
I can hardly at this moment, with all the reflection which
the indulgence of your lordships has accorded me, compose
my spirits to the discharge of my prof. asional duty; under
the pressure of the grave responsibility which accompanies
it. It is no light addition to this feeling that I foresee,
though happily at some distance, that before these pro-
ceedings close, it may be my unexampled lot to discharge
a duty in which the loyalty of a good subject may, among
the ignorant, among the thonghtless,—certainly not for a
moment with your lordships,—suffer an impeachment.
And its peroration is as follows :
Such, my lords, is the case now before you. Such is
the evidence in support of this measure. Evidence inade
quate to prove a debt—impotent to deprive of a civil right
—ridiculous to convict of the lowest offence—scandalous
if brought forward to support a charge of the highest nature
which the law knows—monstrous to ruin the honour, to
blast the name of an English Queen ! What shall 1 say,
then, if this is the proof by which an act of judicial legis-
lation, a parliamentary sentence, an ex post facto law, is
sought to be passed against this defenceless woman? My
lords, I pray you to pause. Ido earnestly beseech you to
take heed! You are standing upon the brink of a pre-
cipice—then beware ! It will go forth your judgment, if
sentence shall go against the Queen ; but it will be the
only judgment you ever pronounced which, instead of
reaching its object, will return and bound back upon those
who give it. Save the country, my lords, from the horrors
of this catastrophe—save yourselves from this peril—rescue
that country of which you are the ornaments, but in which
you can flourish no longer, when severed from the people,
than the blossom when cut off from the roots and the stem
of the tree. Save that country, that you may continue to
adorn it—save the Crown, which is in jeopardy—the aria-
tocracy, which is shaken—save the altar, which must
stagger with the blow that rends its kindred throne ! You
have said, my lords, you have willed—the Church and
the King have willed—that the Queen should be deprived
of its solemn service. She has instead of that solemnity
the heartfelt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers
of mine ; but I do here pour forth my humble supplica-
tions at the Throne of Mercy that that mercy may be
poured down upon the people in a larger measure than the
merits of their rulers may deserve, and that your hearts
may be turned to justice !
It is as a political orator that Lord Brougham
will have lasting fame. His most perfect
speech was on the war with Spain in l8:23. It
is the finest thing that ever came from his
tongue or pen, and is a finished whole. Here
is a passage in which all the Broughainie
qualities of eloquence aro seen brought toge-
ther
What, I ask, are the grounds on which the necessity of
this war is defended? It is said to be undertaken because
an insurrection has broken out with success at Madrid. I
deny this to be the fact. What is called an insurrection,
was an attempt to restore the lawful Constitution of the
country—a Constitution which was its established govern.
ment, till Ferdinand overthrew it by means of a mutiny in
the army ; and therefore, when a military movement
enabled the friends of liberty to recover what they had lost,
it is a gross perversion of language to call this recovery,
this restoration, by the.name of insurrection,—an insidious
confusion of terms, which can only be intended to blind
the. reason, or play upon the prejudices, of the honest part
of mankind. Let the pretext, however, tor the war be
what it may, the real cause of it is not hard to conjecture.
I
It is not from hatred to Spain or to Portutol that tlio amid

