The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—If Paris held only the position of our
own metropolis in the political scale, and if an elec-

tion there Were as unimportant and unnoticed an
affair as the election of Mr. Goschen to the vacant
seat for the " City," then we might congratulate
M. de Persigny on the result of his strenuous at-
tempts to dictate the representation of France. A
long Order of the Day enumerates the men assumed
to be dangerous, who have been beaten in the De-
partments, whil3 it is only at Paris that the Oppo-
sition have gained a local victory. Such a sneer
would be appreciated on this side the Channel, if we
knew nothing more than what we see around us at
home; but, unfortunately, it is one of the most
familiar truths in the whole circle of our knowledge
that Paris is the political centre, the focus, and the
very key of France. That peculiarity never showed
itself more strongly than in the fact of a crisis hardly
felt in the departments ending in the return of most
of the Opposition candidates at Paris by very large
majorities, How are we to regard so portentous an
event as the popular triumph of names regarded by
the Government with execration and horror ? The
bare announcement of their standing as candidates
has driven the Cabinet absolutely beside itself ; for
nothing but the supposition of an absolute frenzy,
approaching to despair, will excuse the extravagant.
lengths of the Ministerial interference with the free-
dom of election. Here we are wholly unable to
understand such a course: Whatever the less open
means by which a certain portion of every British
Constituency may
be undermined, there is nothing
so much to be deprecated here as dictation from
without, particularly from above. Were a Minister
once to let it be known that he attached immense

