The Express.
London, England, 1856-04-21 00:00:00

FRANCE.

Most oon. owe 001111911.0NDYJIY.)
COUNT MONTALEMBERT ON FREEDOM
OF ELECTION.
PABLO, SATURDAY EYIRIIO.
In the sitting of the Corps Legislatif yesterday, on
the occasion of the introduction of the Count de
Labecloydre, the newly elected member for the Seine
Inferieure, Count de Montalembert made an import-
ant speech on the subject of the recent decision of
the Court of Cessation with respect to the liberty of
distributing electoral bulletins. Immediately on
rising, he wu interrupted by the President,
Count de Moray, who inquired whether he
disputed the election P M. de Montalembert re-
plied that be did not. Hie only object was to
make some general observations on the working of
the electoral law. He admitted that the present
rules of the house did not give him a right to make
any interpellation. An interpellation would involve
an answer; he did not ask for, he knew that he had
no right to expect, any. He merely wished to ex-
press an opinion with regard to the electoral law.
The President said it was most desirable that there
should be no misunderstanding. He had always
thonght,and was now more than ever convinoed,that
the beet considered constitutions, the most far-seeing
regulations, required in their working the assistance
of the parties acting under them with good faith and
common sense. Interpellations had been erased from
their regulations, and could not be made. But he was
prepared to acknowledge that observations presented
with moderation, and in a good spirit, might be made
in that house with advantage to the country, to the
house itself, and even to the government. He would
therefore authorise M. de Montalembert to make his
observations, bat under the express reserve that the
'government should not be obliged to answer them,
and that he (the President) should have full right to
stop the speaker if he Sound the course of his obser-
vations transgressing the limits alluded to.
M. de Montalembert said he availed himself the
more willingly of the opportunity, because what he
had buy had no reference to the particular election
then before them. His observations would contain
lnothing that could be offensive for the deputy newly
elected. He only wished to speak of a g I ques-
tion which, as it appeared to him, affected the honour
of two assemblies, the present chamber and that
which had preceded it. When he spoke of the honour
and iudepeedence of the Cops Legislatif, he also
meant to speak of the honour end strength of the
government, for the two were indissolubly connected
with each other. That which in the eyes of the
country and in the eyes of Europe, in the eyes ot
friends and enemies, constituted the 'aeon testable and
iecomparable • strength of the present government,
was above all the extraordinary sanction it had re-
ceived from universal suffrage. Bat it was
still essential that the persistence of this sym-
pathy on the part of universal suffrage should be
demonstrated. Now in what manner could this
sympathy be demonstrated? Why by elections, and
chiefly by elections for the Corps Legislatif. If the
sincerity, ti.e liberty, and the integrity of the elec-
tions were open to question, a fatal blow would be
struck at the independence of the Corps Legislatif,
and at the same time at the power and dignity of
the government. The brilliant consecration which
the government had obtained in its inception, the
glorious and legitimate war terminated by a no
less glorious peace, would be all insufficient to
preserve the government against the principle
of weakness which would result from any
deterioration of universal suffrage. He declared that
if he were a violent and factious man ot
opposition he would clap his hands in secret
delight at the judgment given by the Court of CRUM
lion; he would hope that government might obtain
rimy such judgments, and that it might rigorously act
upon them, and that the prefects might be authorised
to denounce as enemies of the Emperor men who
had been his ministers, sa had been done in the
case of M. de Chspeeloup Laubat, and that they
might lock up in prison every bearer of an electoral
bulletin—be would hope and wish for all this, because
he was thoroughly convinced that such a course of
conduct could not foil to rejoice the spirit of
opposition where it existed, and to raise it up
where it was dead. Bct, as a good citizen' he
wished to give the government a warning dic-
tated by the spirit of justice and loyalty. The
very word election implied choice, and choice meant
that one candidate might be preferred to another. It
was the right of the elector to make preparation for
his choice. Art. 21 of the organic decree stipulated
that the electors should come to the poll with bulletins
prepared outside the electoral meeting. Every
elector might therefore have recourse to a third party
to prepare his bulletin. There might therefore, ac-
cording to this decree, be concert and discussion
between citivens. From this it necessarily resulted
to his mind, that the distribution ot bulletins by one
elector to another was a thing permitted. Now it
seemed to him that the judgment of the Court of Cu-
sation prohibited this intercommunication when there
was no previous authorisation by the prefect, and this
was, in his view, equivalen t placing the election in the
hands of the prefectoriai administration. He re-
minded the house that after the revolution of 1848 it
was decreed that the voting by universal suffrage
should take place in the chief town of the canton.
That was a system which rendered voting as difficult
as possible for the country populations, while it
favoured the inhabitants of totem,. But there was
soon a reaction against this law. He had himself ad-
dressed the following words to the Constituent As-
sembly The people sometimes pardon govern-
ments that oppress, but
them ; it is to deceive a people to promise universal
suffrage in a constitution and withdraw it from them
in practice." After a long struggle the cause
he then advocated was victorious, and the
vote by sections was allowed. It was by
the vote thus organised that the President of
the Republic and the Second Assembly were elected.
He was no great admirer, for his own part, of univer-
sal suffrage, but as long as it existed he desired to see
it honestly acted upon. He would infinitely prefer
the institutions of the first empire, when the &note
named the Corps Legislatif, to a deceitful system of
universal suffrage. Speaking ot the judgment of the
Court of Cassatien, be quoted sarcastically a saying
describing what a court of justice should be : " La
roarmulcts* arras, et non dor services." He hoped
the government would not make use of the fatal pre-
sent which the Court of Caseation had made • that
court might reverse its own jadgment. as it had done
on former occasions; bat as it might be long berme
it did this, he called for as alteration of the law on
this momentous subject.

