The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-01 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPT. 1, 1863.

It was, from every point of view, the noblest
incident in the last French Revolution, the Revo-
lution of February, 184 S, when M. DE LAMAR-
TINE, in front of the Hotel de Ville, proclaimed the
abolition of the punishment of death for political
offences. The repudiation by that same poet-orator
of the red flag of the Ultra-Democrats was, it is
true, a magnificent improvisation ! That red flag
which, as the Revolutionary Leader then exclaimed
in a sudden and ever-memorable burst of elo-
quence, and at the imminent hazard of his life
while uttering the words, that red flag which
bad made merely the tour of the Champ
de Mars trailed in the blood of the peo•
ple, while the tricolour had been making
on the contrary, the tour of all Europe with the
glory and the liberties of France : meaning by the
latter, not Imperialism (of that we may be certain),
but instead of Imperialism, the pick of the doctrines
of 1789, the noblest and sublimest of the political
principles set forth by the Great French Revolution.
Another resplendent incident redeeming much that
was culpable in the outbreak of February, was the
Lynch-law applied, through an instinct of recti-
tude, by the populace of Paris to those who would
fain have desecrated the national movement by
the despicable meanness of theft. But incom-
parably beyond all other incidents of the time,
even these the most signally evidencing the
valour of individual Leaders like LAMARTINE,
or the magniminity of that general multitude
he eras leading by the back of his finger or the

tone of his voice—was the incident already parti.
cularised—the proclamation bythat Poet Statesman:
of the abolition,thenceforth and for ever in France,
of the Punishment of Death for Political Offences.

If it but might be, in any way, possible that, from
the utterance of kindred accents, only the other
day at Malines, bythe lips of CHARLES, the Count
DE MONTALEMBERT,:there might cease the passions
of fanaticism, of bigotry, of that cruel and dreadful
zeal which has before now, at intervals, so often
during the past centuries, desecrated the hely name
of Reigion, by outraging the divine and beneficent
doctrines of the Founder of Christianity ! Nobler
accents than those we are about to quote as having
been so very recently uttered by the Count DE
MONTALEMBERT, in the:magnificent oration deli-
vered by him to his assembled co-religionists at
Malines, nobler, gentler, bolder, loftier accents
than these have hardly been uttered in our time.
" Can one at the present day," asked AIONTALEM-
BERT, " demand liberty for truth—that is to say,
far one's self (since every one, if he be sincere, be-
lieves himself a follower of the truth), and refuse it
to error—that is to say, to those who do not think
as we do P" And, his own question, he an-
swered at once and unhesitatingly. " I dis-
tinctly reply, So " Pausing immediately, how-
ever, upon his utterance of that monosyllable, he
added,in the spirit of FENELON, " Here, I well know,
incedo per ignes, and I hasten once more to declare
that I have no pretens;on beyond that of expressing
an individual opinion ; I bow before all the texts,
all the nons that may be cited to me, and not one
of theeAvill I contest or discuss." So that it is a
Churchman amongst Churehman,a believer amongst
believers, an ultramontane even amongst ultramon-
hues, who is speaking what we are about to quote
as having fallen but the other day (in the presence of
the eternities, we might say but the other instant)
from the bps of the Count DE MONTALEMBERT !
And what
were those words—with these
humble prostrations, beforehand, before the canons
. what were those words he uttered, in
the hearing of four thousand souls at Maiines,
words afterwards to be echoed through the
whispering galleries of the Press throughout all
Christendom P-4‘ I cannot," he said, " to -day repress
the conviction which reigns in my conscience and
in my heart. I cannot refrain from expressing it
after having read during the last twelve years the
attempts to rehabilitate
men and things which
nobody in my ycuth, nobody among the Catholics,
dreamt of defending." Mark Well, now, what
follows •'--"I declare, then, that I feel an invin-
cible horror for all tortures and violence inflicted
upon humanity under the pretext of serving or de-
fending religion. The faggots lighted by a Catholic
hand inspire me With as much horror as the scaffolds
on which the Protestants immolated so many
martyrs. (Sensation and applause.) The gag forced
into the mouth of whomsoever Beta uphia voice with
a pure heart to preach his faith—that gag I feel, be-
tween ray own lips, and 'shudder with pain. (;Sen-
scion.) When 1 evoke in imagination the glorious
martyrs of the liberty of Catholic COP.Seit3DeES ; when
I think of TIIOMAS MORE and the , other victims of
the founder of the Anglican Church ; of all those
Pious Jesuits who, with a heroism so rodent and
undaunted, bathed cruel England with their blood;
of the Franciscans of Gorcura ; of the innumerable
priests who ascended the steps of the guillotine or
rotted in the pontoons of Rochefort ; of L 3, Venee
butchered, of Ireland starved, of Poland agonising,
I will not endure that the blessed privilege,
the holy joy, of admiring and invoking such martyrs
should ever be troubled or tarnished by the neces-
sity of approving or C.leasing other cruelties and
other crimes, buried thaugh these may be in the ea-
sangained obscurity of the past. iinho