The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-14 00:00:00

/

L 12)1(41t always set to work extraw(ranily ; and,
while they carry out what they engage to do in first.
ree style, they overlay it with au expense which long
impedes the public benefit to be derived from it. The
Royal Commission, on the contrary, as trustees of the
funds collected tor the Exhibition, did not scruple to
screw ever 3 thing down as tightly as possible; and
they had in the acting tn,-m hers of their Executive two
men singularly well qualified to control the extrava-
gance of the accomplished artists and clever projec-
tors by whom they were surrounded. For the labour
performed, therefore, the economical management of
the recent spectacle in Hyde-park is probably unpa-
ralleled in this country; and we sincerely hope that
in that respect the Crystal Palace Company will not
be too self-confident to imitate a safe and prudent
example. Magnificence and prodigality in the pre-
sent day are not necessarily synunimous; and even the
favour of the million may be overestimated.—Times.

S:PIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
TIMES.—The abyss of ignominy into which
Louis Bonaparte is plunging the French nation
seems to become daily more unfathomable. No sooner
have we explored one portion of the gloomy gulf in
which the past, the present, and the future of France
seem to be buried, than we are aware of lower depths
and darker shadows. We have ransacked ancient
history to afford us parallels in order to bring more
vividly to our own minds and those of our readers a
state of things for which modern Europe, happily,
amid all its disorders and retrogression, affords no
precedent. The games of Philip or Commodus may
faintly
image the files and spectacles offered to Paris
in exchange for her liberty, and the annals of Rome
before the Reformation may afford miracles as false
and demands as shameless as those of the Bishop of
Lucon ;
but for his last stroke of genius the Presi-
dent need fear no historic parallel ; it is happily
unique and original,
a Napoleonic idea, and only Na-
poleonic. The effort of the President has been not
merely to enslave the country which, seduced by
oaths and promises, trusted her liberty in his faithless
hands, but to make the nation itself the accom-
plice in its own degradation. Repression is carried
to such an extent, and
the power exerted is so
peremptory and absolute, that
people are com-
pelled not merely to acquiesce, but to take an
active and eager interest m rivetting their own fetters.
Dotpitientas Tacitus tells us, kept a register of men's
iiikilirtol-118 BOM' SOression welcomed with smiles. muste-hevea ea
_,wary act
of
aggression
Many have
snatched absolute power by violence, or clutched it
by fraud; he alone demands as a gift that which be
has already taken as a right. But, more than this,
he puts into the mouths of his people entreaties for
slavery and petitions for degradation, sanctioned and
enforced by an appeal to the deepest and tenderest
passions of human nature. It it were possible to raise
Constant
rising
might
a free voice or wield a free pen in France, there is no
topic to which the writer or orator would so readily
foforto yourselves,
resort as the blighted hopes and ruined destinies of the
c"oynqouueraerde content
r o y generation
hu
,sovfeFsrsei nd cohr Couriermen . ‘'Y
haveou a r e
written,--
content,"
tteenn,L,"
forego all thanatdyttonibrowanbceu ancestors
conquered
power as much more odious than that of the Grand
Monarque as fraud and force
diary claims and historicare worse than here.
traditions. Be it 80.
Your lives and liberties are
your
if 3 ou please, squander themon own, and you mays
adventurer with
whom you may think thew safer tahnayn
your children I They, at least,
were born
But
orninto free-
dom ; they were not deprived by an
own of this right, and they claim its
ys act
continuance
their
from you. Let natural affection supply th:ndur nu
of public spirit, and, if not for your asks, at anye rates
for theirs, be free. You leave them your limas and
your goods ; leave them also the inheritance of equal
law and popular government, without which the pro-
prietor is a ryot, and the millionaire a mere deposi-
tory for the State." Will it be believed that this
very appeal, so irresistibly urging to freedom, Laois
Napoleon Bonaparte is now making to France, or
rather requiring France to make to him, in order
that he may perpetuate her slavery ? On behalf of
the children whom they may fondle on their knees,
as they value the hopes of the dearest objects of
parental love, the fathers of France are instructed
to beseech Louis Bonaparte to break yet one
more oath by declaring his power perpetual, and
thus to secure the future of millions, whose existence
they are made to assure him hangs upon his breath.
There is something in this passing the limits of ordi-
nary degradation, and the very sacrament of nature is
profaned and invaded when the love of the parent
for his child is put forward as a ground for selling
him into servitude. Let our readers judge for them-
selves. There is now printed and circulated in
France a petition to the Senate, prepared by an
ardent supporter of the President, under the direc-
tion of the Minister of the Interior, for the re-es.
tablishmeut of hereditary power in the person of
Louis Bonaparte. This document, which we have
elsewhere given at length, purports to be signed by
fathers of families and labourers. It states, that in
