The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-24 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Les Institutions Polifiques, Judiciaires, et Adminis-
tratives d'Angleterre. Par Charles de Franque-
vine, Auditeur au Conseil d'Etat, Avocat a la
Cour Imperiale. 1 Tome, pp. 559. Paris:
Hachette et Cie.

A distieguished Frenchman has, in this singularly
interesting and exceedingly able work, taken not
only a very tolerant but a most generous view of
our English Institutions. M. de Franqueville is a
man of note amongst our Gallic neighbours. This
his very position indicates. Ho is Auditor bf the
Council of State, besides being a barrister at law
in practice and a man of letters with some reputa-
tion. Ho has enjoyed the advantage of mixing in
English society as well as in French society. When
he writes, as in the volume under notice, about our
insular institutions, "Political, Judicial, and Ad-
ministrative," he writes, no doubt, after the accu-
mulation of large stores of knowledge in regard to
those institutions from books, but he writes also, it
should be especially borne in mind, from his own
vigilant, sustained, and thoughtful observation.
The treatise here presented by him to our consi-
deration—for in a philosophical sense the work is
a genuine treatise in its character, a treatise well-
considered throughout, ample in its scope, and
having the broadest, and, so to speak, the most
massive principles for its very foundation—the
treatise here submitted to our examination by
M. de Franqueville has been quite manifestly
from beginning to end, a labour of love with the
writer of it. Like his illustrious fellow-country-
man, the Count de Montalembert, in these particu•
lars, if in no others, M. de Franqueville, besides
being an earnest, a conscientious, and a devoted
ultramontanist, is, with the whole fervour of a
most generous nature, in his political sympathies,
a thoroughgoing Anglo-maniac. A time was when
the cultivation of a frivolous and besotted Anglo-
mania was the passing passion of the hour among
a certain class of French politicians. Outwardly
it manifested itself, this tendency towards the imita-
tion of English ways and methods of doing things,
by the adoption of some of the more flagrant absurdi-
ties then prevalent on this side of the Channel in the
way of costume, as well as in the adoption of some of
our most conspicuous social and domestic habitudes.
These extravagances, occurring (it way be recalled
to mind by even the most superficially instructed
student of modern history), during the evil days of
the first, that is, of the Great French Revolution.
While yet in England the vulgar notion of a French-
man was almost identical with the idealised cari-
cature of that personage painted in Hogarth's
picture of Calais Gate, a caricature afterwards
exaggerated to the most grotesque extravagance of
ridicule in the Frog-eating Spindle-shanks pour-
trayed in the gaudily-coloured etchings of Gilray
and Rowlandson—multitudes of people on the op-
posite side of the Channel, prominent politicians
many of them, were acting, it may be, in a not less
mistaken, but certainly also in a far more
generous spirit : wearing among other things
the buckskins and top-boots, then forming
a portion of the ordinary garb of Englishmen ;
carrying in their right hand a bulbous-headed
walking-stick ; having at their heels a
tamed, though ferocious-looking specimen of the
genus bulldog ; in their hours of conviviality, it
may be, some of them exchanging the savoury ra-
gout for the tough beef-steak, or the nip of absinthe
for the equally nauseous flavour of gin-and-bitters.
It was not that these earlier and merely superficial
Anglo-maniacs hated us less (that is to say, than
Englishmen and Frenchmen were then mutually
taught, idiotically to hate each other) but that they
hated their own rulers, their own institutions, their
own Government more. There was a malignity in
that Anglo - mania, though the evidences of
it were nothing short of the ridiculous. In
noble contrast to the Anglo-mania of past days in
France, is an intellectual and philosophical Anglo-
mania, if such it can justly be called, like that
manifested by a rarely gifted man of genius like
the Count.de Montalembert, or, again as the work
to which we are here desirous of directing the
attention of our fellow-countrymen, admirably well
evidences, by an enlightened and accomplished ob•
server like M. de Franqueville. Subscribing to
Buffon's famous axiom, "la style c'est Phoneme," we
would here, before adding another syllable in regard
to the goodly volume before us, give in the way of
illustration at least one brief extract, as an average
exemplar of the way in which M. de Franqueville's
work is written. Remarking upon the ex-
traordinary difference discoverable at a glance
between the French and the English administrator
our author goes on to remark :—" La quelquea rares
employes, d'un acces facile, d'une exquise politesse,
d'une inepuisable complaisance pour les citoyens
qui, par le plus grand des hasards, ont affaire a une
administration publique. Point de cerbere ren-
gorge dans tine cravat© blanche, le coo orne de la
chaine d'argent traditionelle ; un simple gentleman
en redingote fait fonction d'huissier ; it parait sur-
prise, mais non pas enecontent, d'apercevoir un
etranger, et it s'empresae de se mettre a sea ordres.
II est assurement plus facile de voir un minister
i'Angleterre qu'un chef de division francais. Les
bureaux sent propros et nets. On y voit peu de
dossiers, encore moins de cartons. Une petite cur-
beille d'osier contient trois ou quatre feuilles de
papier etonnt'es de se trouver ensemble, et destinees
1. etre pliees le soir, puis entourees d'un petit
fig rouge [how delicately the red tape is
hinted at avant de retourner :L la poussiere
qui les attend. Presque toutes les admi-
nistrations sent reunies, a Whitehall, dans un
meme Utiment dont la cue seulo est plus eloquente
quo tour les discours, Point de ces etiquettes ma-
jestueuses, sur lesquelles le mot bureau crime, chez
nous, a staler 8a touteepaissance ; de petites plaques
de cuivre bien discretes se desputent la partie in-
firieure do trois portes etroites, et indiquent lea
noms des ministires, dont elles annoncent l'entrec.
Le temple de la bureaucratic anglaise est moins
grand quo l'hotel par 6.culier de l'un des ministres
Paris." Time will come, however, M. do Franque-
ville, when in regard to that last peculiarity of
ours, we are all cherishing the hope of being able
to say with Moliere's Medeein Magri Lui—" We
have changed all that" completely ! Meaning
the restricted character and unimposing ap-
pearance of our public offices. As our
author himself might learn any day, when
next he happens to be over here in London by
strolling down in the direction of Whitehall and
remarking the extent of the clearance there made
to the west of Downing-street. Excellent though
the arrangement of this work of M. de Franque-
ville's undoubtedly is, in the way of affording its
reader a comprehensive and comprehensible survey
of our English Institutions—our institutions at once
political, judicial, and administrative—it is upon
the liberality of the whole tone of it that we
would here particularly be understood to pro-
nounce our opinion—not carelessly, or casually,
or out of mere idle compliment, but with
an emphasis of approval to which, according,
to our thinking, that same liberality of tone
so eminently entitles it. Divided into four books,
the volume considers, in the first, The State and the
Church ; in the second, Justice and Legislation ;
in the third, the Central Administration; in the
fourth and last, the Local Administration. Than
which division of his theme, into four quarters, none
could by possibility ensure to the treatise more in-
stant lucidity or more symmetrical completeness.
Subdividing the first book again into four chapters,
M. de Franqueville comments in the first upon our
Constitution in its entirety. In the second, he con-
siders the Executive Power under half a dozen
sections-1, the Sovereign; 2, the Royal Family;
3, the Royal House; 4, the Civil List; 5, the Privy
Council ; 6, the Cabinet. Chapter three relates
in five sections to-1. The Parliament; 2. The
Nobility ; 3. The House of Lords ; 4. The House
of Commons; 5. The Bills introduced into the Legis-
lature, and there by " passing " transformed into
enactments. Chapter the fourth and last of the first
book relates, in its turn, under two heads, first,
to Protestantism, and, secondly, to what is natu-
rally of especial interest to the writer as a Catholic, 0
to the Catholic religion in the United Kingdoms.,
nay to a certain extent even it might be said, i a
the whole vast area of the British eml\i' re.
A couple of chapters, he finds sufficient for his
second book or division. The earlier of the tic o re-

