The Express.
London, England, 1868-04-08 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8.

THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON.

THE Emperor of the FRENCH will have completed
his sixtieth year on the 20th of the present month,
having presided in one capacity or another over
the destinies of France for well nigh twenty years.
He has lately seen fit to publish a solemn justifica-
tion of his sovereign rights and powers as
the legitimate heir and successor of the
founder of the BONAPARTE dynasty ; and
as the dynastic representative of the national
will of the people who have twice chosen
him by overwhelming majorities as their chief.
Of what does that justification consist ? Of a re-
cital of the great events and acts of his reign at
home and abroad ? Of glorious wars and distant
expeditions crowned with success, of liberty and
order reunited at home, of demolished and recon-
structed cities, of waste lands reclaimed and
turned into fertile fields, of railways and cross-
roads completed or decreed, of universal suffrage
enlightened by a vast system of national instruc-
tion, of liberated commerce and enlarged industry,
of economy in the budgets, of public morality
stimulated and encouraged by example, of con-
tentment, comfort, and grateful confidence prevail-
ing among all classes of the population, of a sincere
realisation of the principles of 'B9, of public liberties
working in harmony with the great administrative
institutions of the State under one supreme bene-
ficent arbitrator and protector 1 No ; the authorita-
tive justification which was issued the other day
from the Imperial Printing-office makes no men-
tion of all these things. One would never
have imagined, from a perusal of that docu-
ment, that the " Itveries Politiques" and the
" Iddes Napoleoniennes" of the Prisoner of Ham
and the exile in England had been fulfilled by
their ingenious and enthusiastic author on the
throne, or that three ultra democratic contributions
by the future biographer of Jumus Cssaa to the
columns of a provincial opposition journal in the
days of Louis PHILIPPE had been the germ of his
own grand liberal policy of after years. His latest
apologetic Memoir consists simply of the plelfilscites
by which NAPOLEON I. was confirmed Consul for
life in August, 1802, and Emperor in May, 1804,
and of the plebiscites, upon a similar pattern,
by which Naroxaorr 111. was elected President of
the Republic in December, 1848, and Emperor of
the French in November, 1852. By a singular
logic of numbers all the millions of votes of all
these plibiscites are added together, and
the total is to be taken as the jus-
tification of the Imperial dynasty against
all objectors past, present, or to come.
Evidently nothing can be easier or more entirely
satisfactory and convincing than this mode of argu-
ment. It is proved thereby to absolute demon-
stration that the French people have on four
distinct occasions committed political suicide.
There is a rumour, indeed, that the present Ex-
PEROI is preparing another manifesto of some sort,
irkethot jA the shape of a Letter to a Minister, or
of an anonymous brochure, to allow his people bow

grateful they ought to be to a government which
in twenty years has quadrupled the public debt,
has founded a Latin empire in Mexico, established
the unity of Italy, made deadly enemies
of the Italians, preserved the temporal
power of the POPE, encouraged the prin-
ciple of great agglomerations in Germany,
and created a moveable national guard of more
than half a million of men to intimidate the
Germans ; and, by way of crowning the oonstitu-
ticand edifice at home, has instituted a press law
and a law of public meeting compared with which
the moat reactionary and repressivemeasures of the
last days of the Bourbon Restoration are charters
and monuments of freedom. Some incorrigible
malcontents in France appear to regard this feverish
disposition on the part of a Sovereign to apologise
to his people for a rigime so fruitful in benefits and
blessings as the Second Empire as betraying a cu-
taro uneasiness of conscience. They regard this ap-
peal as an involuntary self-accusing record which
may possibly relieve its author for a moment, but
will certainly delude neither his subjects nor him-
self. This is a somewhat harsh interpretation, per-
haps, but it must be admitted that the policy of pub-
lishing such justifications is at least doubtful. They
provoke reprisals, and when the EMPEROR points
triumphantly to the phibiscites by which the French
people have again and again sold away their birth-
• right of 'B9, some invidious critics remind the
august apologist that the history of the
Naroutome dynasty is not summed up in the
national vote of 1804. To point the moral and
adorn the tale of the First Empire, something
should have been said of Moscow, Leipsic, and
Waterloo ; of the Hundred Days, and the Acta
Additionnel, of France desolated by conscriptions,
wasted by glory, sick of conquest, sighing for
peace, and freedom, and security ; of the tardy
penitential avowal of the EMPEROR that it was
time to endow the French people with all those
liberties, of which he had persistently deprived
them so long as Fortune favoured his inordinate
designs and indulged his dream of universal dot
mination. Why, it was asked, does not the pam-
phleteer, instead of reciting pldbiscites, recount
the final consequences of those ten years of per-
sonal government and irresponsible power ? Other
critics reprinted certain documents bearing
date December, '4B, and December, '5l, and
signed by the same hand, which certainly
present a striking contrast. But these dates,
it is true, in these rapid times, are but ancient his-
tory. What is more to the point and to the
purpose as a significant commentary on the Impe-
rial justification is the pamphlet which appeared
on the same day from the pen of an eminent econo-
mist, bristling with facts and figures, and simply
entitled " The Balance-sheet of the Empire."
The object of this publication is to show,
chapter and verse, precisely what France has paid
in the course of sixteen years for the blessings and
benefits of personal government. Poor Louis
PHILIPPE'S budgets are what Mr. Dia-
LEL' would call " fleabites " indeed in
comparison with these prodigious amounts of
war loans and peace loans, and annual
estimates to the tune of eighty millions sterling,
all resulting—after sixteen years' experiense—in
what 1

