The Sun.
London, England, 1852-02-26 00:00:00

GERMANY.

The publication of the sentence of the District
Court in Hesse Cassell against the members of the
Permanent Committee of the late Chamber was
Exed for the 19th. Only two of the accused, M.
Schwarzenburg and M. Grafe appeared, M. Henkel
having escaped. They are convicted of attempting
to resist the execution of the decrees of September,
1850, incurring thereby the penalties of high trea-
son according to an ordinance of 1795. They were
sentenced to terms of two and three years' imprison-
ment, with deprivation of Civil rights. They have
both entered an appeal against the sentence.
One of those fearful whirlwinds that occasionally
'visit Vienna blew on Wednesday last, causing consi-
derable damage to chimney-pots and window-panes,
and the heads of passers-by. Nothing has been seen
like it since the winter of 1848.49, when a hurricane
shook the very walls of Vienna. The telegraph
suffered on Wednesday, causing a delay in the ar-
rival of the message conveying the substance of the
ministerial motion in the House of Commons respect-
ing the national defences. From Oderburg, the dis-
patch dated the 17th had to be forwarded by post, so
that it only arrived last night. With respect to these
defences, certain organs of the Government here pre-
tend to sneer at the idea of an invasion of England ;
the military preparations by land being merely in-
tended to keep down the disorderly and riotous at
home!

