The Sun.
London, England, 1852-01-16 00:00:00

FRIDAY EVENING, JANUARY 16, 1852.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIMES.—The political instruments commonly styled
Constitutions which have heretofore fallen under our
notice all professed either to define and limit the rights
of the Sovereign prerogative, or to establish and secure
the rights of the people. The document just promul-
gated under a similar title by Louis Napoleon Bona-
parte differs from all such instruments, inasmuch
as it omits or extinguishes all
popular rights in theory
and application, and establishes a political structure
which is a mere engine for enforcing the will of a single
ruler. It contains, in short, no trace of liberty, and no
check on despotism. The chief bodies in the State are
alt either dependent on the will of the ruler, or debarred
from the exercise of the independent authority they
may -receive from the people; and the general guarantees
of public liberty—such as freedom of the press, freedom
from arrest, save under judicial process, trial by jury,
religious toleration, &c., which have figured in the
Frei. ch Charters since the establishment of constitu-
tional government in that country, have now, as might
be anticipated, entirely disappeared. In these re-
spects even the nugatory, general provisions of the
Constitution of the Year VIII. are not revived. Tho
proclamation in which Louis Napoleon has attempted to
explain to the French nation the method in which he
has discharged the duty confided to his care is a loose
and rambling address, totally incompreteasibie, we
should suppose, to the masses for whom it was written,
and totally opposed to the more dignified and enlight-
ened sentiments of those classes in the nation which may
be better able to understand it. The assertions and
principles on which Louis Napoleon seeks to establish
his dominion and his constituent powers are the same as
put forth by him in several former publications, from the
Ideas Napoleoniennes of 1839 to the Revision de la Con-
stitution in 1851. He observes that France bas retained
in her social condition a very large proportion of the in-
stitutions conferred upon her by the Emperor Napo-
leon. His centralized administration, his army
raised by conscription, his lucid system of
finance and public accounts, the University of France,
the Concordat, and the Code Civil, are institutions that
have survived the convulsions of half a century. Why,
then, he asks, should not the political institutions of the
First Consul have the same duration ? and on no other
ground ho now re-imposes there upon the people. In
retained whatever
was thought sound, useful, or lastin—
g in the Imperial
institutions, ahe is now to resume the despotism which
other words, because France has
at the same time gagged her, exhausted her, and de-
haelllivtehde ;civil
war with, the iete-
rights of his
graded her. Many of the legal atinsinistrative concep-
tions of the Emperor had great merit. It was not by
them that be fell, nor did they fall with him. He fell
because, in spite of all the military glory and
the energy of his career, his
political institu-
tionseuuut
country. He
w e res
fedllenia l
of
because
lect, the independence, and the honesty oe the nation.
He fell because be governed by the army and the
police; and not a vestige of his political institutions sur-
vived him, because they were all studiously contrived so
as to place the entire power of the state in his single
hand. To revive similar institutions now is to place a
similar power in the bands of one who is neither re-
spected for his character, admired for his genius, nor
dreaded for his power. It is false that "the present
state of society in France is nought else than France re-
generate by the Revolution of 1789 and organized by
the Emperor." Between the present time and the dates
of events oscillating from despotism to anarchy, it implies
a strange want of memory or of candour to omit altogether
;those thirty-five years of constitutional monarchy, which
form the freest, the most prosperous, and the most pro-
gressive era in French history. is it to
be supposed, because the nation has been panic-
stricken in the last few months by she alter.
nate triumph of a mob of ruffians and a mob of
soldiers over the laws and liberties of the kingdom, that
every vestige of that long train of her patriots, orators,
public writers, jurists, and statesmen has vanished? that
nothing remains of France between the pike of a Jacobin
or the bayonet of a Chasse*. de Vincennes ? This
Constitution is framed on some such hypotheais. It is
calculated wholly for a nation that has forgotten to be
free; and, although it is possible that the terrors of the
past and the illusions of the present may win the tem-
porary acquiescence of the country to its provisions, the
cause of human liberty and representative government is
not so palsied and dead in France that it will not one day
spurn and shake off restraints which no other people in
Europe would submit to, save as the last and most cruel
necessity of armed subjugation. It is true, the Imperial
institutions have survived in the administration of
France, and the remains of those institutions are pre-
cisely the most active causes of the ruin of public freedom.
