Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-03-09 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN TIMES WEDNESDAY, MARC-It ,9, 1853

been " parties," it is true, that is
persons, individuals, whom he has opposed,
because they sought to disturb his dynasty. But
the English. have certainly not " attacked him
incessantly in the journals," in any manner what-
ever, on this account, whatever they may have done
on the other. As to " exciting the public mind
against France," that is quite a gratuitous assumption,
Not only can the English have no interest at all in
doing that, but they have the highest interest in
doing the very opposite of it,—reconciling the public
mind of their country to France, promoting therein
the warmest feeling of amity and goodwill, and
thereby endeavouring to establish and perpetuate
peace and good neighbourhood between• the two
nations. No English writers, that we are aware of
—none, certainly, that could have any influence
with their countrymen,—have ever " sought the
means to injure him," as he would have it supposed ;
except, of course, in so far as their resistance of his
despotic and dangerous policy could have the effect
of injuring him. And this would be his own fault --
not theirs. He says it is what he " cannot compre-
hend." As he distorts it as he affects to censure
it—it might be incomprehensible. But it were
utterly impossible that one so shrewd, so politic,
could fail to understand, that a people, like the
English, living under free institutions, cannot in
reason be expected to have any sympathy with one
who has assumed very much the position of a
despot. Yet, even in this respect, it is not that they
have at any time been " exciting the public mind
against France," but only (if at ail) against one
who is lording it over France with the arbitrary
authority of his own self-will, and behind the
bayonets of a warlike host —a phalanx that is
dangerous to all liberty not only in France, but
throughout Europe at large. And this being the
case, when he adds, " if, in my own country, I chose
to act in this manner, it would be impossible for me
afterwards to restrain the passions which I should
have let loose," he only indulges in a little " sound
and fury," which, if it means anything, only signifies
that he is all the more dangerous in the position
which he has so unscrupulously assumed.
His dissimulation is made only the more manifest,
when he goes on to say, " I have always entertained
a great admiration for the liberties of the English
people ; but I regret deeply that liberty, like all
good things, should also have its excess." Is it pos-
sible to believe this ? If it were so, would not the
liberties of the French people, his own countrymen,
and whose destiny he controuls, have been in some
degree respected ? And where is our excess o f
liberty, which he pretends to " regret deeply ?"
But surely it is not a question with which one can
have anything to do, who despotically denies his own
country any of the " good things " at all ! The
English people don't want the " great admiration,"
or any admiration at all, of such an one for their
liberties. If he wants their sympathy, and their
confidence, let him first establish and maintain the
liberties of his own people. It is all very fine to ask,
" Why is it that, instead of making truth known,
it uses every effort to obscure it ? Why is it that,
instead of encouraging and developing generous
sentiments, it propagates mistrust and hatred ?"
The first question is itself a suggestio falsi. The
independent Press of England, as respects his own
case, has done the very reverse of " obscuring the
truth ;" it has exerted itself constantly in "making
truth known,"—the truth of which' he is himself so
much afraid, ttiat he dare not allow the English
journals to circulate without the most despotic
censorship among,his subjects. And as to "mistrust
and hatred," what else can there be among a free
people, towards one who has raised himself, as he
has done, to Imperial power, and maintains himself
there, by the suppression himself, not only of gener-
ous sentiments, but of that without which all such
sentiments, in such a quarter, at any rate, are mere
sounding brass—a nation's liberty., which every
generous heart must needs regard and cherish as the

ecclesiastics and Ilaymen,
arefine looking men. The priests,
in their ecclesiastical costume, were objects of intense
interest to the people of Queenstown on Sunday. What
their designs are has not yet transpired ; whether they will
stay in England, or return to take service under the
Sardinian flag, whose protection they will doubtless readily
obtain. For the present they have outwitted King ' Bomba,'
and their return in triumph to the country from which they
had been expelled is ' on the cards' with which the game of
empire and revolution is played."