When the Emperor NAPOLEON, on the eve
of his approaching sixtieth birthday, asks
himself in the watches of the night what the en•
thusiastic Carbonaro of 1831, the meditative Pri-
soner of 1840, the Exile of 1847, has done to
justify his marvellous destiny, what will his con-
science reply ? Has he closed the era of revolutions
in France Has he established public order
or public liberty en durable foundations ?
Has he given more than a momentary gleam of
prosperity and confidence to the material interests
of the country ? Has he fostered and developed the
moral interests of the nation ? Has he proved thathis
government can bear to be discussed, and that he
needs no diversion at the cost of hisneighboura from
domestic discontent ? Has he secured to his own
dynasty the possibility of a future ? Has he
rallied and reconciled ,the old parties, or won the
loyalty of the new generation ? To ask these
questions is to answer them. The most
vulgar sources of evidence suffice. Look at
the quotations of the public securities; con-
sider the forty millions sterling buried in the
Bank cellars ; listen to the cries of the reluctant
conscripts in the provincial cities ; seek for the suc-
cessors of the few statesmen who consent to take
their turn at the council table ; read the
independent journals. Ask any Frenchman
you meet, of whatever class, or party, or
opinion, whether he believes in the future of the
present dynasty; contemplate all the outward and
visible symptoms of public morality—whether in
finance, or literature, or the drama, or in the
daily life and manners of society, and then say
whether that wonderful creation of audacious
will, which has been so much admired on this side
of the Channel, is a monument of genius, or the
throw of a gambler 1

THE VOLUNTEER DIFFICULTY OVER-

COME.

kr is not at all surprising that the volunteers of
London and the southern provinces should have
joined in a chorus of indignation at the decision
arrived at on Saturday last limiting their great
annual festival to a mere holiday show. If
the authorities had no intuitive conscious-
ness of the fact, certainly not many
hours could have elapsed before they were made
aware of their mistake. Astonishment and vexa-
tion were the inevitable result, for the deci-
sion threatened to bring discredit upon everybody
concerned. The arrangements which were supposed
to be the result of careful deliberation were
upset,—or at least appeared to be so,—with
wonderful alacrity, and it was not easy to under-
stand how such a change could have been really
necessitated by the addition of some eight or ten
thousand men to the twenty-four or twenty-five
thousand whose presence had already been
counted upon. Compared with continental
corps d'ormic—with the garrison of Paris,
for instance—thirty thousand men do not com-
pose a very formidable force, and it would be a
lamentable confession to make to the world that,
within a circle of detached forts over twenty miles
in circumference, designed for the protection
of one of the greatest naval arsenals in Europe,
there is not sufficient space to parade and
mancenvre thirty or forty thousand men. At
length, however, • way has been found of
saving the confession and of escaping from a fancied
dilemma. If any difficulty really existed, it seems
to have been attributable to a want of under-
standing between the military and the local
authorities, although it is only fair to say
that, judging from the facts as they have so far been
made known, no blame attaches to the latter. We
learn from Portsmouth that Colonel WARD' arrived
there last evening, sent by Major-General Lugo-
SAY to the MAYOR and local committee, and the
bearer of conditions upon which alone the
original arrangement can be reverted to. This