The Sun.
London, England, 1849-03-26 00:00:00

eventually be crowned with well-merited success .
We are happy to find that the speech delivered on
the 7th instant by the Honourable Gentleman in the
House of Commons, on the occasion of the second
reading of the Bill, has been republished. We
would most earnestly invite the public attention to
this lucid and able statement, and to the examples
cited by Mr..; DRUMMOND in support of his views.
He has mentioned the case of " a property
which sold for 12,0001., on which the
cost of sale amounted to 2,0001., or about
seventeen per cent. on the purchase money;
another which sold for 5001., on which the costs
amounted to 1241., or 25 per cent. ; a third in which
the property sold for 1501., and the costs were 501.,
or 33 per cent. ; and a fourth in which the property
sold for 6201., and the costs of sale amounted to 2001.,
being about 33 per cent. also"—and he has capped
the climax by referring (in a note) to a case in
which the purchase-money for a small property was
301., and the expenses 451., or one hundred and fifty per
cent. Surely no further proof is necessary in sup-
port of the assertion of the Committee of the Society
for Promoting the Amendment of the Law, that
"small properties cannot be dealt with except as arti-
cles of luxury ;" that " the proprietor is debarred
from selling, and the poor man from buying, by the
expense of the transfer ;" that "retrospective titles
are not merely a legal inconvenience, but a great
social evil."
That evil will now we trust be remedied. When
there is a general register of titles established, as
proposed by the Hon. Member for West Surrey,
coupled with a judicious system of insurance of
titles, as suggested by the Legal Title Insurance
Company, to whose admirable project we have al-
ready directed the public attention, the delays and
expenses that have heretofore attended the transfer of
real property will be reduced within reasonable
limits. There will be many inducements to small
capitalists to invest their money in the purchase of
land, the nation will obtain that most valuable class
—a body of small proprietors—where each man cul-
tivates his own land for his own benefit; and the
value of the landed property of the country will be
increased by no less than five years' purchase, or
more than 400,000,0001. sterling. These indeed
would be advantages worth obtaining, and yet the
nation is deprived thereof by the operation of laws
formed by assemblies of landowners, to their own
serious prejudice. We again wish all possible success
to Mr. DRUMMOND in the important and arduous
duty he has undertaken.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris papers of Saturday and
yesterday.

- The PRESIDENT of the Republic has sent the fol-
lowing communication to the journals :
" The President of the Republic daily receives from
different parts of France, and particularly from the de-
partments of the Meurthe and the Vosges, letters re-
questing him to indicate candidates for the Legislative
Assembly, or committees with whom the electors may
correspond. Thanking the different persons who have
addressed themselves to him for their confidence, the
President declares that he is a perfect stranger to all
electoral committees, and that he cannot designate any
candidate for the suffrages of the electors. Penetrated
with a sense of his duties, he cannot, as President of the
Republic, exercise any influence, direct or indirect, over
the elections."

The National Assembly on Saturday reduced the
Budget of the Minister of Public Works by
13,750,000 francs, notwithstanding the opposition of
the Ministry, who on this occasion received the
assistance of M. DUFAIIRE.

In the sitting of Saturday the law for the suppres-
sion of clubs, as amended by the committee, passed
the second reading. The law as amended does little
more than abolish the name of club for public meet-
ings, for the discussion of political subjects ,which
have not the character imputed to clubs by the present
law will be permitted. According to the present law,
a club is an organized body, having a president, vice-
presidents, and secretaries, the meetings of which are
periodical and public, and the debates of which
extend to any and all political questions which
its members may from time to time propose.
The meetings which this law permits, if the society
be public, must not be periodical, nor must the so-
ciety be permanently organized. In a word, the in-
tention of the law is to tolerate occasional public
meetings, which may be convoked for especial pur-
poses, which purposes must be duly announced and
previously notified to the police. But the law also
permits the existence of associations regularly orga-
nised, with periodical meetings ; the public not to be
admitted, but the number of members of the associa-
tion to be unlimited. These societies may discuss
political subjects. They must, however, notify their
organization, presidents, secretaries, &c., to the police,
the agent of which may be present. The measure
will be all but inoperative, as all measures of a similar
nature which are not tyrannical must necessarily be.
It was pleasant to contemplate the puzzle of the
Ministers when called on to define a club, and to
show in what it differed from an association, during
the discussion on the Bill as originally proposed by
M. LEON FAUCHER. The Bill ran thus :—" Clubs are
interdicted." " A definition," said M. ODILON BAR..
ROT, "is demanded for these words, ' Clubs are-inter-
dicted,' but there are things which have no need to
be defined, and this is one of them. How can any
one mistake the meaning of the words ? A club is a
tribune of incessant provocations—a club is a place
where lessons in revolution are given." The Assem.
bly, however, was not satisfied with this lucid
Minis-
terial explanation, and M. ODILON BARROT was
reminded, that when M. GuizoT forbade the
banquet, for the forbidding of which he was im-
peached by M. ODILON BARROT, M. GUIZOT
had declared that the banquets were "tribunes
of incessant provocations—places where lessons in
revolutions were given"—whereupon M. ODILON
BARROT, who, according to the Presse, " has become
more a Guizotist than M. Gunor himself," tried
back, and drew the following not very comprehen-
sible distinction between legal and illegal meet-
ings :

