Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-12-22 00:00:00

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

FRANCE.

PARIS, SUNDAY EVICIING.
The disappointment which has befallen the
' Courrier de Paris shows what little chance there
is of the French press lining released from. its
ligaments, and how long the political structure has
yet to wait before the promise of the architect is
fulfilled, and its summit " topped with the crown
of liberty." The Courrier de Paris is an evening
journal, whose existence dates about two years
back. It first issued under the incongruous title
of La Verite. The assumption of such a name
'wounded the susceptibility of the more passionate
admirers of the " situation." Many were puzzled
to know what it meant, for veity has been long
consigned to the Index Expuryatorius, and has
almost escaped the memory of men. It is looked
upon somewhat in the light of base coin, now and
then tried to be forced into circulation, but con-
temptuously rejected by most of those who either
have a place to take in the system, or who are
already in' possession, and who naturally do not
wish to risk it by any damaging denomination. It
is regarded as an outrage on common sense, and
in some sort a defiance flung in the face of a com-
munity which prospers without it, or in spite of it.
By some curious manipulation, about which much
petty scandal was current at the time, the Verite
like a docile journal, changed its name, and in
consideration thereof was allowed to be sold in the
public thoroughfare like the Pays and Patrie•--a
privilege which added a satisfactory supplement
to the scant revenue it derived from subscriptions
Encouraged by the circulars of the Minister of
the Interior, announcing the utmost latitude to
the exercise of universal suffrage, and affecting to
believe that these circulars really meant what they
I said, the same paper, under its new title of Courrier
de Paris, supported, but with becoming discretion,
the independent candidates who took the field in
opposition to the government nominees. The con-
sequence of this imprudence was the suppression
of his privilege of sale of an evening on the Boule-
vards. Now, though it may be all very fine for a
statesman to glory in being unsold, it is rather a
fault in a book or a newspaper. The Courrier de ,
Paris, having its sale cut off as the penalty of giving
too literal an interpretation to official circulars,
became reduced to its original proportions, and
continued for a long time to languish in obscu-
rity. It was in that prostrate condition, fast
verging towards iissolution, when that clever
and eccentric person, M. Emile Girardin,
took it into his head that ho, perhaps, might
galvanise it. M. Girardin had very recently
sold his interest in La Presse, which he had
long and successfully conducted as manager and
editor. It was thought that he had abandoned
polemics for ever, and had at length settled down
to the placidities of private life. "To chronicle
small beer," Sce„ was not, however, to the taste of
a man who had for so many years been foremost
wherever fighting was going on. As opposition
was his element, he conceived the design of re-
Burning his polemical campaign in the columns of
the Courrier de Paris. His plan was to establish
what is called a " dynastic opposition," and, while
supporting the Imperial regime. and never calling
the new order of things in question, to show that
such an opposition, far from undermining, would,
on the contrary, consolidate authority. In a word,
he meant to show that liberty and the Imperial
Government were perfectly compatible. If he
ever seriously entertained such a notion it was soon
dissipated. Two or three articles appeared, not
under his signature, brit that of the Secreiaire de
Redaction, a harmless personage, vary like what
John Doe or Richard Roe was in certain legal pro-
ceedings in England. In an article published in
the Courrier of the 12th of Dec., and intended as an
answer to the Constitutionnel, the following hetero-
dox passage occurs :
Yes, we accuse you of preferring "the Empire without
liberty," because you do not deem liberty for it, and we
demand it, firmly , convinced, as we are, that nothing
opposes the existence of the Empire with liberty—quite
the contrary. Does not the roof which covers the building
protect its foundation ? Is not the liberty of the press,
from the salutary terror which it holds out against abases,
more advantageous than hurtful to the Empire ? Can the
Empire examine everything, hear everything ? Will
any one dare to inform it of everything ? Are there
not excesses committed by the Government which people
are tempted to attribute to the Crown ; or is the Crown
always certain of being correctly informed of them ?
From what occurred in Russia on the occasion of the
Crimean -war, we can see to what fatal impotence, in
periods of great trial, the most absolute authority is
exposed when not aided and enlightened by ever-vigilant
liiterty. Could we separate the cause of Governments
from that of the people, we might say that liberty is still
more useful to Governments than to the people ; for, after
all, what is liberty but that ennobled denunciation—but a
system of police under another name, and applied not any
longer to persons, but to abuses ?
Such language, you will admit, was very bold.
To suppose for a moment that the notion of not
exposing, but merely alluding to the existence of
"abuses," could be tolerated, was one of the
wildest that could enter the head of a man having
the remotest pretonsions to common sense. The
offence was too heinous and too personal to be
pasSed over. It was intimated that such a mode
of supporting the Empire could not he allowed ;
and the following concluding passage from an
article in the same paper, on the 13th, shows the
consequences of such hardihood :

