The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE 44 SPECTATOR " ON PRINCE NAPOLEON'S
DISGRACE.—The speech at Ajaccio, if not secretly
sanctioned, meant nothing less than this—a Bona-
partist programme which was not of Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte. The Napoleonic idea, suggests Jerome,
is not the idea we see realised, but another and
more democratic idea, a dictatorship it may be, but
one which shall permit freedom of the press, of
association, and of religion, which shall break finally
with the Papacy, terminate the temporal power, aid
Italy in her rise to the first class, humiliate Austria
to the dust, and above all re-cement the alliance
which the "regeneration" of Mexico has done so
much to untie. That idea is to be bold, aggressive,
propagandist, not to shrink from combinations,
such, for example, as the one which protected Po-
land, not to recede before the priesthood, not to
reverence obstacles even though to overthrow them
it is necessary to disorganise Europe. The Napo-
leonic idea, in short, is not to be a compromise
between revolution and order, but openly Jacobin
in foreign affairs as in the interior, to resemble the
system of the Hundred Days and not the system of
the triumphant Empire. The programme is the
more dangerous because it will be to vast numbers
of Frenchmen singularly attractive. Educated
France, if we may judge by a hundred signs, is at
this moment hungering not for parliamentary
government, or an Orleanist regime, or the Bourbon
family, but for liberty of utterance and movement,
for the right to say what it likes and write what it
thinks, and combine for any object which seems
good to it. It is not the essence of such power so
much as the superincumbent pressure which frets
the cultivated class, not so much the dynasty they
desire to overthrow as the system of expression by
which that dynasty is seeking to establish itself.
The patient asks for more air, not a change of
medicine, and Prince Jerome offers to open a
window and admit the refreshing breeze. Natu-
rally the physician in charge, whose first theory
is that all the windows must be closel, lest the
patient should catch a chill before the crisis, is in-
tensely enraged, and tells his assistant that he
neither can nor will tolerate anarchy in the sick
room. There can be, says the Emperor, but one will
in my family, as in my government, and that one of
course is mine. Naturally, too, Paris, however
doubtful of the treatment pursued, sympathises
with the elder practitioner. It seemed at first sight
a little strange that Frenchmen anxious for more
liberty should be annoyed because a Prince of the
Blood offers them more, but the anomaly is ex-
plicable enough. The Frenchman is above all things
logical, and he cannot forget that the Prince who
makes these offers owes the position which makes
the offers formidable solely to the cousin whose
throne he is thereby sapping. He is not the Elect
of the people, he has done nothing for France, he is
great only because an abler man than himself called
him from exile to accept the second position under
himself. Prince of the Blood, Senator, General, he
was bound by the very magnitude of the favours he
he had received not to oppose the regime through
which alone lie had obtained them. Besides all
these, he was Vice-President of the Council, and
even in England we do not permit members of the
Government openly to arraign its policy, to de-
nounce, for example, a war accepted by the Govern-
ment, or declare an alliance which it is promoting,
dangerous, to talk Radicalism while carrying out the
Tory scheme of administration. [Precisely what Mr.
Gladstone is doing, by the way !] The Prince may
claim free speech as a right belonging to French
Princes as to all other Frenchmen, but it certainly
does not belong to the Vice-President of the Coun-
cil of State under the present regime. Least of all
does it belong to him at a moment when the Em-