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

THERMOMETER.

This day at Two o'clock
Barometer-29.81,
WIN-D
-IV.; moderate breeze and fine, but very sultry.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THis Dar.—Moraing, si. 20m.—Afternoon, sh. 31m
ru-siowtow.-Morning, 52m.—Afternoon, 6d. 12m

7-„,15,"
4:1 544.4+1

LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 1564.

The extraordinary Trial which was brought at
Paris on Saturday to so es.traordinary a conclusion
may at length be very reasonably commented upon,
even here in England, now that it has been brought,
as a trial, to any conclusion at all• Different, often

---- -
diametrically opposite, though the institutions o.

the two countries unquzstionab:y are, it becomes a
mitter of duty among the publicists of each, respec-

Lively, to comment upon the bearing of those insti-
tutions, upon their bearing not only directly on the
social condition of things in the land to which
they (the institutions referred to) belong, but indi-
rectly also upon, if not the social condition, at any
rate the guidance or development of public
opinion among the neighbouring population.
Any disquisition upon the YELVERTON case, for
example, would be perfectly en regle, if indulged in
by anyone among our Parisian contemporaries.
G:mment upon that extraordinary trial might,

not only very allowably but very judiciously,
he penned to almost any extent by any individual,
among the band of French journalists. Any.
thing that seriously affects the social or political
order of things in France, in the same way, upon the
same principle identically, comes legitimately within
reach, not only of the scrutiny, but of the searching
criticism as well, of the journalism of England. Of
the working of the institutions.of France, we may be
permitted to take our view, here in England, quite
as reasonably as Venehmen themselves. And rice
versa might be said of the latter in regard to their
capacity atid right to judge of the working of ours
—that is, of the working of our institutions.
Having premised:all which, let ns say at once, in re-
ference to this remarkable trial which has but
juat now come to so very remarkable a conclu-
sion among our Parisian neighbours, that it
strikes us, in itself and in its result, as at once
painful and ludicrous. The charge directed against
the accused is this trial is, we would maintain,
little less than ludicrous in itself, amounting as it

does to something nearly equivalent to a formal
declaration in a court of law, that two•and-two
make not four as people have hitherto supposed,
bat some half-a-dozen or thereabouts. Thirteen
persons, in point of fact, have been for-
m 111 y, deliberately, and authoritatively charged
with the high crime and misdemeanour
of forming an illegal association of Twenty.
It seems ridiculous, on our part, seriously to assert
ay nauch--yet such, to all intents and purposes, was
absolutely the bearing of the accusations brought
against MM. GARNIER PAGES, CAItNOT, and BREo,
with their ten associates. For, seriously to put the
matter at issue in the plainest possible terms, such
was literally, such was no more and no less than
the drift of the whole charge directed against them.
Thirteen were not thirteen, but a score. Two and
two, in others, as before intimated, were pronounced
to be no longer four, but some elastic half-dozen or
thereabouts. Not only has this, and this precisely,
been the accusation directed against M. GARNIER
PAGES and his dozen colleagues or associates, but
this, and precisely this, was the decision eventually
arrived at, as the result of this astounding trial at
Paris on Saturiay. The astonishing consequences
being that the accused have been sentenced to be
mulcted in 5,000 francs each, together with costs,
for hAvin g constituted themselves, to the number of
thirteen, an electoral meeting of twenty—this
preposterous sentence having been pronounced in de-
fiance of all the rules of arithmetic, to say nothing
of the lad's and equity in any country upon
the surface of the globe—and pronounced, let it be
borne in mind, not by the one-eyed philosophers
but by the sixth Chamber
of the Flying Island,
of the Correctional 'Tribunal of the Seine?

The Duke of BEATJFORT has not nr.nccd mattors
in his ramarks about the P)sition of affairs and the
state of parties. It is really a relief occasionally to
meet Wits an add:eta of this soft= for it aeeme to