PARIS, soave: Evmmio.

M. de Moetalembert's speech, of which I wee
enabled to send you a tolerably full report yester-
day, appears to-day in the Afessiteur. To complete
my account (sufficiently accurate in all other parties-
, late) I subjlin from the official journal the text of
the very mularkelge peroration. I must premiss
that the official reports of the debates in the Corps
Logi'latif (the only reports permitted) ere drawn
up under the supervision of a committee, whose busi-
ness it is to tone down, so far as decently possible,
Use rare opposition speeches that may be made. In
the present instance, I am told, by an me wit-
ness, that the report is far from doing justice
to the speech. However, enough remains to proders
a profound sensation in the public tailed, considering
that the ifasii•w is placarded in every commune in
Prance. Every man in the country who can reed
will have an opportunity of seeing that the Supreme
Court, the Court of Cessation, has been calmly mad
deliberately d.nounoed in the people's house as an
accomplice with the government to render universal
suffrage a mockery, and be will moreover see in the
wretched gabbling defence of the President of the
Cruel' of State a oonellaive toethweey to the truth
of the eeeentioe. The following is the eeselnding
pomp of IL de Mootalinnberee speech es glvew is
Ithe Messitsers

The "Weer eatlefpesed test e. woahl be enema of I
west if peeper reopen ter the )alts Wt of seen or ley.
Ite donned that he hed co Wrestles io be weeds. to this
row& Ajoilissost of tbe melted numbers of the Coon of
Camas was re debt teutkd te yelp greet respect: bet
thY.rWr nut set be eertied to so abusive west.
The Aeee 11.44 (Wag jigged) wit call low to the

