The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-27 00:00:00

The French Councils-General.

The Paris papers publish the speech of the Duke
de Persigny at a banquet to which he had invited
the members of the Council•Goneral of L 3 Loire.
M. de Persigny drew the following parallel between
the existing institutions of France and England:—

I am aware, gentlemen, that there exists among us a
political school which, while wishing to maintain the
monarchical principle, the only one which evidently is
suited to the traditions of France, pretends to have the pri-
vilege of liberal ideas; that this school fancies that it has
found the very formula of liberty; and that, in despite of
unquestionable experience,it perseveres to maintain that be-
yond its formula no liberty is possible. To this singular
proposition the simple reply might be given that the idea of
subjecting liberty to fixed rules is not philosophical ; that
liberty, like despotism, changes ad snjlnitum, and that every
free country has a peculiar character of its own. We might
add that real liberty is recognisable by unmistakable signs,
by the solidity and duration of the governments which it
establishes, and especially by the passion with which it in-
spires them for great things. If, on the contrary, you see
governments—so called liberal—disappear after a few years
of feverish existence, we can only presume that all that
they had of liberty was only the name. But this does not
satisfy me; I wish to examine closer the pretensions of this
school. I first ask how it happens that in the century in
which we live—a century of experience and of universal
emancipation—men dare to recall the remembrance of a
liberty which commenced by reducing 10,000,000 citizens
to the condition of political exiles. I understand that sys-
tem as it is organised in the country from which it emanates,
that is to say, with our neighbour on the other side of the
Channel, whom lam compelled incessantly to quote. In
fact, there is there, spread over the surface of the country, a
whole electoral body, a whole political class which, tradi-
tional heir of the Conquest, possesses, since William the
Conqueror, all the means of influence. The lord of the
county is the justice of peace, levies the taxes, regulates
public order ; in fact, is invested with all the powers of
authority which in France appertain to the administrative
hierarchy. That this powerful class, from the very fact that
it has all the powers of the nation at its disposal, disposes
also of its government ; that, master of the lower elements,
its also commands the higher ones ; that it makes or
upset Ministries at its will—all this is logical, natural, and
especially suited to the character of "self-government," to
the traditions of the country, and to its internal organiza-
tion. There the principals of authority and of liberty can-
not clash and are not sacrificed one to the other, for liberty
is in the hands of those who exercise authority in all things.
But in our country, which is differently organized, where
"centralization" prevails, where for centuries society has
been accumstomed to trust to the Administration which
provides for public safety and order, how can the so-called
Liberal school wish to apply to France the political system
of England ? By arbitrarily constituting a class of 200,000
electors to take a part in the state of the English electoral
body what did it do ? As it was impossible to give to that
class the authority which belonged to other hands, was it
not a most dangerous and false application ? For, while
the political class with our neighbours is all in all—does
everything, can do everything, on its own hook—the class
artificially constituted in the presence of 10,000,000 French-
men thrown into a political nullity could do nothing ex
cept by a fiction contrary to the very organization of the
country. Will you, in fact, comprehend the error by a
sensible comparison of the internal administration of the
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would be upset, there would not.be either order, justice, or
safety. In the French electoral college, on the contrary,
as constituted under the Parliamentary system, the sudden
loss of 100 or 200 citizens would have been no loss. It will
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ought to rest upon the natural bases it meets with in the
soil, and not upon assimilations, upon copies more or less
faithful, taken arbitrarily from abroad. In submitting to
the nation the principles of a constitution drawn both
from the traditions of the chief of his race and his own
reflections, he has, with the French people, erected a
monument on which authority and liberty are both seated
with:equal firmness,and the disposition of which is as simple,
as logical, as conformable to the organisation of society as
in any other country in the world. And first, gentlemen,
whatever may be thought of the administrative regime
which is actually imposed, not on the press in general,
which is free, but on political journals, it is clear that this
regime has nothing to do with the fundamental principle of
our institutions. It has only been inspired, evidently, by
considerations analogous to those which in the last century
determined the founders of English liberty to place tempo-
rarily all the agents of publicity beyond the pale of the com-
mon liberty. They had thought that so long as a new State
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liberty, for this regime is transitory in its very nature; it
may, it ought, to be modfied. For myself, I believe it sus-
ceptible of receiving in practice notable ameliorations in re.
spect to the right of discussion, which the Government, no
more than our institutions, has reason to distrust. But in
what concerns the movements of parties to deceive the coun-
try as to its situation, and cherish passions or hopes con-
trary to the established order, if we follow the example of
every free people in what is really sage and politic, we will
wait for other circumstances before changing this regime.
The vice of epochs which have been preceded by long revo-
lutions is not so much, indeed, the survival of old parties, as
the moral condition of a certain fraction of the classes mixed
up with public affairs, which, by reason of having seen
changes, by reason of having cried in turn, Vice le Roi ! Pins
la Ligue ? has ended by toeing political sense, and, troubled