The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

SATURDAY REVlEW.—M.Billault and M.Baroche
have justified, by their eloquence and versatility,
the choice of the Emperor, and as they represented
no department, they offered no mark to opponents
who might wish to aim attacks at the administra-
tion of affairs. M. Baroche is rewarded by promo-
tion to an active office, and M. Billault by a continu-
ation of the same functions under a higher title. The new
Minister of State will still, with his colleague, M. Rouher,
defend in the Senate and Legislative Body the measures
which they may perhaps sometimes have approved as mem-
bers of the Cabinet. It is, nevertheless, considered neces-
sary that M. Billault's office should be reduced to a sinecure,
and accordingly the duties of the Minister of State are
divided between other departments. In all discussions the
Minister of State and the President of the Council of State
Rill represent and defend the decision of the Emperor, and
perhaps the Legislative Body may prefer high dignitaries
to mere speaking Ministers. The Sovereign of France is
too sagacious to allow his agents to insult a Chamber in the
Bismark fashion, nor is M. Billault likely to raise a quarrel
on the question whether he is amenable, like a Deputy, to
the Duke of Morny's bell. The 30 or 40 members of the
Opposition may perhaps enliven the proceedings of the
Chamber with unaccustomed excitement, but, on the whole,
the modified system will probably wsrk for the present
smoothly, even if the liberty of debate and the influence of
the Chamber are gradually increased. The changes which
have been made, both in the persons of the Ministry and
its organization, are apparently intended to conciliate the
dissatisfaction which has been revealed at the recent elec-
tions ; but the simultaneous removal of Count Walewski
and Count Persigny from office will occasion considerable
surprise. The Emperor Napoleon has always shown com-
mendable fidelity to his early adherents, and the ex Minis-
ters may safely reckon on future favours. It had become
almost impossible to avoid a change in the Ministry of the
Interior after the failure of the official candidates in
Paris. M. de Walewski is supposed to incline to the
sacerdotal party, and his title, if not his office, was
required for the promotion of 111. Billault. It is uncertain
whether the prospect of a rupture with Russia is seriously
affected by the retirement of a Minister who professes to be
a Pole in feeling, as well as by name and origin, M. de
Persigny's blunders in the Ministry of the Interior are no-
torious, but, in many respects, his conduct was the neces-
sary result of his situation. He is believed to be honest, and
there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his early profes-
sions in favour of liberty, and especially of free discussion.
When he entered office, M. de Persigny was fresh from his
mission to England, where he had been deeply impressed
with the essential unanimity which underlies all political
discussion. Almost all public writers in this country accept
the Monarchy and the Constitution as ultimate and unques-
tioned conditions of the national existence ; and the press
supports or opposes statesmen and measures, without endan-
gering either the reigning dynasty or the foundations of
society. Any competent observer must perceive that safety
as well as progress is in a high degree secured by the com-
bination of unlimited freedom of speech with universal and
voluntary abstinence from dangerous licence. M. de Persigny
wished that the Empire could be accepted in the same spirit,
and he forgot that the French system of government has
provided no recognised field for political discussion, Even
if all France had renounced the Bourbons, the House of
Orleans, and the Republic, public writers who are unable
to influence the course of public affairs are naturally
tempted to investigate the bases of the Constitution or the
dynasty. The Imperial system was too simple and too
consistent to endure an attack on any part of its fabric, or
on any detail of the administration, and it was necessary
that those who were expected to repose unbounded trust
in the Sovereign should either approve the acts of his
Government or preserve a respectful silence. The
Minister long endeavoured to bring recalcitrant jour-
nalists to reason by holding out the example of un-
forced English loyalty. His disappointment was ex-
pressed in the wholesale persecution of newspapers, and
latterly in indiscreet attacks on Opposition candidates.
His latest official circular reveals, with a curious candour,
the gradual and complete discovery that a despotism cannot
take a Constitutional Government for a model. It is useless,
says M. de Persigny, for a democratic country to imitate a
neighbouring country which is essentially aristocratic.
There is profound truth in the implied proposition that social
inequality is indispensable to freedom, which can only be
maintained by the vigilance of a powerful minority. Every
absolute monarch has required or preferred a dead level in
his subjects, ever since the Etrurian king cut off the highest
poppy-heads in the garden. If England were peopled with
small freeholders and republican artisans, the press and the
Parliament would soon be remodelled after the Continental
pattern, Three of the new Ministers are unknown in Eng-
land, if not in France. Sanguine Liberals may perhaps
argue that it will be impossible for M. Boudet to interfere
with the press as arbitrarily as a Minister of the Interior
who was also a political personage. It must be assumed
that M. Durun, as a compiler of school-books, and N. Behic,
as a steamtoat manager, possess special qualifications for
administering the departments of Education and Commerce.
SPECTATOR.—It is right as well as natural that a case
like that of the girl worked to death the other day in the
employ of Madame Elise should excite a peculiar horror.
