The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-27 00:00:00

IBER.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
TIMES.—" The Spanish ulcer and the Austrian
match," said Napoleon, at St. Helene, " were my
ruin." Disenchanted of the illusions of absolute
power, restored to the faculty, which he had lost, of
justly estimating his position as the ruler of republi-
can and revolutionary France, Napoleon saw, when
it was too late, that the attempt to sever himself from
the people from which he sprang, and to introduce
his parvenu family into the hierarchy of European
monarchs, had robbed him of popularity without in-
creasing his dignity, and deprived him of the support
of the class to which he belonged, without conciliating
for him the regard and sympathy of that to which
he aspired. Eckmiihl and Wagram had given him
the power to demand from prostrate Austria the
hand of one of her princesses, but this alliance, bril-
liant as it was, could not secure to him in adversity
the fidelity of his father-in•law, or raise him to a
permanent position in the aristocracy of kingship ;
it was not in Napoleon's power to be a legitimate
monarch, though he might, had he chosen, have
been something quite as respectable. The same
folly which made Cromwell covet the Garter
made Napoleon eeek after foreign alliance. His
renown, his genius, his great exploits were as
nothing unless consecrated by the blood of Rudolph
of Hapsburg. Did we want any proof of the narrow
intelligence and vulgar estimation of things which
characterise the present ruler of France, we should
find it in the manner in which be deals with this deli-
cate subject in the speech just delivered by him on
the inauguration of the :equestrian statue recently
erected to the honour of Napoleon by the well-garri-
soned town of Lyons. The man who, be he kinsman
or stranger, Frenchman or foreigner, undertakes a
panegyric of Napoleon the Great has a fruitful—in-
deed, an inexhaustible subject ; it required something
less than the mind of a gentleman-usher to treat such
a theme after the fashion of Louis Napoleon. The
principal point which this man of etiquette and con-
ventionality can find to remark in such an occur-
rence is that the statue is equestrian. This, he
observes, is a significant fact. Equestrian statues
are only erected to legitimate Sovereigns, the
people of Lyons have therefore legitimated the
Emperor, and by so doing rendered legitimate
also the domination of his nephew. Since the
days when Caligula made his horse a Consul, or,
rather, since the devolution of the Persian empire
was determined by the neighing of a horse, never did
that noble quadruped do so much for a dynasty as
this horse of Lyons. Dariva's horse neighed him into
a throne, but Napoleon's has cancelled the 18th of
Brumaire and the 2d of December, and legitimated a
whole dynasty. Such things can a horse do, and
that a horse made of stone. But the Emperor had
other claims to legitimacy ; he was thrice elected by
the people, upon which, however, his nephew does
not seem greatly to rely; he was consecrated by the
Pope—an honour which has rarely been withheld
from those who have got the Supreme Pontiff into
their power ; and he was connected by the ties
of blood and policy with all the Sovereigns
of the continent of Europe. What can legitimacy
ask more ? Is it not wonderful that there should
be Orleanists and Bourbonists in the land when
the title is so clear and the proof so unanswerable?
or, rather, is it not much more wonderful that a
man who has the command of a vast army and
the undisputed power of ruling one of the finest
countries in the world, should think it worth his
while to seek to rest his power on such miserable and
paltry pretences ? Does the President suppose that
the name of Napoleon, which has lifted him, being
what he is, into his present position, owes the charm
which it exercises over the soul of the French peasant
to any of the paltry accidents so pompously enu-
merated ? Does he really believe that it is on account
of the sham and compulsory elections of Consul and
Emperor, of a consecration by the hands of the Pope,
of his alliance with the House of Austria, or of his
intimacy with the Emperors Alexander and Francis,
that the name of Napoleon is still a name of power
which makes the heart of every Frenchman beat
high with triumph and exultation ? Surely the
author of the Idies Napolioniennes must know
that it is to transendant geniug, to brilliant
military exploits, to glory which captivates the
imagination if it does not always satify the judg-
ment, that such homage is paid, and that it would
have been paid much more heartily and more unani-
mously had not the character of the great man been
stained by that vulgar weakness which his nephew is
so anxious to parade and to emulate. The truth is
that no event bids fair to be so fatal to the reputation
of the first Napoleon, and tends so much to tarnish the
laurels which he has won, as the advent to power of
one who, bearing his name and imitating his actions,
has contrived to show to the world how much of
littleness there is in great events, how much of weak-
ness in prominent characters, and how much of folly
in successful undertakings. No matter how false the
praise, a subservient audience is sure to applaud the
most ill-deserved eulogium if uttered by the lips of
power. History is boldly perverted and facts
