The Express.
London, England, 1860-12-12 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDIVESDAY, DEC. 12.

Ir is cheering to find the liberal party of all
hues and shades in France taking heart of
grace, and accepting, neither with mock mo-
desty nor in sulky silence, the concessions an-
nounced by the decree of the 24th of November,
and interpreted by M. os PLiSIGNY in a couple of
Circulars to the Prefects. The second of these
Circulars, which immunise the form of a chapter
from an unpublished essay on the British consti-
tution, has not met with quite so grateful and
flattering a reception as the first. The tone and
temper of both these suggestive documents is
candid and generous to a fault. This seems to
be generally acknowledged. The new Mr.viirta of
the Is-risme enjoys reputation, even among po-
-lit ical adversaries, for sincerity) and disinterested-

ness not always found among the intimate ad.
herente of the Empire, and which lends to all his
public declarations a dignity not always attain-
able by an ardent convert to Imperialism,
such ea his immediate predecessor, M. Bittxurir.
M. us PEBEIGNY, in short, has a reason for the
faith that is in him • the faith in liberty
under the Empire ; which to many of his country-
men seems almost as romantic a conception as love
in marriage. It is probable that only one who
was a Bonapartist when Bonapartism was in
prison and in exile—a refugee creed, and a quasi-
republican doctrine, would pretend to justify
this faith nine years after the establishment of
the Second Empire. But as M. DX PRILSIGNY in
his former Circular explained to the Prefects with
perfect ease how nine years of what is invidiously
called arbitrary power were an indispensable pre.
face to a new era of public liberties ; so, in his
latter may on the liberty of the press, he has no
difficulty in proving, text in hand, that the laws
which govern the pram in England are "a terrible
" arsenal "—he might have added, of spiked guns
and weapons out of date. It cannot but be flat-
tering to Englishmen, that a Minister of the First
Empire should, with a fine Roman hand, talus up
our constitutional history where HALLAM and
Macarn.ar left it, and, while conveying instruction
to French Prefects, throw new light on Dome
obscure passages of English history. Our new
Essayist has availed himself of a long residence in
England to " penetrate himself " with the spirit of
our laws and liberties ; and hu traces them back,
by a natural principle of selection, to the troubled
period of the accession of the House of HANONSR.
Long after the abolition, or rather the expiration,
of the censorship in 1694, and even after the
consolidation of the Hanoverian dynasty—as late
as 1819, and even as 1848, M. Ds Psiunowe
notes with complacency that "the English Parlia-
ment did not hesitate to give to the Government
"the means of forcing the jury to defend the
" State ;" and he cites, as the latest production of
the " terrible arsenal," a Bill parsed (for a single
year) in 1848, by which • brace of Irish rebels
were brought down and bagged. Although M. Di
PEARIONT begins by bearing witness in very
handsome terms to the " noble spectacle" of the
liberty of the press, as it is openly exorcised in
England, he manages somehow to leave an
impression on the reader's mind that this liberty
is of a comparatively recent growth, and exists at
this moment by sufferance, and during good be-
haviour rather than by right. He is equally
struck by the " extreme liberty " and " the rigour
" of the law ;" and we need scarcely add, that it
is on " the rigour " and not on " the ex-
" treme liberty " that he expatiates. French
public writers will be consoled by the assur-
ance that after three revolutions they are not
more than a hundred and seventy years behind
their neighbours in the pursuit of liberty. Yet
there is reason and truth in the distinction which
M. us Premix. draws between free discussion of
the policy of a Government or the acts of
an Administration, and attacks on a reign-
ing dynasty, or the established order of
the State. Nor can it be denied that
party journalism in France from 1815 to 1851 has
often struck at the established order of the State.
This wee so under the Restoration, under Louis
PHILIPPI, and during the brief crisis of the
Republic; each petty in its turn—Legitimist,
Orleanist, Republican, conservative or destructive
—has in power maltreated, and in opposition
abused, the liberty of the press. NAPOLEON L
could not conceive any organized expression of
public opinion in a country where it was the busi-
ness of the constituted bodies of the State to think,
speak, and act. Neither CHARLIE X. nor Loots
PHILIPPI found it possible to live with or without
the liberty of the press. The reactionary press
employed its liberty to destroy the Repnblic of '4B,
and the Second Empire simply adopted the prin-
ciples of the First.

The first right and dnty of every government
is self-defence, and in France, unfortunately, no
government for the last seventy years has com-
manded the free and full assent of an united nation,
as the representative equally of right and fact. It
is not only that in France the tendency of liberty
has been always revolutionary, but that the pray
tice of power hoe been always arbitrary. It is
difficult to imagine the press enjoying a right of
discuwing without restraint the acts of the ad-
ministration when the responsibility of administra-
tion is covered by a practically irresponsible Chief
of the State. This, however, is the problem which
M. na PESSIONY, with the utmost frankness and
ben'•volence, invitee the independent press to
solve. No doubt if the Minister were half es
well persuaded as he ought to be that a
dynasty founded on the national will, and
ratified by the suffrages of eight millions of