That centralization which places the whole fate of the
provinces within the grasp of any man who is lucky
or bold enough to seize the mainspring of the engine....
that enormous standing army, raised by conscription
from the Peasantry—and that division of landed pro-
perty introduced by the Code Civil, which has robbed
two generations of their testamentary rights, are tall Im-
perial institutions. They have perpetuated a slavish
dependence of the people on the Government, even dur-
ing an epoch of constitutional monarchy; and they now
hand back to the empire, or its descendants, a race of
men more prone to sink under the influence of such in-
stitutions than to struggle for the liberties of which they
have now been deprived. The inference we draw from
the series of revolutions through which France has
passed is, not that she is incapable of freer and more
popular government, but that the liberties she did
enjoy were incompatible with that centralization and
administrative despotism which are now quoted
to justify the subversion of her political free-
dom. The responsibility to the people on which
Louis Napoleon professes to found his dominion is a
mere fiction, since every institution by which such
responsibility could be enforced is robbed of all
strength against the Government and directed with
all its power against the people. The Senate and the
Council of State, which are the two most important
bodies in the Government, both emanate from the execu-
tive authority. Their deliberations are to he secret, and
they have the exclusive power of originating and
amending laws. The legislative body does, indeed, aP•
pear to retain a more popular character than had been
ascribed to it; and, as far as we are acquainted with the
propoied mode of election, it may possibly return men
of eminence and independence. The vicious principle of
Parliamentary stipends is happily discarded, and we
hear of no express limitation on the candidates. In
these respects it may be hoped that the hypothetical (ha'
cussion of certain propositions connected with the
draught of the constitution has not been wholly without
effect, No doubt such an Assembly, freely chosen, if
that be possible, may exercise considerable moral power,
and, as the
incline will not form part of it, that
power will rather to opposition than to the sup-
port of the Government. But it will be found that the
aPPlication of t is power is most jealously guarded,
and limited to the narrowest objects. If a legisla-
tive body favourable to the Government can now be ob-
tained, its duration will be prolonged by lute for no less
than ten years—a lease of political power far beyond the
average duration of French Governments or constitu-
tions. At any rate, if, contrary to all probability, such
a body should prove refractory, it may be adjourned,
prorog he Senateued, or dissolve by the President; and in that
case t would sd upply its most essential functions.
Lastly, if all these precautions +should be unavailing, and
the voice of the nation should once more be raised
against despotic authority, as it was raised during the.
100 Days against the Emperor Napoleon himself, there
can be no obstacle to the repetition of a coup d' aril
such as we have lately witnessed) and the Councils
or Assemblies, which owe their existence to the will
of the President, can expect no greater security than
an Assembly which had been constituted and elected
by the whole suffrage of the people. In short,
this system of government, copied ostensibly
from the organic laws of
the Consulate and
the Empire, is avowedly calculated
.
to leave the actions of
the head of the state " free and without hindrance ;" in
other words, absolute. Its most evident purpose is to
strengthen the coercise power of the state, and to clear
it from all resistance or opposition on the part of the
nation. The political institutions of the empire were
adapted to the indefatigable genius and activity of the
man who comprised in his own person the arbitrary go-
vernment of France. They
are now renewed with a
i
poverty of language and plagiarism of ideas that suffi-
ciently denote the difference n the
first actor of this
strange dramas They are renewed without the prestige
of glory, the terror of a devastating revolution, or the
active support of the first men reeamein _
g in the country.
They are viewed with indifference or aversion by all
that is honourable or enlightened in the nation. They
are erected on the ruins of a vast edifice of freedoml ong
possessed and enjoyed by Frenchmen; and it requires
no spirit of prophecy to foresee that such a "constitu-
tion, administered in such a spirit and by such men,
will afford no abiding restingplace for the people of
France.
CHRONICLE.—The worst anticipations of those who
angured of the new French Constitution from the violent
travail of its birth and the apparent passiveness of the
nation under the autocratic dictates of its author, will
scarcely be found to be realised in the documents which
we publish elsewhere. Except so_ far as the unhappy
circumstances which accompany h
t o promulgation con-
stitute a suspicious gloss upon its text, the instrument
prepared by Louis Napoleon is, perhaps, not much more
open to objection than most others of the Constitution
which revolutions has imposed on Franco. There is no
very conspicuous departure from the spirit of that appeal
to the people with which the President commenced bia
coup d'etat; and though the Constitution of the Year
VIII. is expressly referred to, that
.colossal fraud has
not been made an exact precedent
evading pledges which the occasion had once made
voting laws and
necessary. The privilege of
the branch of
im-
posts is lodged with the popular
body which n nme7
Legislature! and the electoralustituted by universal
suffrage. that Assembly i
-s constituted by
the legisla-
, suffrage. Contrary to general
submitted to it;
Live corps is to debate on theb measures under the but the debates are only to published.eechamber. The allusion
sur-
veillance of the President of the
to the permanency
of the introductory proclamation
s more satisfactory.