THE PRESS IN FRANCE.
(From the Literary Gazette.)
PARIS, FEB. 18.—President ;Lionsperte has this day
promulgated leis long-expected law on the press. It is of
unexampled harshness and oppression. Old Draco
himselt, if living in these days, would not have made
it so atrociously severe. Is ruins newspaper end
periodical proprietors; it strips editors, and writers,
and reporters, of the means of obtaining their bread
by their honest industry; it altogether annihilates the
political press. And not content with this, it prohibits
the entrance into France of foreign political journals and
periodicals without the special authorisation of the Go-
vernment—a prohibition expressly levelled at some of
your daily contemporaries.
The principal enactments of this extraordinary law
are as follow :—No political newspaper or periodical can
henceforth be started without the formal permission of the
Government; neither can any change be made in the pub-
lishers, principal editors, proprietors, or managers of a
journal, without the said permission. Anybody introducing
or circulating an unauthorised fereign newspaper is to go
to prison for from a month to a year, and is to pay a fine
of from 41. to 200/. The caution-money to be deposited
previous to the publication of any newspaper or periodical
is to be 2,0001. at Paris and Lyons, and less iu some of
the departments. The stamp duty is to be six centimes
a sheet, and is to be borne by foreign as well as French
journals; and books on politics and political economy are
to pay the duty, whether foreign or French. Any
fraud or irregularity on this point is to be punished by
a fine of from 8/. to 2,000/. The postage on newspa-
pers is to be re-established. Any newspaper publishing
a report of parliamentary proceedings, other than that
authorised by the President of the Chamber, is to be
fined from 401. to 2001. The publication or reproduc-
tion of false news e., probably all news displeasing
to the Government) is to incur a fine of from 2/. to
401.; if done wilfully, of from 201. to 401., with imprison-
ment of from one ruunth to a year. The publication of
unauthorised accounts of the sitting of the Senate and
of the Council of State, and of reports of trials of the
press, is prohibited under penalty of from 21. to 200/.; if
the reports so published be designedly incorreet, there
is to be an increase of fine and imprisonment. Every
newspaper is to be obliged to insert any article
of a public functionary under a penalty of
from 21. to 401., and of suspension for
fifteen days. The law courts may prohibit
newspapers from reporting any criminal or civil case
whatsoever. A newspaper condemned once for what is
called crime, or twice for simple offences, is to be sup-
pressed. It can also be suspended without judgment by
the Government, and altogether suppressed by decree of
the President. Any attempt to revive it under anothername
is to entail fines of from 201. to 1201., and imprisonment
of from a month to two years, on the editors, publishers,
and printers. No man condemned for what the French
law calls an infamous offence is to be allowed to:write
at all on politics, and any one printing or publishing
his lucubration is to pay from 40/. to 2001. The publication
of engravings, lithographs, drawings, medals, and em-
blems, is not to be allowed without previous authorisation
under pain of from 4/. to 40/. fine. Booksellers are to
be required to have special'. licences to carry on trade,
and are to go to prison for from one month to two years,
are to pay from -41. to 2001., and are to have their
shops closed, if they neglect to obtain them. Finally,
all trials relative to offences of the press are no longer
to take place with the intervention of a jury, but before
the police tribunals.
In presence of such enactments as these, it is clear
that the political press cannot exist in France. The
slightest observation displeasing to the GOV,;llk-
meat, nay, even the inadvertent publication of a
simple paragraph considered offensive, will not only
subject editors, publishers, and printers, to heavy
fine and lengthened imprisonment, but may cause
the suspension or even suppression of their journal or
periodical, and that, if the Govermeat so pleases, wilh-
ont any form of trial or process. Under such a regime
the copyrights of newspapers which a few months ago
were worth tens of thousands of 'francs, are now lite-
rally worth notbine. and none but madmen could now
think of embark oef, aleney in newspaper speculation.
Is will be observed that the new law does not ostensi-
bly touch literary periodieals; but yet it presses as se-
verely on authors as on regular journalists. And it does so,
because in France the newspaper has never been exclu-
sively a newspaper as ours are—it has always been partly
newspaper and partly literary periodical and magazine—
political and news-giving in one Part, literary and
critical in the jeuilleton. What now can the poor author
ceewith his romance or his tale—his sketch of manners,
his essay, his biographical etude, his review? There will be
no feuilleton to accept it, because few newspapers win
exist,
and those that do will no longer be able to pay the
expense. And as to the existing literary periodical,th
ofey
too will suffer ?for theenactments respecting matters
politics or social economy," will deprive tteM of all 11-
balrty in discussing the questions which now-a-days have,
mast charms for the reader, and will strike at that ins-
partant. portion of their contents which consists in the
woostilete, in a popular form, of the evils of the social
sate.
As a free press is the first and clearest proof of the
libes&y
of a elation, a glance at Prince Bonaparte's new
law will show every one that France is now in a state of
abject and mostbohteirtine7
the most
rnegallaytaVery. It is a la-
mentable thing to say, the truth, that, in
a political point of view, t er.e.is at this moment no great
difference between the intellitfehnetbalaned heah.
a minded peo-
ple of this noble country and
driven to black
of a sugar
plantation. One is almost
Mist mankind can be nothitig betthr thnnatoth'seepo4ltashiine.nss
of the gods, when we see such a people subjected to
suche
a law.
A few months ago the number of daily political news.
Papers in Paris exceeded thirty; it now does n)t amount
50 ten, and of these ten some aro certain to disappear in
the course of a short time. It is a very moderate come
putation to suppose that each one of the twenty and odd
suppressed journals gave regular employment at good
salaries to ten literary men, as editors, contributors, re-
porters, correspendents, or critics, and that each one
efferded occasional employment to at least the same
number of feuilletonistee. Here, then, we have
rip,vsrds of twice two hundred men, who, as regards
in tf'i ligenCe, are of the elite of society, sud-
"
denly deprived of " the means whereby they lived,
without any fault of teen. own. What is to become of
them? What of their helpless wives and families?
Few of them have any aptitude for any other calling,
and even it they had, what chance have they,
in this overstocked world, of finding vacant places?
The contemplation of their misery must wring
,
and the more in
every heert,as, frcm a cer- !
tam *TM they all possess, they feel it with
peculiar bitterntesee.unßto:rt.t,shaaftetesr
whoall are ruined by the
, :hey are but a
matt portion of h
ruining of the press :—there the compositors, who
oinift .exceed 2,000 number ; there tire the newsvenders,
y.;tio mitt amount ro hundred' ;-there are the dittribu.
h the üblisert ,
:end the clerk;, "and all the va.
p.
• . UV)" cleppnlient, it turn
vsli
mast amount to
l!ko otlllthe now
My occupation's gone. and than paper-makers
and type-founders irtuat surely find work sleeker
and twagee lower, now that the newspapers are