mis-stated without the possibility of correction,
and the most that can he irs favour of the
sketch of his uncle by the younger Napoleon is,
that it is not Loose false and delusive than the account
which he gives of himself. The Emperor, says
his nephew, destroyed the old regime by re-establish-
ing all that was good in it, and the revolutionary
spirit by causing the blessings of the revolution every-
where to triumph. Napoleon retained, or rather re-
stored, much of the pomps and vanities of the old
regime—an endless muster-roll of the officers of state,
a plebian nobility, a vulgar imitation of Court cere-
nial ; but the better parts of the old regime—the
royalty, the devotion, the subordination of ranks—he
neither did nor could restore. Napoleon sacrificed a
generation of his countrymen, not to extend the bless-
ings, but to blot out the memory of the revolution,
and to raise himself and his mushroom Kings into the
fraternity of those ancient monarch whom he tram-
pled into the dust. But when he fell the ancient
regime revived, and the revolutionary spirit revived
with it ; and at this very moment the very ele-
ments that he is represented to have destroyed
divide the opinions of French society between
them. For himself, Louis Napoleon says he has
but one object—that of reconstituting peace in France
as a faithful servant of the public. We are happy to
hear that in this respect the views of the President
differ from those of his uncle, and that while the for-
mer gave France the blessings of the first revolution
through a series of never-ending wars and conscrip-
tions, the second will give her the benefit of her
second revolution through a contrary policy. A
faithful servant of the country, we admit, could do no
less; but willing as we are to believe the President's
assertion of his fidelity, we seek in vain for any other
guarantee than his own affirmation to confirm our
belief. Was he faithful when, after the failure of
Strasburg, he ventured on the attempt of Boulogne ?
was he faithful to the constitution to which he swore
in 1848 ? and is he faithful to his own creation of
1851, when he admits publicly that he is now
balancing between the retention of the title of
President and the dignity of Emperor, and
has not made up his mind whether under the
humble title of President—too humble to express
the substance and possession of arbitrary power—he
can render sufficient service to France, or whether it
will not be advisable to change that title for one
which will fix the destiny of the country, and enable
him to render it the greatest services ? To inaugu-
rate an undignified and servile parody of the old Em-
pire, no address could be more proper than that de-
livered at Lyons. By drawing down Napoleon the
Great from his vast and eccentric orbit into the same
system as ordinary Monarchs, the President makes
imitation more easy, and comparison less invidious ;
and though no laurels may adorn his brow, and all
the victories he can boast have been gained over the
helpless passers-by in the public street, in the appe-
tite for mere conventional rank, in the ardent desire
for admission into the hierarchy of Sovereigns, and
the utter misconception of the causes of his power
and the conditions of its duration, he may, with
some confidence, flatter himself that he is fully equal
to the conqueror of Marengo and of Austerlitz.
DAILY NEWS.—We are very much disposed
to concur with a contemporary as to the grounds on
which any attempt at further: centraliastion, as re-
gards the poor-law ought to be steadily resisted by
the representatives in Parliament of a frugal and
freedom-loving people. There is no practical ques-
tion, in truth, in which considerations of national
economy and popular liberty are more plainly in-
volved. Local taxation and local administration are
the very elements out of which all our boasted consti-
tutional rights, habits, and capabilities have for gene-
rations been formed. To these, as to the main roots,
are traceable all that affords healthful vigour and
sober earnestness to public opinion amongst us; and
to maim or mutilate these roots, however covertly and
without surface disturbance, must be regarded as an
act of the deepest and most indellible treason to the
well-being of the State. Our Poor-law sys-
tem, like moat other portions of our in-
stitutions, may, from time to time, require repair.
Twenty years ago great abuses had arisen in the
mode of administering relief'. A mistaken or indo-
lent philanthropy had gradually led to a species of in-
discriminate disbursement of alms in the form of out-
door relief to the ordinary labourer, which in many
places had actually effaced all marked distinction be-
tween pauperism and independent industry, and
which threatened to reduce vast districts of the king-
dom to the same plight of over-deepening demorali-
sation and decay. Stringent and decisive measures
indispensable;
and corrective discipline were felt to be
and without the interposition of some central power
it was confessedly impossible to hope for their effec-
tive application. It was not without a struggle,
however, that the public mind could be brought to
assent to the erection of the Poor-law Commission,
which at first was proposed only as a temporary con-
trivance, and not renewed or eventually placed on its
present permanent footing without many hesitations,