importance to the return of a candidate, he would
not only entail defeat and make a hero of some
inconsiderable person, but he would also inform
the whole nation that his Government had lost
its centre of gravity, and was tottering to its fall.
As it is impossible to say what accident may affect
this or that election, and only certain that free citi-
zens do not like to be told whom to trust and whom
to avoid, our Governments generally let popular
constituencies take their own course, and if the re-
sult should chance to be adverse make light of the
affair. Lord Palmerston's Government has had to
suffer many disappointments, and that on ground
where it might be supposed to be firm ; but it has
survived them all, and occasionally gained a sup-
porter when it had lost a constituency. In France
all is different, as we see to-day. We are driven to
the alternatives of believing that the present Govern-
ment of France is in jeopardy, or of concluding that
the Minister of the Interior is gratuitously doing it
the greatest possible mischief. Was it necessary
that he should denounce the men to whom his mas-
ter had recently offered the right hand, that he
should proclaim them the insidious enemies of the
constitution and dynasty, and that he should put it
to the loyalty of France to exclude them from the
Chamber ? Was it necessary that he should post
them on the walls and warn the inhabitants by
house-row of the political burglars who were break-
ing into their social edifices? Was it necessary that
the Constitutionnel should be converted into a Hue
and Cry for the detection and proscription of a
small handful of dangerous men P If it were neces-
sary, then what are we to think of the enormous
fabric which, after the labours of ten years and
a vast cost of treasure and blood, is ready to
crumble to dust, and fall like a card-castle at the
summons of a dozen good talkers and writers ? If
it were not necessary, then the Emperor has com-
mitted a grave error in allowing so much to be
staked on so small a game, and in provoking a contest
where even victory would have been discreditable,
much more defeat. Paris has now resumed its all
but normal position of differing from the rest of
France, and being content to differ, knowing well
that France will eventually follow its lead. We had
begun to suspect, or rather to hope, that this was no
longer the case; that immense material improve-
ments, a profuse expenditure, and a firm military
grasp had reduced this volcano to a dormant con-
dition, and covered its hot lava with verdure. But
thanks to M. de Persigny, we see the hollowness of
this hope. Paris is the Paris it ever was, and ever
will be. It feels a violent reaction from something
to something—perhaps it does not quite know its
own feelings, but it expresses them in the return of
the men who it has just been told are most hateful
to the Emperor's servants and advisers. It was
very natural ambition that the Emperor should
wish to rule a free people, and to found a constitu-
tional monarchy. Not only is it the best chance
for the stability of a throne, but such a rule is a
moral dignity, and not a mere caprice of fortune or
predominance of power. Napoleon 111. wished to
lay he early foundation of a free choice and a
heartfelt loyalty. The firststepthe waschtaomobpeer. open the
t
representation and emancipate
was also whispered, somewhat diffidently, to the
press, that it might try a little freedom of style.
New-fledged liberty was to rise from the ground,
and prove that it could fly—not too far or too high.
In a gradual and measured concession of liberty it
is important to observe who is the first to interrupt
the experiment, and declare it a failure. In this
case the Emperor has promised freedom, and his
Ministers have undertaken to interpret the conces-
sion, and say precisely how freedom is to be used.
The penitent and converted adherents of a ruined
cause were to offer themselves to a perfectly free
constituency, and be freely but summarily re-
jected. This would indeed be to govern a free
people, and the representatives of the old dynasty
would have been once more visited with a political
ostracism. Such an experiment was ably deaigned,
and only needed to be faithfully executed. Paris
ought to have been left perfectly free; her Press
ought to have been left unfettered, and both sides
allowed to speak and be heard. But no sooner, were
there serious eymptoms of an adverse result than the
experiment was stopped, the Press was placed under
orders, and the people of Paris were told whom they
were to return, unless they were traitors and conspira-
tors. They have been f rat told they were free to
choose, and then controlled in their choice, like the
toys in which it is attempted to produce spontaneous
and perpetual motion, by first introducing a motive-
power and then forbidding it to work, lest it :Should
exhaust itself. In this case the motive-power has
been more fortunate than usual; it has broken
through the checks which were to restrain and hus-
band its strength, and is doing its legitimate work,
by returning the men of its choice. If ,the next
thing be an attempt to prevent that development,
i there can be only one result—it will stop the machine
. and perhaps throw it altogether out of gear.
HERALD.—There can be no better proof of the
position that the Emperor has made racing a French
institution than the fact that on Sunday last the
Parisions forgot the interest of their general elec-
tions in the greater attractions of the races at the
cßoorirsesdpeoßndnoeulotre. Everybody was there, says our
and the London newspapers of Mon-
day were so true in mirroring the French feeling,
that while faithfully chronicling the success of the
winning horses, not a word was said by them of how
M. Thiers and his fellow candidates had been faring
at the ballot-box. Even the Journal des Debats of
yesterday—par excellence the journal of politics—
seems engulfed in the vortex created by the Imperial
hand, and while giving nearly two columns to the
fortunes of the horses can consecrate scarcely more
than half-a-dozen lines to those of the statesmen.
The Parisians, whatever other vanities they are blind
to, have reached a very salutary conviction on the
vanity of politics. 'To them all is vexation of spirit
save seeing good in their days, and probably the
greatest service they owe to the most distinguished
of their historians and statesmen for risking the
pains of a candidature Was in the felicitous DWI which.

suggested by the letter of M. de Persigny, identified
him with the public debt as the Thiers Consolidees.
Paris has reached the conviction that there are no