I

... . . i

632

Sovereigns are for marching their swarms of barbarians
into the Peninsula—it is not against freedom on the Ebro,
or freedom on the Mincio they make war. No, it is
against freedom I—against freedom wherever it is to be
found—freedom by whomsoever enjoyed—freedom by
whatever means achieved, by whatever institutions secured.
Freedom is the object of their implacable hate. For its
destruction, they are ready to exhaust every resource of
force and fraud. All the blessings which it bestows,—all
the establishments in which it is embodied, the monu-
ments that are raised to it, and the suit acles that are
wrought by it,—they hate with the malignity of demons,
who tremble while they are compelled to adore •, for they
quiver by instinct at the sound of its name. And let us
not deceive ourselves! These despots can have but little
liking towards this nation and its institutions, more
especially our Parliament and our Press. As long as
England remains unenslared ; as long as the Parliament
continues a freo and open tribunal, to which the oppressed
of all nations under heaven can appeal against their op-
preasors, however mighty and exalted—and with all its
abuses (and no man can lament them more than I do,
because no man is more sensible of its intrinsic value,
which those abuses diminish), with all its imperfections
(and no man can be more anxious to remove them, because
none wishes more heartily, by restoring its original purity,
to make it entirely worthy of the country's love),—it is
still far too pure and too free to please the taste of the
continental despots—so long must England be the object
of their hatred, and of machinations, sometimes carried on
covertly, sometimes openly, but always pursued with the
same unremitting activity, and pointed to the same end.
The editor of this edition does not state, what
we know to have been the case, that when the
speaker hurled forth the passage, " they hate
" with the malignity of demons, who tremble
" while they are compelled to adore," the
whole House burst forth in a vehement cheer.

That speech presents the type in which Lord
Brougham's style was cast. He excelled in
aggressive and fierce attack. Thus his tone was
too often in the key of a tirade, and even this
speech on the war with Spain is too like
sublime scolding. It is only at rare intervals
that such a tone can be endured in the House
of Commons. There were angry feelings in
the Whig party from 1812 to 1830 ; and their
exasperation at any exclusion from power
found representative utterance in the burning
sarcasms of Lord Brougham. He was, also, a
prodigious browbeater; and Sir Robert Peel
suffered under him on many occasions, espe-
cially in the answer to Mr. Peel's charges
against the Education Committee, in which
Sir (then Mr.) Robert Peel endured a galling
castigation. This great reply was delivered
off-hand, and without previous preparation,
and vastly raised Lord Brougham's fame as a
political speaker. There is a vein of con-
temptuous scorn for the personal character of
his ad% ersary, and an adroit insinuation of
political Jesuitry, through the whole speech,
which galled Sir R. Peel at the time. " I did
so and so," said the speaker, " not throughany
" apprehension of incurring the right honour-
" able gentleman's (Mr. Peel's) displeasure,
" which never once crossed my mind, and if it
" had would have left a very slight impres-
" sion." We can imagine how Brougham's
lips would have delivered such a sentence.
And elsewhere he said, " This night has
" shown me how meanly I estimated the
" inventive subtlety and the unconquerable
" pertinacity of polemical malice." And else-
where, growing still more personal, " His
" (Mr. Peel's) objections could not have
" originated within these walls. They must
" have been gathered from some coarse menu-
" factory abroad." After that speech Sir R.
Peel took special care to leave Mr. Brougham
alone.

For rich satire, grave irony, and subtle yet
popularly effective derision, the annals of
]Parliament contain no superior specimen to
Lord Brougham's speech on the " Bed-
chamber Question" in 1839. It is, indeed, a
most masterly piece of prolonged irony, and
produced great effect at the time. There are
some passages of choice humour in it. Several
arch strokes, like the following, might be
cited :

The meaning of a Ministry resigning now•a-days is that
the husbands retire, but leave then wives; half step out,
the better halves stay in; and the usual formula, almost a
technical expression, used by them that resign,
when they say "We only remain in office until
our successors can be appointed," must henceforth
be understood as signifying this—" We only remain
in office until our wives and sisters can succeed in pre.
venting any successors from being appointed but ourselves."
lt, is really a most painful thing to be thus speaking of
ladies at all in a public debate, or to discuss a question in
which they are mixed up; but their position and their
fortunes have become a matter of State. Ladies of the
bedchamber ars ppyi made ruOlic functionaries-, they are

THE PRESS.

henceforth converted into political engines; they are made
the very pivot upon which the fate of a Ministry turns. No
longer can a Government he formed as the wisdom of Par.
liame_t nrescribes ; the ladies of the bedchamber stand in
the way of those statesmen to whom the Legislature has
given its confidence. Thom, ladies have ceased to be the
mere companions of the monarch's social hours ; they are
made State engines; they are become statesmen, though not
clothed in masculine attire; andtheir power and their persons
stand between the desire of Parliament and its gratification.

