The Sun.
London, England, 1852-05-11 00:00:00

elected of the nation, first by several constituencies,
secondly by 6,000,000, and thirdly, by nearly
8,000,000 of free citizens, speaking under the shadow
of the Ballot and by the glorious privilege of Uni-
versal Suffrage ! Before the events " came off," in
sporting phraseology, the more bigotted among the
anti-Bonapartiste were endeavouring, by every
imaginable device, to provoke antipathy by
giving rise to the most sinister rumours, and
occasionally even by indulging in the most sombre
and (considering their calumnious character) the
most dastardly predictions. The massacre (as the
necessarily rigorous proceedings of last December
have been absurdly called), the massacre of the
coup cr itat was to be repeated. The tricolour—not
less than the red flag which was so grandly repro-
bated in the February of 1848 by the Poet-Orator
who thereupon originated the new Republic—was to
be dragged through the blood of the people, making the
,our of the Champ de Mars, as it had already made the

tour of Europe in the midst of an unparallele4 suc-
cession of victories. The army, inspired by copious
draughts of champagne, were to raise the cry of Vile
1' Empereur, which was to:be answered by the crowd
of spectators by sullen shouts of Vive la Republique.
Irritation was thereupon to be roused between thelmili-
tary and the civilians. Upon the slightest collision
taking place, the soldiers were to fire upon the
concourse, and then were to be witnessed scenes
of horror and carnage such as had only
before occurred during the Reign of Terror,
and to the music of the Carmagnole. The author of
all these atrocities, moreover, was to be picked off by
the bullet or by the dagger of an assassin, and the
world was at last to be rid of that terrible bogey—
that thorough raw-head-and-cross-bones bogey, as
DICKENS has called him—who has been recently
frightening all the old women in England into fits,
carrying dismay into the hearts and stirring up bile
in the livers of all persons of weak intellects or of
diseased digestion in the United Kingdom!
Well—and how has it all turned out P Has there
been this massacre ? Has there been this assassina-
tion ? Has there been this fearful internecine war
in the Champ de Mars, this pollution of the tricolour,
this desolation of the French capital, this execration
of the PRINCE PRESIDENT? Not a bit of it! The
Wish that was pater familias to all these evil
thoughts has met with a disappointment very gra-
tifying to think of as occurring to the head
of so very disreputable a family. Even the de-
luge of rain which was spoken of yesterday in Lon-
don as throwing cold water on the fate in the
Champ de Mars, turns out to have been, like the
ruck on the Derby Day, " nowhere"—the weather
being exquisitely beautiful, the heavens cloudless,
the breeze cool and refreshing, and the whole of
the gorgeous spectacle lit up with " the sun
of Austerlitz." According to a moderate computa-
tion, the troops assembled on that historical ground
which had last presented a similar appearance on the
occasion of the famous Champ de Mai, after the " Re-
turn from Elba," when the Emperor N APOLEON
was preparing to struggle against the whole world
rising in arms against him, " from the Tanais to the
Thames"—numbered not less than 80,000 altogether.
This vast assemblage of the flower of France was, more-
over, rendered doubly interesting and impressive by the
circumstance of its comprising representatives from
every corps in the French army, including even those
within the walls of the Eternal City and on the
plains of Algeria. As a mere spectacle, the
scene of yesterday on the Champ de Mars
must have been one of a very wonderful and
memorable character. The cuirrasiers cased in hel-
mets and breastplates of polished steel, the hussars
caparisoned with embroidered dolmans, the lancers
with pennons fluttering from their spears, the im-
mense concourse of infantry, the cavalry,
the artillery, the attendant throng of
spectators, the religious ceremonial presided over by
the Archbishop of PARIS arrayed in full canonicals—
all must have presented an appearance of grandeur
and magnificence never, perhaps, witnessed in that
city of public festivities since the days of the great
EMPEROR. LOUIS NAPOLEON cannot very speedily
lose a remembrance ot the 10th ot May, a day on
which the nation. through its applauding representa-
tives, may be said to have given its crown-
ing sanction to his government. He was
then enabled, moreover, formally to revive
the souvenirs of the heroic age which had
been buried under the jealousies of the Restoration,
by presenting to the colonels of the different regi-
ments of the army of the Republic those Roman
eagles which were originally adopted as the standard
of France by Napoleon le Grande about the com-
mencement of the present century. It is remarked
even by the enemies of the Pelee cs Pnesinesr, that
the shouts of the infantry as he galloped in front of
their lines, followed by his gorgeous suite and retinue,
were those of Vise Napoleon, while the cavalry broke
into vociferous acclamations of T'ive l'Empereur. It is
not to the fervour of these cries, however, that we
would direct the attention of the people of England,
but rather to the earnest shouts of Vice Na-
poleon raised by the multitude lining the
vast area of the Champ de Mars, and
which greeted the progress of the PRINCE
PRESIDENT in the streets both on leaving and on re-
returning to the palace of the Tuileries. Those ac-
clamations sufficiently well refute the calumnies which
have hitherto dogged the footsteps of Louis NAPOLEON,
representing him as the detested tyrant instead of the
spontaneously elected chieftain of 35,000,000 of
Frenchmen. The declaration also which fell from
the lips of the PRINCE yesterday, when presenting the
eagles to the army—the declaration that
those eagles were not to be regarded as
constituting a menace to " foreign powers," but
simply as " emblems of independence"—must clearly
enough demonstrate the folly of those pro-
phets of evil who have represented him as
dreaming of conquest rather than of peace—
as looking rather to a criminal aggression against a
friendly nation, than to the internal welfare of France,
a welfare to be secured only by the operation of a
national and enlightened, a vigorous but beneficent
government. Encouraged by the attitude yesterday
openly assumed by the people and by the
PRINCE PRESIDENT—that of complete confidence
in each other—let us hope that a new epoch of
happiness has in truth dawned upon that beautiful
land which has been so often ravaged by revolu-
tion, and that the Republic may indeed have at
length become consolidated under the aegis of the
glory Of NAPOLEON.