Men and women die every day of overwork, and the fate of
the poor milliner's girl is hardly worse than that of the
literary man who, after a life of half-paid exertion, finds,
with a growing family, that he is still not doing enough,
puts on extra steam, and dies insane from toil, without a
misererc from the press over his heart-breaking lot, Yet it
is well that the death of Mary Anne Walkley, "aged 20,"
should excite the greater interest, for her fate, unlike his,
touches the inmcst conscience of the rich, rouses the healthy
fear which poisons and sometimes restrains the aberrations
of luxury, the doubt whether, science notwithstanding,
luxurycan be right while so many continue to
suffer. She
died
f m making
a dress for the Drawing-room,
o
and the contrast between the object of the toil
and the toil's result, besides being in itself essentially dra-
matic, appeals to an instinct deeper than the imagination.
The man who flogs a slave to death because he disobeys
may seem at first sight as bad as the man wh ) murders a
slave in order that carp may be fat; but that is a just in-
stinct which holds the second the greater crime, which feels
rather than believes that to inflict suffering in order to se-
cure luxury is the most devilish form which contempt for
humanity can assume. The details, too, in this case
strengthen the natural horror, The poor girl had been forced
to work on the Court dress—as much forced, though not as
much degraded, as if the whip had been used—for 23 hours,
and the inquest revealed a state of things permanently dis-
creditable to the trade. Mr. Isaacson, the proprietor of the
establishment—" Madame Elise" being Mrs. Isaacson—
has defended himself in a letter as grotesque as any Dickens
ever composed, and he admits that for this- e months in the
year his "young ladies," as he calls them—for those who
most disregard the claims of womanhood are always first to
avoid the old healthy word—are worked as hard as human
nature can bear. They have 15 hours a day of sedentary oc-
cupation, are forbidden for the sake of profit to go out in the
day, and for the sake of their morals to take exercise in the
evening; sleep four in a room, and two in a bed; and have
on the best version of an obscure statement, about one-half
the prison allowance of air to breathe. In their workrooms,
according to Dr. Lankester, they have less than this, being
allowed only 60 feet, which is not a tenth of the proper sup-
ply. Mr. Isaacson says he pays well, which, as Madame
Elise wants the pick of the trade, is probably true, and that
he feeds them on good meat, which there is no especial
reason to doubt, though his remark suggests painful ideas
as to the practices prevalent in houses with which he is
evidently, though silently, comparing his own establish-
ment. Still, making all fair allowances, the broad facts re-
main that in a milliner's house of the first rank, and em-
ployed by the class which goes to drawing-rooms, and mak-
ing consequently large profits, girls of 20 are kept 16
hours a day at sedentary work, prohibited exercise,
ordered to work on occasionally day and night, and com-
pelled to sleep in dormitories so unhealthy that, as one girl
said, " we are often ill there," and one girl has died. There
is good reason for the indignation which Mr. Isaacson will
probably feel not indirectly, through a fine heavier than
many a court would venture to inflict, but sympathy, how-
ever just or needful, must not hurry the sympathetic out of
their sense and prudence. It is possible to remedy part of
the grievance complained of, and Lord Shaftesbury has
acted with his usual courage in bringing the subject before
the Lords, but the remedies to which he points will require
not a little discussion.

LONDON REVIEW.-Mr. Roebuck is a little fond of pre-
senting himself, in all his glory, at Imperial palace gates.
Ile has had an interview with the Emperor of the French,
and no doubt was as much impressed with the grandeur of
society in the French palace as was likely to be the case
with so uncompromising and terrible a demagogue, who
never 'bates his breath for anybody under an archduke.
The French Emperor's opinions on the American question
have thus been prematurely given to the world in a most
objectionable manner; or, rather, have bean allowed to
filter through the ears to which they were unfortunately
addressed. Like the four Liverpool merchants, of immortal
memory, Mr. Roebuck probably feels that it is no use ob-
taining interviews with imperial personages unless the
world is informed immediately of the fact. As it was at
Vienna, so probably it has been at Fontainebleau. Tear 'em
has " been," has been "seen," and has been "conquered,"
The inestimable animal never roams in drawing-room with-
out leaving his tail behind him ; and Sheffield, which re-
turns in her present member a Radical, a Tory, a Dema-
gogue, an Austrian, a Southerner, a cynic, and an unvar-
nished Briton, will henceforward recognise in the old dish
a new and delicate French flavour, fresh from the Tuileries.
It is the proud and unique privilege of Mr. Roebuck not
only to be the terror of tyrants and the mainstay of the
British flag, but also to enjoy the questionable honour of a
self-invited frequenter of the Courts of Europe. This kind
of unauthorised and unofficial diplomacy is extremely un-
desirable. We have a Foreign-office, and ambassadors in
abundance, through whom it is the policy and the custom
of this country to communicate with foreign crowned heads.
So long as Lord Palmerston's Government is in office, they,
and they only, are to be taken to represent the feeling and
opinion of the English public. If Mr. Roebuck hoists
himself into Fontainebleau as a Minister ialist, he is thrust-
ing himself into a place which we pay Lord Russell and
Lord Cowley to occupy. If ho goes as a private and inde-