7‘ If the meeting is adjourned, and then assembles again,
it assumes the character of permanence, and becomes
a club. A meeting, consequently, is allowable when it
is not permanent. But suppose that there are as many
declarations as meetings—suppose that permanency be
arrived at by means of successive declarations—in that
case it must be allowed that it would be easy to elude
the law.—(Approbation on the Right; murmurs on the
Left.) When meetings assume a character of perma-
nency, they degenerate into clubs; they become known
by their calumnies, by their vengeance.—(Murmurs on
the Left.)"

This second attempt, which bears a marvellous re-
semblance to the late CHARLES MATHEWS'S defini-
tion of metaphysics, was as unsatisfactory to the
Assembly as the first ; whereupon M. ODILON BARROT
declared that the interpretation of the mean-
ing of the law must be left to the decision of
the Judges—a conclusion with which the Assembly
was by no means satisfied, and accordingly they have
tacked on twenty-seven additional articles to the one
article of the law as originally proposed, by which
the law is so modified that the name alone of club is
proscribed.

The troops were all under arms in Paris yesterday,
and General CHANGARNIER was, as the Americans
would say, " particular spry and active" in galloping
about in all directions. There was, however, no
attempt made to disturb the public peace. The only
appearance of anything like a crowd being on the
Place Maubert and the Place Notre Dame, where
some persons were assembled singing " Vive NAPO.-
LION."

The Siècle, which is considered as one of the
organs of the Ministry, has the following important
article on the war in Italy
" The Republic is not responsible for the events of
the struggle undertaken against its advice, at an hour
which is not of its own determining, on conditions which
it has not accepted, and even in contempt, it must be
said, of the negotiations which, in concert with Great
Britain, it had so loyally followed. If an unfortunate
day, which Heaven forefend, should bring Radetzky to
Turin, war would not ipso facto break out between
France and Austria, as it is in Piedmont erroneously
supposed. Under such circumstances the French Cabi-
net would certainly have to take counsel as to the means
of preserving Piedmontese nationality, but the army of
the Republic would not necessarily be obliged to cross
the Alps. The entry of Marshal Radetzky would cer-
tainly have been a casus belli had he himself, without
provocation, denounced the armistice; but he has been
attacked, and that contrary to the most severe remon-
strances of France and England. He is menaced with
being turned at once on the Ticino and on the Po; to
prevent the danger which is pressing on him he momen-
tarily invades the country of his enemy, which is not con•
trary to military usages or necessities. In order that
there be no doubt on the subject in Piedmont, we shall
repeat the cases of war which the Republic may lay
down to the rest of Europe. They would be, according
to the unanimous opinion of France, the establishment of
the Russians either in Prussia, in Hungary, or in the
northern provinces of the Ottoman empire, or the mili-
otarrtyheacAtidr
oniaotfict.he
TRhuesrseiadnidfleet
exist eitheran o tihne
rthe
series o Dardanelles
f, cases
belli regarding Austria, such as the entry of her
troops into Piedmont, Tuscany, or the Roman
States;
declaration of w
but these
which h
causes have
just a
been made.beenannulled by
the The
Piedmontese, the Tuscans, and the Romagnols attack
the Austrians; and the latter in defence, or by way of
reprisals, cross the Ticino, the Appeniaes, or enter Fer-
rara. It is a right with which the Italian aggression has
most inopportunely invested them, and which during the
war no one has a right to contest; the Republic, less ,

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