The Express.
London, England, 1861-05-20 00:00:00

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(nor on 011/11 consannerr.)

PARIS, WIHTSONDAY.

This being one of the great catholic holidays is
politically a blank. All the world is promenading
in new dresses. There is a warn, sun but a bitter
wintry wind and abundance of dust. I have looked
in vain among the crowds that throng the streets
for groups of the 3,000 English workmen who are
said to be at this moment in Paris. I rather think
the majority of them are so well dressed as not to
be readily distinguishable.
An important petition has been presented to the
Senate denouncing as unconstitutional a decree
dated Jan. 9, 1861, by which the Emperor autho-
rised the Prefect of the Seine to do various acts
without the sanction of the Minister of the Inte-
rior, which he could not have done by himself
under a former decree of March 24, 1862. It may,
perhaps, astonish foreigners, who know in a general
way that the Emperor is all powerful, to he told that
his will can be hampered by any legal quibbles. But
although if he takes the trouble of going the right
way to work there is no power in the state capable
of thwarting him, yet, as the man says in the play,
" there is a form in these things, madam—there is
a form." Now, in point of form, the Emperor has
no more power to supersede the law by a decree
than the Queen of England. It is true that within
the last nine years many illegal decrees have passed
unchallenged because, in the utter absence of gua-
rantees for individual liberty and the general para-
lysis of political life, nobody cared to call attention
to them. But the principles proclaimed on No-
vember 24 have greatly emboldened the public
mind, and the publicity of the debates in the Senate
gives an enormous force to the right of petition.
Legality, which was tabooed, stands a chance of
zooming into fashion. The petition which is
the occasion of these remarks is signed by a single
individual, IL de Montileury, formerly assistant.
mayor of the second arrondissement of Paris. He
publishes in an appendix an opinion of M. Albert
Gigot, an advocate at the bar of the Council of
State and the Court of Caseation, which proves
conclusively that the decree is illegal, and argues
that the Senate, as the recognised guardians of
the constitution, ought to declare it null and void.
To this opinion MM. Berryer, Marie Deemarest,
Emile 011ivier, Jules Fevre, Picard, Dufaure,
Andrei, and other eminent oottnael have "adhered."
The simple point is this—that the decree, limiting
the powers of the Prefect of the Seine, was issued
by the Emperor during his dictatorship after the
corp sltat, and when (as is established by their
subsequent ratification) his decrees bad the force
of law. But the decree of January, 1861, pure
porting to repeal the former one, and to en-
large the prefect's powers, was signed at a
time when regular government was esta-
blished, and the separation of the legislative
and executive powers defined by the constitution.
The Emperor has now no more power to repeal one
of his own former dictatorial decrees than he has
to repeal any other law. One is puzzled to con-
jecture what device can be resorted to, iu so plain a
case, for maintaining the validity of the decree
before the Senate, which, however, I suppose will
be done either by M. Billault or one of his col-
leagues. The case involving, as it does, nothing more
' nor less than the question whether the Emperor
is above all law, excites extraordinary interest.
K Griterin, the senator just dead, was better
acquainted than perhaps any other man in France
with the regulations of the custom-house. He
entered the finance ministry as a clerk when very
young, and passed nearly the whole of his life at
the treasury in the Rue de Rivoli. From 1830 till
&recent period he was director-general of the cub
toms, and during all this time he so loved his office
that he was always the last man to leave it, and
he seldom wandered farther away than to take a
stroll under the arcades, in the street, or on the
terrace of the Tuileries opposite. When removed
from his desk to the velvet cushions of the Senate,
he became afflicted with a sort of home sickness,
under the influence of which he pined away; and,
though a very robust man who might have been ex-
pected to attain a great age, he died iu his 69th
year.