Ministers were last night rather unpleasantly re-
minded of their true position by the Ilouseof
Com-
mons. They received a salutary, although a
disa-
greeable, lesson as to the propriety and necessity of
restricting themselves to indispensable business, and
introducing no new elements of discord until the
country has responded to the forthcoming
appeal.
If no degree of fiscal injustice, however glaring,
can be remedied, because they are tied down from in
any degree interfering with the public taxation, or the
means of collecting the national revenue—if nothing
respecting the franchise or relating to Parliamentary
reform can be brought under the consideration of a
moribund body, where, we ask, is the urgent neces-
sity for the disposition of the seats rendered vacant
by the disfranchisement of the convicted constitu-
encies ? What peculiar charm is there about the
number 658, that should induce a departure from
the ordinary rule ? For eight snccessive years we
have been enabled to dispense with two of the
number. In 1844 Sudbury had been deprived of
the priviiege which it had grossly abused, and yet
no substitutes were provided for the missing Mem-
bers. The PEEL and the RUSSELL Administrations
appeared equally indifferent on the subject. Indeed
separategeneral and
impression seemed to be that the
the
4• could be more fitly disposed of under a
question
of Parliamentary reform than :Is a
isolated proposition, and it Fs.3 inva-
riablypostponed for that; purpose. The removal of
the: blrou4h, constituencies could
V.ery urgent as to require
tfreommatter
8.0
to justify the Government in de-
instant attention, or . .
nSO"t Areliabdler);
comparative inaction which had
parting from the c
4-
been prescribed •or their condition.
more in the Proposition than
was apparent on a superficial examination. It was
'
In truth there wig
not merely the division of two of the largest county
constituencies, and enabling the West Riding of
•
re 9
Yorkshire, or the southern division of Lancashire,
henceforward to send each four representatives to Par-
'lament in place of two, as heretofore, that was