(inantovibilite) of the judicaturesof this
pnciple as ono of the
The implied recognition o
still surviving institutions .
which bear witness to the
Emperor Napoleon's genius, is a considerably better
t
guarantee for its maintenance
the
body of the Conatitu-
han would bo any express
provision to the same effect in .
flan. The rights of the press receive no such homage.
Apparently, this is one of the subjects to be regulated in
the forthcoming aeries of organic laws. It is possible.
single
passage in which
however, to construe the in
are mentioned as inconsistent with an
from criticism
newspapers
altogether
intention to debar them
and somatic. One principal .novelty is the exclusionei
ation
of the the Ministers from par.tui
tro p
in
dueed withthe b a
cate-
ness of either Chamber,
gorical declaration that in
future they are simply to
be deemed heads of the departments confided respec-
tively to their directions. The practice of the United
le in.poitat, and tlo
State@ may be pleaded se as exiiinP

exception can be taken to the formal reasoning of Louis
Napoleon, alleging that the responsibility of the Execu-
tive Chief renders idle that of his subordinates, if the
former be really enforced. What chance there may
practically be of calling to account such a President as
the existing one, is a question which our imaginations
are left to unriddle. Another innovation is the prohi-
bition against publishing any report of the debates which
is not officially sanctioned and certified—a rule which
evidently may be turned to purposes of very gross de-
ception. The most startling change—and it Is one so
grave that it my probably require further consideration
at our hands—consists in depriving the Lower House of
the power of initiative and of the right of amending
Government propositions, and in lodging these with the
Senate. This is an exact reversal of the arrangements
habitual with constitutionally governed countries, and
it wears so little resemblance to known prccldent that
we can only judge of its operation by watching the actual
experiment. To say that these documents are honourable
or creditable to Louis Napoleon would be to employ
terms which have no application in this connection. At
the same time they throw a light on his character which
exhibits it as somewhat differing from the vulgarly sel-
fish idiosyncrasy of a merely successful usurper. From
the commencement to the close they bear witness to a
mind absolutely enslaved by veneration for the Emperor,
and completely, if conveniently, habituated to a confusion
between the rights or claims of the mighty dead, and
those of the individual who happens to bear his name.
No peasant in France could profess the Napoleoniun
creed with more astonishing witvele than does the Presi-
dent of the Republic. And by the side of these con vie,

ions—and not in the least iuconsistent with them—there

seems to be an equally servile respect for the authority
of the democracy in its widest acceptation. His seven
millions of votes, end his relationship to Napoleon, ap-
pear to have inspired the President with a sort of belief
in himself as the trustee of a Divine mission. Motives
flowing from this belief aro the most respectable that can
be assigned fur the many flagrant enormities in his con-
duct since the 2.1 of December, and for the compara-
tively few absurdities in the Constitution. Napoleon
manacled the press—Napoleon swept the streets of Paris
with grape—Napoleon transported Jacobites and Royal-
ists pell-mell to Cayenne. These examples, together
with the poll of the 20th, have probably closed the Pre-
sident's breast against compunction for the cruelties
which are scored against him in the conscience of the
world. In the same way, between recollections of the
Emperor's continual appeals to universal suffrage and
his personal impression of its sanctity, Louis Napoleon
has preserved the unlimited franchise against the advice
of his most devoted counsellors, whilst ho has engrafted
on his new institutions as strange an excrescence as the
world has ever witnessed, in the shape of a perpetual
right of extra-constitutional appeal to the people against
the Constitution itself. Somebody has satirically defined
the theory of Socialism as resolving itself into an infi-
nite succession of strikes. Louis Napoleon's idea of pro-
gress involves apparently an infinite succession of coups
d'etat. The commencing paragraphs of the Proclamation
strike us as highly characteristic and illustrative. The
President asserts that every single one of the standing
institutions of Franco was created by his uncle. " The
greater portion," he writes, "of the measures which
concern the progress of industry, of commerce, of litera-
ture, of science, and of the arts, from the statutes of the