very matter helots the ooutt, the judgment was
only sovereign so far as reseeded the particular ease
it
In
p.
the
awl h th upon
e.
cjcwathd purposes h
eigirea etl o
itophruf
rewi
otcl as:
0 ill
aahat
tdtd:P:c
adtrgo:ca!:
eenam:t ababesywneui.
sdtteh.e
no :ttte,irrhtteh election,
oewrt
was
. sc and present
bishuati:t tt
naeoion, lrt
was so
trio, that in the debate on the law of 1837, which defines
the authority of jedgmeats of the Court of Caseation, the
Chamber of Deputies rejected an amendment presented by
judgment of the united
elumben of the court should be binding upon all other
tribunate. It followed, therefore, that any barrister,
any accused paean, was free at this moment to
contend before all the mate of France, in any other
canoe, that the doctrine of the Court of Cuution
was wrong. He claimed for Women, in that house, u one
of the esthete, or, at least, one of the advocates of the law
of 1849, which the Canal. of Cusation had to strangely in-
terpreted, the same liberty which t►e law granted to eny
advocate, or any accused party. The debat, on that law
was a wondrous instance of the courage and onion
which were (wooed to faction at the time. He would
11444 to the recollections of the President of the
Council el State, and the President of the Corps Legielatif,
who then, in eonjunchon with other &oil citizens, die-
played their habitsal firmness against the party of disorder.
He iavoked their testimony, fully persuaded as he was that
they would then have been the first to protest against the
imputation that they were making a law the result of
which would one day be to prevent the distribution of elec-
toral bulletins. The Idontegaards themselves shrunk from
the notion of drawing any such consequence from
the intention of the framers of the bill. But what
no Monies/nerd had dared to dream of, the Procaine-
General of the Court of Cessation had done, and he had
thus attributed to the authors of the law the intention to
render uni I suffrage illusory. It was against such en
interpretation that the authors of the law ought to protest
with all their might. If in 1862 a new law had ►een made,
if the Emperor had then thought fit to suppress the
liberty of distributing electoral bulletins, the law
would exist, and tho y would have aothing to do but
to conform to it. But th-.t such a @occlusion should be
deduced from a law voted at a period of extreme liberty,
when reep,ct for the rights of the erector went so far as
to establish his positive right not ocly to distribute lids of
candidates but el o circular, and elec•oral addresecs—that is
to saymritioga of the most impassioned kind—was something
inconceivable. He would not dwell further on the point;
be would confine himself to saying that there were twos's-
tams of interpreting law. The one was the judaic, which
he might also call the Britanaic system, for the
English sticking rigorously to the text of their
laws sometimes or,w the strangest consequences from
them; the other was ill, ia4. rpretahoa which he would
call Fren.h, and witch coneieted in seeking, above all
things, fi r the spirit of the text. The first system might be
summed up in the maxim summon rue, summa irouria; the
second was that wlrch had away honoured the French
judges, soil a h.ch might be described in their celebrated
Phrase, "La mar rend des crests et non des minces."
(T►e court gives judgment, and does not render services.)
He would ask which of these two systems bad been followed
by the Court of Cessation ? He was coovinced that it will
not for the interest of the government, and that it was not
Its desire, to me the fatal pow. r which had been conceded
to it by the Court. But he did not think that any more or
less official declaration—lay more or less tolerant applica-
tion of the la --euuld now be accepted as satuf.ctery. No
doubt it was possible that the Court of Condon might re-
viie its own jousprudence, as bad been seen before, and
especially ill retard to the law on duels, but they might
have bon to watt for such a result. A prompt and t fficeci-
one remedy was celeu tor. It, therefore, appeared to him
that a mcw law wee necessary.
It is a circumstance to be noted that, white M. de
Montalembert, in that quiet and unobtrusive way
which distinguishes his oratory, was uttering wither-
ing sarcasms upon the Court of Caseation, the Pro-
cureur-Chaeral of that court, Al. Royer, was sitting
opposite to him in one of the strangers' galleries.
The President of the Council of State, M. flambe,
who did not avail himself of the condition made by
M. de Moray, that the government would
not hold itsaf bound to give any answer
to M. de Montalembert's "observations; bad really
no argument to advance against them. He merely
expressed his horror at the attack upon the most
immaculate Court of Caseation, read over their judg-
ment, and gave, in the name of the government,
that very declaration which M. de Montalembert
had so pointedly said beforehand would be of no
value, namely, that it was not intended to make use
of the law as declared by the court. He had recourse
to the miserable quibble that the electoral law
quoted by M. de Montalembert did not contemplate
the free circulation of electoral bulletins, but only of
electoral lists, whereas, as M. de Cbaaseloup-Laubat
proceeded to show afterwarde, the electoral lists were
abolished alter the coup d'etat, and the bulletins,
which ire only nut lists because they must only con.
taro the name of a single candidate, were subati.
toted. M. Baroche, anticipating the judgment
of the Court of Caseation on the distinc-
tion taken between municipal elections and elections
for the Corps Legislatif, declared,with blind and des-
perate tenacity, that the government would insist
upon the tight of regulating the distribution of bul-
letins with regard to all elections whatsoever. The
fact of this diecusaion having taken place at all marks
an epoch in the history of the present French regime.
It is the first timo that any member of the Corps Lc-
giolatif hes succeeded in exercising an "
The precedent is most important.
Prince Jerome went last night to see Rietori in
" Medea." This is the first time that his imperial
highness has been to a theatre since his serious illness.
The esenpe about to be formed in the Vat will be,
I am told, upon as grand a scale as those of Boulogne
last year. The Emperor will go to visit them. I
have heard no confirmation here of the news circu-
lated by an English journal that his Majesty intends
to be present at the naval review at Sptthead.

General Lavine, formerly aide•de-camp to Marshal
Daronst, has jos'. died at B.:rim, at the age of 85.

SPAIN.

MADRID, SATURDAY, APRIL 19.
A royal decree authorises the emieston of highway
shares fora stun of 30 millions of reale.
The disarmament of the Valencia national militia
wee effected quietly. 1,300 stand of arms have been
taken from them.

THE UNITED STATES.

(71011 OVII OWII CORRBSTONDINT.)

LIVERPOOL, SUNDAY.
This day the Royal Mail steam-ship Canada,
Captain W. C. Lang, arrived in the Mersey with Lb*
usual mails from the United Statism. d British North
America. She lelt Boston on the 9th inst., and Rao
Mx on the 11th, and has brought besides the mails
92 passengers. and above 200,000 dollars in 'pais
on freight.
The Canada passed on the 19th instant the Canard
giant, Emu, inward bound.
The Washington lierald alleges that the French
and English ministers declare that a detachment of
mss will be landed from their respective squadrons
I on the coast of Central America to swot the Costs
Ricans in the war against Nicaragua.
Thirty-two buildings and property to the amount
of 300,000 dela. were destroyed by fire at Gallen cm
the Slat March. _ .

The Banta brig, and the Charles Morgan 'teams;
with recruits for the Walker Nicaraguan expedition.
sailed March 31 with a umber of colinieers.
At the steamer's departure money woe &sties at
New York, and an abundant supply. &ocks Wm,
with a tendency downwards.
Beallmage dell to London, 9 to 9/ firm ; that on
Paris heavy and lower.
Breadstuff' lower for common qualities, others
putty steady.
Prevision' Justice, and unaltered in prices.
Freights dull. Grain 6d. per bushel, and cotton
ono farthing par lb.
Ages eager.