a country like France all interests are placed under
the sovereign influence of the Chief' of the State;
that who is to be this chief ought not to be made
a periodical question ; that otherwise a father cannot
possibly know the politicol conjuncture under which
he will provide for the marriage of the child whom
he fondles upon his knee; tnat therefore such a
presidency cannot satisfy the loftiest and sweetest
sentiments of parental and conjugal love; that, were
it otherwise, the births ought in a peculiar manner to
correspond to the renovation of the Executive; and
that the present generation, having conquered
anarchy, would violate all the duties which it owes to
succeeding generations if it were to allow the prin-
ciple of resistance to be individualized; and prays,
for these and other reasons, that Louis Napoleon may
be invested with an hereditary succession. We can
imagine no grosser insult offered to any nation than
that contained in this really official document. Go-
vernment in France, where the Moniteur lately as-
sured us "an essay was being made of the most un-
bounded liberty," is always to be absolute, and the
only question is in whose hands that absolute power
is to be vested. Despotism in France •
18 an accom-
plished
fact; and, teem die g to this • •
petition, no
other form of government is possible. -
All that
can be done for future generations is tomake it
g
stable and permanent, and, in order to
ra
tlytbe
affectionate yearnings of retheis of families, to
deprive posterity of the last vestige of tftcd"P'---
the power of selecting her own master. So cum'
pletely are the people of France considered to be
the property of their present and future rulers, that
it is even suggested •
, in a srit of ironical and con-
teruptuous exaggeration thati no parent ought to
bring up a abilo except ne be born at the psrricular
period at which the change of dynasty IS to take
place. Frazee has lust all control over her own des-
tiny; she cannot tell what will become of her--: sh a
does not presume to offer an opinion on the subject.
All
she‘ wishes •that the last relic of influence over
14,
her fate may be taken from her for
v tin be has, as far as
ofi. a family cannot
be
happy tin
his unconscious eff-
..-..uman institutions cah,,
deProf regaining the freedom
spril'g of the last possibility
his degenerate hands. "It was
which has slipped frotm
ere
*redness" in the President to
great and noble
decennial archon when it was open to
snake himself a .
end
out the part of Pisistratus. But
him to have came
f vitude d. ted at
~ aredisgusted greyly o ser
the petitioner', nd are moved by this noble and disin-
such prudery,oare
t quire that his authority should be as
terested
dal:
tim n amount. We need not doubt
unlimited
etition wills be graciously received, that the
that the p,
f fathers and families will be held an
excuse
fond affections o
for the z,al with which they canvass the de-
tails of a constitu ,
tion to which the President has
given
the inviolable seal of his oath, and that in mercy
to the rising generation he will be persuaded, by the
prayers be has dictated himself, to suffer the gentle
violence of converting the ownership of France and
Frenchmen from a term of years into a fee-simple.
Such is the language held, such are the sentiments
expressed, in the country of Mirabeau and Lafayette.
Happily it is not in the power of the French
nation to confer on the existing state of things
the stability which is asked. W it
Were possible
to mortgage or alienate the rights
of posterity
we believe that there is servility and baseness
enough in the country to assign them over in the
most solemn and binding Wanner. But, happily
for the destiny of mankind, the right
reverts, the
instrument is cancelled, and human re-enters
into possession of the dignity nature. _
__
which it was sought to
forestall and destroy ; the possessor of land may
alienate the patrimony of his heirs,
only squander the •
patrimony of the present. How
often those rights have
been surrendered and re-
conquered by France history can tell, and we are
much mistaken if the prayer and hope of every honest
father of a family is not that his children may escape
the snares with which his own path has been strewn,
and that, free alike from unbridled license and un-
bounded despotism, they may go forward in the path
of moderate progress, not holding their lives, their
' liberty, and their property as the free gift of an abso-
' lute tyrant, but protected by equal law, and gua.
ranteed by national spirit
and enlightened public
' opinion.

DOVER.—It has become a common remark, that in
no season has Dover experienced so large and continued
successions of visitors as during the one of 1852—visitors of
a day or two—embracing the facilities for travel, both on sea
and land, to stir abroad from busy inland scenes, and sip the
salubrious air of our south-eastern coast, to catch a glimpse
of the laud of Frenchman, and retire home to wonder at the
variety and distanceof objects brought by steam within the
scope of a day's holiday. This class of tourists cannot in-
filled.—Dover Telegraph,
s, with whom Dover is tolerably
elude our libt of fashionablp
well
The Dudley Gallery of Pictures end Sculpture,
containing the celebrated statue of the Greek Slave,by Hiram
Foyer, also a Venus by Cdnova, is still open to the public
(free), at the Egyptian •hdll, Piccadilly, without orders or
cards, every day but Mondays. Visitors are only required
to write their names in a book kept for that puma