Thatre Francais to those of the Institute of France,
from the institution of prud'honunes' to the creation of
the Legion of Honour, have been fixed by the decrees of
that [the Imperial] time. It may then be affirmed that
the frame of our social edifice is the work of the Empe-
ror—which ehs resistingr
eh,
shocksror—w hofiethhrheaesresvtooloudtiofinsr.m, isince l it
havehaenyd th
the same origin, should not his political institutions havee
the same chance of duration?" This last question dis-
closes the fallacy which is misleading the President—
fatally, we believe, and to his own dishonour. The
Political Institutions of the Empire are out of date,
because they were comprised in the genius of the
Emperor himself, and the Emperor is no more. If
Louis Napoleon can still the air at home with the roar
of victorious cannon abroad—if he can absorb the in-
stincts of independence in the pride of domination—if he
can tempt the eye which would be inquisitive in do-
mestic concerns to lose itself in the wide prospect of a
conquered continent—he may govern France, though
he accord to Frenchmen a much scantier measure of

'reedom than is guaranteed in his Constitution. He
who can bend the hero's bow may enter upon his entire
inheritance. But if this is beyond his reach—and com-
pass it he certainly cannot—the people will turn his
political contrivances against him as easily as they
turned the Charter against Charles X. We are not pre-
pared to say that rational freedom is impossible under
the new institutions; but if Louis Napoleon proceeds a
step further in the Imperial career of fraudulent usurpa-
tion, he may be sure that the mechanical checks he cre-
ates will last just up to the point—which is always
reached eventually—where public opinion becomes
stronger than terrorism.
POST.—Thanks to the wonderful thought conductor
which now links us with the Continent, and let us in
justice add, to the energy and promptitude of the corre-
spondent who has rendered us before such signal ser-
vice in the same kind, we were enabled to publish, in
our third edition of yesterday—within half-an-hour of
its promulgation in Paris—the outlines of the Act by
which Louis Napoleon has terminated so much anxious
suspense, has silenced so many bitter slanders, and by
which, to quote his own emphatic words, he trusts that
" Peace wit! be assured at home and abroad— his ardent
hopes be fulfilled—his mission accomplished." We also
gave (exclusively), at an early hour in the day, the full
and exact text of that remarkable proclamation in which
the President of the Republic announced this Act to
the nation. Our readers are, therefore, able to judge on
what kind of foundation the trustee of such mighty
interests has undertaken to re-construct the political
fabric—to regenerate the social system of France.
The Constitution is, as the proclamation of the 2d
December announced that it would be—bared on the
system and principles on which the magnificence and en-
during benefits of the empire rose out of the hideous ruin
strong action . and comprehensive
of those earlier days of revolution. The distinguishing
character of this political framework is an Executive of
through a Parliament to the country, by whose universal
suffrage both are elected. It will be seen that to the
Legislative body is secured that great constitutional
ile anfdatraelfordmiffi,power,
prreesspeornvesisbtloe
check on the Executive, with which no despotism can co-
gives them—what is now the chief
exist—the exclusive power of voting the supplies of Go-
vernment.the French people the great principle of Parliamentary
government, while it
which,cil; y o inf
theall faEcreeonfeha
want of France—an acting power in a position to effect
progressOfse..
jealous and ill-regulated
, Assembly, it could hitherto
o.t the
only
worksp propose.
government, since the great social disorganisation
of half
a century since, has been the profession
to work in theory with materials that did not
exist in practice—the continued attempt to govern,
first by a throne, from which the only sound Supports of
monarchy had been knocked away; then through a re-
public, which was a mere hollow framework of democratic
institutions, the machinery of which, ruined by a long
process of centralization, was deprived of all real motive
power. It would, doubtless, be presumptuous to an-
nounce as a certain remedy for the great evils which
have so long afflicted France, the plan of her elected
chief; but, as far as human loresight and calculation can
extend, it does appear to us that Louis Napoleon has, in
performing his promise of the 2d of December, con-
sulted those great objects, the permanent attainment of
which ho has, from his first entrance on his great mis-
sion, declared to be the end and purpose of his labours.