politics outside the Government, and philosophi-
cally resolves on amusing itself. The consolatory
maxim, " Apres nous le deluge," has crept down
from monarchs to the people • and the best states-
man for France is be who, following the suggestion
given by the acclimatisation of horse racing, will
invent for Paris a new pleasure. 'With every sixth
man a Government agent why need the rest of the
community fash its head about a business already
too bountifully provided for ; and as to employing
a special talent in the service, the saying of the
Roman Epicurean, " Why risk anything to save
what is not worth saving P" is as good for our time
as for the Imperial days when it was uttered. But
though as against politics racing is the greater at-
traction—for the most ennuyie of the Parisian
beauties who watched the course on Sunday would
probably own that, however " triste" the turf, it is
at all events as interesting as the tribune—it has
taken a long time to attract to it the likings of a
French public. To be sem and admired by a bril-
liant entourage is one thing, but to form one of a
brilliant entourage, occupied in admiring running
horses, is another; and the instinct of a French
public is not to interest itbeif much in performances
in which they do not themselves play a principal
part. Even among ourselves there are not a few
who might own, to a friendly bosom, that when no
stake depends on the event their pleasure in races
consist in everything but the racing. The void not
filled up by the rivalries of the horses is catered for
by the fair; and the comforting materials that
make the freedom of picnics something more than a
privilege, Aunt Salty, the booths, stalls, gambling
tables, fortune telling, and the ten thousand other
humours of the greatest of our national festivals,
comes in to leave us under a happy forgetfulness
that we have been travelling a very long way to see
little boys in parti-coloured clothing trying to out-
ride one another on some very lang-limbed horses.
The races of the Bois de Boulogne, if unenlivened by
most of those accessories, were surrounded this year
by the various attractions of an institution under
prosperous development, and have probably had
nothing to equal them in interest in the annals of
French " sport." Au Imperial pavilion rcceived, the
Emperor and Empress, accompanied by an es-King,
two sons of the Kings of Holland and Belgium, and a
suite becoming "le Grand aironarque." The race-
course is said by our Paris correspondent to have been
not unlike Epsom from the numbers present, and
with the amount of the stake gave almost a na-
tional importance to the coming-off of the event.
All the old rivalries between England and France
renewed themselves in the harmless form of a con-

tention. about horses ; and the interest which our
countrymen took in Lord Clifden, Saccharometer,
and some other horses, brought to redeem their
failure at the Derby, was met by a corresponding
zeal for the pro ess of a French mare La Toucques,
which had been rivalling on French downs the per-
formance of our own Blink Bonny. The passion
for la gloire Francaise found in this far-famed mare
a worthy champion. The Paris Bourse turned, in
the prospect of her success, into a Tattersall's, and
betting operations, as our correspondent tells us,
rivalled those of the Three per Cents. Unhappily,
the expectation which had raised the French horse
to equal odds in the betting was doomed to disap-
pointment by the superior running of the English
horse Ranger, which, our readers will recall as
thrown out of his running for the Derby by the
falling of Saccharometer. The discomfiture can
only find adequate expression in a French journal
in the old phrase of chivalry," Everything is lost
except honour." "As to La Toucques, that in-
comparable mare," continues the writer, "this pearl
of all products, past, present, and future, the bril-
liant star placed by its late performances at Chan-
tilly at the zenith of the French Racing Calendar,
how is all her glory departed, all her brilliant pres-
tige vanished, and all our enthusiasm fallen." The
I rench mare, however, had the distinction of run-
ning second—and though the success was qualified
by the fact that the three placed with her were
English horses, the fact that a French horse had
been found to beat two of the favourites
for the Derby serves as a placebo to a vanity
which might be expected to yield us, if any-
where, a precedence in turf matters. The
union of the tWo countries in a common amuse-
ment is, perhaps, not the least pleasing of the
proofs how rapidly is going ou the assimilation of
nations. The Englishman found himself as much at
home on Longchamps on Sunday last, as he did a
month ago at Epsom, and perhaps tof all the assi-
milations we were led to expect from the uprise of
the railway system and the network of electric
telegraphs, there are few which show how rapidly
the peculiarities which have divided one people
from another are giving way
If some of the
change indicate the
the
symptoms accompanying before the increase of
these international communications.
old prejudices of traditional rivalry engaged in a
new field, their manifestation does not take an un-
pleasant form ; and could we fancy that the transfer
of our own racing excitement would open a neW
field for the employ of our national rivalries, and
supply a safety valve for prejudices that have rarely
been engaged in a more innocent 'direction, we
might congratulate ourselves on obtaining from the
Empire another welcome guarantee for that peace
which, on a celebrated occasion, it was declared to
be identified with.