If we fail in the double task we have undertaken, and
in which no one succeeds by doing it otherwise—if liberty
and the Government continue to be separated from each
other as the poles, as we have not received a mission from
either, we shall have baffled the hopes of no one. " 1)3
your duty, whatever be the consequence," is a motto which
was not invented for the necessities of the present discus•
mien, bat it is applicable to it, and justifies it.
Thii was the last note of the swan ; his voice has
not since been heard.
It is quite clear that the Government does not
want to be assisted or defended in such a free-
spoken fashion—non tali auxilio. It wants no such
dashing volunteers. It will not be served by such
free lances. It has its own troops of the line—
" penny-a-line " men ?—drilled and disciplined to.
execute its commands without presuming to ask
questions ; and it is perfectly satisfied with the
dreary prose of its own journals, into which not
even a chauffe-pied in the shape of a feuilleton by
Dumas can infuse life or warmth. The articles of
the Courrier excited a certain interest, which shows
that the existence of a desire for something
approaching free discussion is not quite dead with
the public. The campaign, however, is for the
present at an end. The author of the experiment
will apply his energies to something else, and the
Courrier de Paris must content itself with following
the example of most of the other Paris papers and
become a mere organ for puffing.
The Minister of Public Instruction's procedure
towards the professors who write in the Revue des
Deux Mondes, and M. Laguerroniee-t's " reply" to
a late article by M. Villemain in the same publica-
tion, would indicate that the Governthent is grow-
ing more sensitive every day. If a writer speaks
of Greek or Roman worthless, he is, by contrast,
reflecting on the contemporaneous worthies of the
French Eaapire ; if he touches on the dissimulation
of Augustus, or exposes the vices of the Caesars or
the Sejani, he attacks, by implication, public men
of the present day. Neither praise nor censure
comes kindly. We seem to be approaching a
period when hardly any ingenuity shall escape the
microscopic vigilance of the censor. It may, for
aught we know, soon apply to the most harmless
productions; lam not quite sure that the objec- b dowo
1,114. The ,
tions which were once made in France to the FRIPWRECK AND GREAT LOSS OF vie/oh 0/
author of a work on geometry, may not yet be received a, Lloyd's, on Saturday, states pato r 90_0
Age. of and from Halifax for Ponce, the
,t 0,6
repeated :
thrown on her beam ends in a heavy squall, Olt I cannot permit the publication of your book ; you dare November, and all her crew washed overbe4 22,1
to say that between two given points the shortest line is man, who was taken from the wreekßelalatinnor.le..l:
the straight line. Do you think me such an idiot as not to Reindeer, arrived at St. Thomas from
perceive your allusion ? If your work-appeared I should BRIGANDAGE NEAR biter —"the di obso
make enemies of all those who find, by crooked ways, an says the Nouvelliste of Marseilles "State that
afeDiefio 01. f
easier admittandt into Court than by a straight line. QOM- from that town was stopped on W
ednesdaY. t vtuo
d Log"' ecoe"! the
The their number !" nine o'clock, betweea Dregui,gan an from Done
0 60
The work of another writer, on the " destruction armed with guns. They took 4,000 fr. _ .010_4 to
of insects," the censor imagined to be a covert and then withdrew, without melestinc___t" roe 1"
allusion to the Jesuits, and was, subsequently, carriage, or requiring anything from them.
TralolierO t
prohibited. I hope we are not verging to such a had their faces whitened with Soar,"

The Nord publislAes an Imperial decree) iv;
from T. sarskoe-Selo, Nov. 20 (2nd Decent;cril 661,:0
and. signed by the Emperor Alexander, 15'1" "„"o
siderably modifies the state of serfdolt cle'hee
.districts of Yilno, Kovno, and Gradno.
accompanied by a circular, addresse,i'doiii
Minister. of the Interior to the governors ();
districts, and by another to the civil and
governors and marshals of the nobility W"
the empire.

SPAIN.

Our Madrid letter of the 15th states v 8 ccil
0 Y 0
Government has resolved on Madrid °,; je
netted by railway with the Mediterreueil" ieEd
course of the next month. deto
Colonel Santiago Perez, who had bee..l3, Ojos
in prison at Madrid for more than 12 '„,1300;000
suspicion of being engaged in a eonspirt`„"s 413'
the Queen, had been set at liberty in c°- -e
t
of the amnesty. 1603,130 e
Our private letter from Madrid, of the :ES
announces that advises had been ree6r-ve shred the Havannah, stating that two e'tleopte
having
on board 1,200 negroes, had been
t.
108
by the Spanish cruisers. con 0•
The Madrid Gazette, of the 16th ins7coeg„o7
seven columns, printed in small type, toti°leoe
latory addresses and protestations of nbe Pt'
the throne on the occasion of the birdie' " 0
t
of the Asturias. Cabifle
The reports of a modification in the
contradicted.

l$
(101),Je te.