In thus boldly and frankly adopting the form ,
and spirit of the imperial polity for the ba-
sis of the system by which he is to govern, the Presi-
dent has, we trust, secured to France the best
and only guarantee of prosperity within, and of peace
beyond her frontiers—a firm and strong Government—
trusted by the people on all details of execution—re-
sponsible to the nation on all great questions of principle
To have attempted a new Utopia—a theorised system,
on principles elaborated from conjectured expediencies—
would have been to fall at a more critical moment, and
with less hope of extrication, into the miseries and delu-
sions which made 1848 a year of rein. To combine
tried institutions with the absolute demands of the day
was one part of the problem to be worked out; to unite
a strong directing Executive with a body that should
preserve the essence of the Parliamentary principle, and
should represent the people's voice in the State, was the
other. The Napoleonic system solves this problem in
its powerful but responsible head—its originating Council
of State—its controlling senate, and deliberative Parlia-
mentary Chamber. We have never ceased to combat that
black invention, so recklessly originated and so sedulously
maintained in certain quarters of the English press, that
the three years' struggle of the President has been ono
gigantic hypocrisy—his whole conduct and his every
profession one enormous mass of falsehood and perjury.
No lighter charge than this was involved in the suppo-
sition that all the efforts of Louis Napoleon to govern
the nation which had made him its chief wore directed
to the mere establishment of his own personal power in
the form of a military despotism, and that such an
establishment would bo the sole result of the for-
cible but necessary acts of the 2d of December, the
only manner in which its author would keep the pro-
mise of a constitution, which he then held forth to
the nation as the close of its long era of revolution.
We had watched with an anxious and strengthened
hope the loyal and patient struggle of the Chief of the
State, and the increasing and confirmed confidence of
the nation in his power and judgment; we trusted that
those qualities, supported by that deserved adherence,
would supply to France the means and the security ot
prosperous development, by rescuing
the principle
of
government from the dangers amid which it was
perish-
ing, yet preserving in its full power, and obeying in its
full extent, that absolute sovereignty of the national
voice which the course of events has made the_. only
possible foundation and reliance of authority.. We re-
cognise in the now Constitution—in the reception by the
influential classes of the new form of Government.--the
strongest guarantee that this hope will not be disap-
pointed. We look to seeing in the ten years' extension
of Louis Napoleon's power, the best safeguard of those
interests which have been so long and so fearfully en-
dangered.
ADVERTISER.—We publish to-day an outline of
the new Constitution of France, with the proclamation
by which it is preceded. Wo shall be able to speak
more fully and more confidently as to the previsions
the important document, when it is before us in ea:lenso
In meantime, without expressing any judgment on th •
character of this new French Constitution, we are e
sure
that not only England, but all Europe, will ei
re* •
ce to
find that the conclusion of the proclamation breathes
the most pacific spirit. "May this Constitution,says
the President, " give to our country calm and prosperous
days—way it prevent the return of those
struggles in which victory, however legitimate •
intestine
dearly bought—may the sanction which tills always
to my efforts be blessed by Heaven. you
,ave given.
eace
be assured at home and abroad, my ardent hopes will be
fulfilled,any Wiiii9loll will be mccuplielied."

DAILY NEWS,—The Autocrat of France has pro-
mulgated the constitution that might have been expected
of him. It is precisely that constitution that the fa-
vourite clown or charlatan of the day might have an-
nounced with enthusiastic applause to the audience that
throngs before any theatre of the Boulevard du Temple.
It is the very burlesque of representative government,
the parody of every system that has been seriously es-
sayed in really free countries. Power without responsi-
bility, debates without publicity, a Commons House
without the faculty of originating a law or modifying a
budget, an Upper House without hereditary dignity or
elective right, a Government which is nothing but a po-
lice, and an army whose duty is merely that of gen-
darmes—such is the political system solemnly proposed
for and to France in the middle of the 19:h century.