lating to Justice, the later to Legislation. Three
chapters make up the third Book : the first having
regard to the Homo Department ; the second to
Foreign Affairs, as well as to the Army and Navy ;
the third to our Financial system. Firally three chap-
ters are the subdivisions of the fourth book—havieg
reference, the first, to counties,the second to parishes,
the third to municipalities. Having recounted
all which, the scheme of the whole treatise may
now very readily be comprehended. And it is
worth comprehending when it comes to be
examined into—we hardly know which we
would say by preference, whether of more
worth in France or in England. Through
it, the English reader:may learn, with advantage to
himself, how magnanimously and appreciatively a
truly liberal-minded Frenchman can survey the
whole complicated fabric of our English Institu-
tions. Through it, moreover, the French reader
may learn, with advantage to himself, how
much real liberty is fostered here in England
under our political, judicial, and administrative
institutions—as the reigning Emperor, his Mejesty
Napoleon 111., took occasion to remark hardly
twelve months ago, when pronouncing a panegyric
upon our English institutions in words that M. de
Franqueville has, in this book of his, unconsciously,
it may be, but most effectively enforced—words
that (some of them at least) even M. de Montalem-
bert himself might have articulated as the cham-
pion of true Liberty and the admirer of a strictly
Constitutional form of government.

SECOND EDITION.

SUN OFFICE, HALF-PAST 4 o'CLocK.

THE POLISH INSURRECTION.

BRESLAU, September 23.—The Gazette says :
All the inmates of the Palace of Count Andre
Zamoyski have been arrested. Among them
are Count Lubrenski, Prince Lobomirski, and
Professor Paplonski. The two hotels Za-
moyski have been confiscated and converted
into barracks. A search has been made in
the neighbouring church of St. Croix ; even
the coffins were opened and the bodies thrown out.
During the night a convoy of prisoners left the
citadel for Siberia.