We should like to linger over these speeches,
as they call up thronging recollections of days
which are yet uuchronicled ; but our space is
exhausted. These speeches sell, and find
numerous readers. Several editions of them
have now been published, and that before us
is one of the best of them.

Hiatoire de la Chute du Roi Louis Philippe,
de la Republique de 1848, et du Retablissement
de l' Empire. By M. A. Granier de Cassagnac.
Paris : Plon.

(Third Notice.)

IT has been generally supposed that the coup-
d'etat of the Prince President, the necessity
for which was demonstrated in the preceding
article, was kept profoundly secret until the
very last moment. But M. Granier de Cas-
sagnac tells us that this was not the case.
" The colonels of the army of Paris," for
example, " made known to tue Prince," he
says, how much they considered " military
dignity" humiliated by the proposition of the
Questors of the Assembly to deprive his Im-
perial Highness of the command of the army,
which was solemnly guaranteed to him by the
Constitution. In plain English, they incited
him to, and expected, a coup-d'etat--a thing
which they evidently would not have done if
they had not well known that he was disposed
to make the attempt. And, besides, General
Magnan, Commander-in• Chief of the Army, not
only knew some time before it took place that
it was coming, but he communicated the
" great fact " to generals under his orders
some time before :

The Commander•in-Chief of the Army of Paris regularly
assembled every Thursday the general officers of his army
and his division. He was of opinion that a decisive
measure was necessary. Without knowing the day, he
knew that it was near at hand, and he was resolutely
devoted to its accomplishment.
On the 26th of November, General Magnan received all
the generals of the army of Paris at his house; they were
twenty one in number. He then took on himself the
grave resolution of making known to them a secret which
was not exclusively his own. This confidence, essentially
delicate, would have been dangerous if it had not been
placed in officers guided by duty and honour.
The general•in chief exposed rapidly to his comrades
the situation of France, the imperative necessity of saving
society menaced by demagogy, the design which he knew
the Elect of the People entertained of making a new appeal
to national sovereignty, and the confidence which he placed
in the army to protect the liberty of the vote against the
attack of factions. He made known his firm resolution,
for his own part, to engage his full and entire respousi•
bility in an enterprise eminently national ; he expressed
a hope of being imitated by the generals of the Army of
Paris; but he added that, if there were amongst them
some who could not conscientiously follow him, he left
them the liberty to explain themselves clearly, remarking,
however, that he relied on their sense of honour and
their probity not to reveal what he had stated.
One of the generals, in the name of the rest,
declared that, " whatever the hour the Prince
" might select, he should find them ready to
" respond to his appeal." And then, in
French fashion, they threw themselves into
each other's arms, and embraced each
other :

When the emotion was calmed down and silence re.
established, General Magnan said, " Let us all swear that
not one of us will speak to any one whatsoever of what
has taken place between us !" The twenty one generals
all took the oath with fervency, and it has been so well
kept that we are the first to make known, after the lapse of
five years, the ezintenoe and the results of this memorable
meeting.
The coup•d'etat was fixed for the 2nd of
December, and on the previous evening the
Prince, as is known, gave a grand party at the
Elysee. It has heretofore been alleged that at
this party nothing whatever was said or sus-
pected of the impending coup, but M. de Cas-
sagnac tells us differently :

The open and fierce conflict between the President and
the Assembly, excited by the old parties, rendered a crisis
more probable, and public opinion anticipated it to be
very near at hand. It was spoken of that evening at the
Palace of the Presidency as of imminent necessity, and it
was spoken of gaily as of an event ou which minds were
made op. A southern deputy, M. Pemjoy, asked a writer
of his nognaiutitnoe, " When do you mean to kick us out ?"