The consular constitution of the year VIII., from
which the mock system is borrowed, was, it is well
known, an undisguised and complete distatorship. The
Council of State were the advocates whom the future
emperor paid and consulted. The senators were his
valets. The Tribunate, or Lower House, was com-
posed of his paid talkers, who, when they talked in
any way that Government did not like, were peecluded
from talking at all. Soon alter this constitution was
originally granted, the tribunate, as the Howe of Ito-
presentatives was then called, chose to discuss and criti-
cise Napoleon's two measures of the code and the con-
cordat. The First Consul was indignant at their auda-
city, and withdrew these laws, giving the tribunate
nothing whatever to discuss. They had no power by
the constitution of originating a law or a motion, conse-
quently their functions were suspended, their place be-
came a sinecure, and they themselves became the laugh-
ing-stock of the Parisians. The same fate awaits the
mock House of Commons of Louis Napoleon, if, indeed,
he can get any Frenchmen above the rank of village
schoolmasters who would so far demean themselves as
to wear the livery, and receive the pay, of popular re-
presentatives without the faculty of doing: anything save
what they were bidden. Why not issue a decree, that
the servants who wait behind the chairs of the guests
at the Elyass shall take the seats in the morning,
and vote the laws of the President,
including' his own civil list and their expenses. It would be just
as respectable and genuine a House of Commons as
the va(etaille which the mock constitution summons
from the provinces. Odious
,as is a dictatorship, the
least humiliating form of it is that which avows what
it is, and which assigns reasons for its necessity. Bona-
parte, in 1800, was not without these reasons. The
country had just recovered from civil war and from
foreign war, from both of which be who claimed the
dictatorship had saved it. The representative system
had in a manner worn itself out. Its last manifestation
was a reckless and exuberant royalism, that threatened
to give up every boon and conquest of the great revolu-
tion. The excuse of Bonaparte was that he wanted to
save the revolution, the benefits and the acquisition of
this revolution from a reckless and criminal reaction.
To maintain the revolution, to uphold in office, influence,
and power, the ideas and the generation which it had
produced, such was the idea of Napoleon. He was
determined to save revolutionary France from the des-
potic subjugation of Europe, to endow France
with new laws and with a social and political
organisation in accordance with the state of things and
of society that the revolution had created, and that the
counter-revolution threatened to destroy. Liberal men
admitted that there was some show of reason in these
motives. And when Napoleon came forward with the
code and the concordat and with his system of mixed
education, they understood that he had not grasped
power for purely selfish purposes, and that he made use
of that power to place France superior to the other Eu-
ropean absolutisms, and free from the worst abuse of the
old French alisolutism. But is there one of these pleas
—one of these excuses—that holds good, or can be seri-
ously brought forward for the present barefaced and
inglorious and tricky usurpation ? Not one. There
is all the tyranny, all the assumption, all theimper-
tinent dogmatism of setting up as a legislator for a
great nation, at a time when that nation has grown
to manhood, instead of being, as in 1800, in a political
nonage. There is really nothing to do, nothing to
change, nothing to enact. France is not menaced by
the foreigner; and France is menaced by no priestly or
aristocratic reaction, which the present tyranny does no. t
rather flatter and yield to than set at nought. There is
no disorder in the provinces, no defects in the admini▪
s-
tration, which absolute power must not aggravate in-
stead of reform. There was a want of honesty and of
a high tone of morality in public men. Will Louis Na-
poleon mend that? The provinces have been reduced
to nullities, local intelligence and influence crushed:
what cau Louis Napoleon do but aggravate the evi▪ l?
The army weighed on the country: it will weigh hence-
forth tenfold. Direct taxes took away half the revenue
of the landed proprietors, the majority of whom are
poor. To increase direct taxation will be impossible—
yet bow avoid it, if the salt and drink duties be
abolished? There is no reform possible, no alleviation
feasible in French taxation, except by means of economy.
Can Louis Napoleon, or can any military chief,economise ?
There is, therefore, not one pretence for setting up a
dictatorship—one reason, save that this mode of go-
vernment alone suits the nephew of Napoleon. As to
the Constitution just promulgated, it is the most auda-
cious of humbugs, not deigning to take the trouble to
corer with even a decent veil the nakedness of despo-
tism. All that it attempts is not to temper arbitrary
power, but to associate and implicate with it all those
notable or capable men, who consent to barter independ-
ence for effice, and who submit to wear the despot's
livery in return for liberty, to share with the dictator
the spoils of the state. No honest or upright man will
take office under such a mock Constitution; and if a
sufficient number of Frenchmen of education and capa-
city be found to do so, all we can say is, that this will
stamp indeligiblo disgrace upon France, without adding
to the durability or consistency of a government which
is an anachronism to the age, and a disgrace to the
country, iu whose history it must survive as an indelible
humiliation.