Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-08-05 00:00:00

only explanation of a state of opinion so divers

anomalous must li

thu existence of a g 4

lypocrisy, which, while it. deludes the simple and

ascs the support of the sycophant, adds to the

moral turpitude of the character.

LOUIS'MPOLEOR is in this diktnma. His enemies
have, no doubt, many logically incontrovertible
grounds for the reputation they have built hini
But if you once discard the (evil secret which they
affect to discern in every' phase of his career, hono.ur
and •virtue, everything• lofty and magnanimous, seem
to vie 3n furnishing it with .a favourable interpreta-
tion. It is an additional misfortune to such a char-

actor when its judges begin with a deep-rooted
assumption, and pretend to have found a master-key

which unlocks all its mysteries. If a man is suspected.
to be mad, his wisest acts are taken .as evidences of
the cunning with which madness.. is often charac-
terised. It is the same with the man suspected to be

of one idea, and to have his mind through every change
of circumstances continually fixed on one overmastering
The most candid professions,

the most

unlikely occurrences, the most re-assuring efforts, are
considered to have a bearing -upon the ruling motive,

and by some Way or other to tend to the one great
•

consummation. Now, no one can deny, at least, that
Louis -NAPOLEON has himself supplied his critics

with the master-key that unlocks hi; mystery

in all fairness, impossible that he can complain, if
all his professions of amity, and offers of confidence,

are taken as a mask _under which to carry forward

the completion of long-meditated designs, or, at
least, if they do not meet with that reliance which

influences the conduct of others, or challenges a full

reciprocation, If this is a mystery, unluckily the world

has always its master-key at hand. Once assume

that there is a goal on which Loins NAPOLEON
keeps fixed an untiring gaze, and that every effort of
his life has one object—to bring it nearer—then

every item takes its necessary place in the great

account, and every feature assumes its consist-
ent part in a system. Every effort to remove
suspicion and allay distrust may not necessarily
aggravate them, but it must tend to increase our
vigilance. We do not wish to provoke. Louis NA-

POLEON, much less to insult him. • It is 'as' much our
misfortune as his that we cannot believe in a cordial
alliance, any more than in Italian liberation. That
affectation of the brain-sick sceptic, " Oh, that I
had faitli t" • It

is, in our case, a sincerity
arises, not from the affected squeamishness of a
fastidious intellect, but from the apprehensions of
a very homely common sense, and the conclusions
of a very vulgar logic: We are able to put two and
two together, and we are able, after twenty years'
experience, to read Louis NAPOLEON'S life. We
have, moreover, a selfish memory for words and
events which wholly concern our own. interests.
The very acme and first recommendations of our
every-day logic is, that we take LOUIS NAPOLEON
himself as the interpreter of his own actions, and the
revealer of his own motives. , Nay, we think, when
so profound an oracle utters astute principles of

government, the least the world can do is to give his
own administration the credit of them. When he

tells us, for instance, that no great people can
suffer a large abridgment of their liberty,

without the compensation of external glory,
we recollect that he himself confessea.: it) the
fact, and justifies it as a necessity, that "the salva-

tion of society " has obliged him to inflict
this abridgment upon the French people. We
inquire further for the glory which is to supply the
fund of " compensation," and we find another
acknowledged necessity of the situation to be, the
avenging of Waterloo, and the humiliation of
England.

Whether it is still possible for Louis NAPOLEON

to remove his reputation from the dangerous ex-
tremes of heat and cold to which it has been subject,
and to enable the world to strike the average, the
Italian expedition was said to be an experiment. On
the whole, it has lamentably failed. The tem-
perature of the frigid zone became consider-
ably intensified, and even the thermometer

in the torrid, fell a degree or two. Now,

we are told, the experiment is to be prolonged into

a Congress; though on many accounts it would
appear with smaller chances of success. What he
could not do with an army at his back, he cannot
expect to accomplish by a diplomacy which steps in
to redeem its failures and short-comings.

At all events, this state of uncertainty must be
effectually dissipated, or else culminate in a crisis.
LOUIS NAPOLEON himself will feel the want of a
great compensation. The incense of paid flatterers
cannot atone for the universal censure of the wise
and the good. It cannot afford any solid satisfaction

to turn, even from the just and reasonable reproba-
tion of an English newspaper, to M. DE MORNY in
rapture, and M. TROPLONG on all fours.