SITU ItDAY,

to which the reply was, " Very a9on, I hope !" The Prince
showed himself to his guests with the unalterable calm of
his mind, and the habitual amenity of his manners. The
most attentive observer would not have been able to dis•
cover either gloom on his brow or anxiety in his words.
The writer then tells the old familiar• tale of
how the coup was effected. When the party
broke up, General St. Arnaud, Minister of
War ; Count de Morny, who was to be made
Minister of the Interior ; M. de Maupas, Pre-
fect of Police ; and Colonel de Beville, an
aide-de-camp, assembled in the Prince's
study, and, with the Prince, made the final
arrangements. Early in the morning, Gene-
rals Changarnier, Cavaiguac, Bedeau, M.
Thiers, and other leading members of the
Assembly, together with the more despe-
rate chiefs of the secret societies and of the
clubs, were arrested ; strong bodies of troops
were placed in different parts of Paris ; decrees
declaring the Assembly dissolved, and making
an appeal to the people, and proclamations to
the people and the army, were issued ; groups
of representatives of the people assembled
and attempted to force their way into the
Assembly, but were prevented, and, having
insisted on meeting at an adjacent niairie,
were arrested ; the President of the Assem-
bly, M. Dupin, displayed greater cowardice
than had been expected even from so vile a
political intriguer; and the population, though
agitated, received on the whole the coup less
unfavourably than was to have been expected.
In the morning of the 3rd, however, an
attempt at armed resistance was made, and
barricades were thrown up, but the troops
soon " put down " the insurgents. On the
following day a more desperate and more
formidable rising took place, but it was
quelled. The Prince President triumphed.
On all these points M. Granier de Cassagnac,
contrary to what we had expected, states little
that is new ; and, truth to speak, he is not so
communicative, nor even so graphic, as Dr.
\Term and other writers. He thus corrects a
common error :

It has been said and printed that the President of the
Republic caused twenty million franca (800,0001.) to be
taken from the Bank of France to be distributed to the
troops on the 2nd December. The truth as to the expenses
of the soldiers on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, is much more
simple and mnch more noble.
When the Prince resclved in the evening of the Ist
December on saving society by a decisive measure, there
remained to him of all his private fortune and all his
patrimony a sum of fifty thwuand francs (2,0001.) He
knew that on certain memorable occasions the troops had
given way before insurgents from want of provisions—.
more famished than vanquished. He took then to the
last franc all that remained to him, and charged Colonel
Fleury to go from brigade to brigade and to distribute
this sum, man by man, to the soldiers who had conquered
demagogy. Such were the expenses of the 2nd December.
They can, our readers see, be opposed with some advan-
tage to the accounts of the 24th February, and to those of
all the revolutions which have taken place in France.

The number of slain and wounded in the
combats which the coup-d'etat occasioned in
Paris has been greatly, and even scandalously,
exaggerated. According to our author the
army had 26 killed and 184 wounded; the
insurgents 175 killed and 115 wounded. And
he contradicts the assertion that after the
fight executions of insurgents were made :
History, which cannot disdain any calumny, must
protest against pretended executions of prisoners said to
have been made in the Champ de Mara, or in the forth
which surround Paris. The French army was then and
always will be what it. was in the time of the Vicomte
d'Orthes—it possesses brave soldiers, but no execu-
tioners. .„

This anecdote is interesting:—

As soon as the first faits accomplis bad rendered the
measure of the 2nd December irrevocable, the Prince
summoned to him all his tried friends. They were M. de
Persigny, M. Fould, M. Abatucci. To the latter the
Prince said, taking hint by the hand, Cosa fatla—" The
thing is done! "
-

Crushed in Paris, insurrection had no
chance of success, and that which broke out
in certain departments was, consequently,
soon quelled. Then the Prince President
promulgated the Constitution which he
thought best adapted to France; it was based
on that of An VIII., drawn up by the First
Napoleon, but was infinitely more liberal.
This is our author's version of it :

This Constitution establishes a supreme power, which
is both legislative and executive, independent in its
sphere, but restrained by laws. It consecrates the
division of powers, for it recognises a Legislative Body
which votes the laws and taxes, and a Senate which
watches over, controls, and sanction t4lio vote. It 411411•