The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-24 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1849.

Twelve months have elapsed to-day since that 24th
of February, 1848, when the magnificent fane of
Royalty which had been built up under the dynastic
influence of the Orleanists crumbled into ruins, and
when a pure Democracy emerged from those ruins in
the final, the most abrupt, the most comprehensive,
and the most glorious of the Three Great French
Revolutions. To-day Paris commemorates the anni-
versary of her emancipation. A solemn festivity,
civic, military, and religious in its character, attests
that her citizens appreciate the services of those im-
mortal patriots who were the founders of the Re-
public One and, Indivisible. Since the memorable
sitting when the Provisional Government was se-
lected from the incorruptible minority of the old
Chamber of Deputies, the statesmen who were then
invested with supreme and almost irresponsible
authority by the acclamations of the people have
been visited by many striking vicissitudes. They
have been scattered: they have been traduced : they
have been debarred from any participation in the toils
and; responsibilities of government. Some of them,
numbered amongst the suspected, are living as exiles
in the drawing-rooms of Piccadilly. Others, taken
in arms as the conspirators in the Rebellion of May,
are awaiting the punishment of their offences in the
dungeons of Vincennes. Others, again, the staunch but
calumniated upholders of the principles of Democratic
Moderation, are still deliberating upon the destinies
of the country among the ranks of herrepresentatives.
Whatever may be the situation of these remarkable
men at the present moment, we are satisfied that the
population of France will look back to the magna-
nimity of their great actions on the 24th of last
February with none but sentiments of admiration,
mingled and, as it were, consecrated by a thousand
tender recollections. Every patriotic citizen of that
Republic which was proclaimed by the Provisional
Government will remember that those illustrious
democrats were the only men who had the courage to
save France from the perils of an unprecedented ca-
tastrophe. They will on this day call to remembrance
that the Provisional Government preserved the
nation from falling into the abysses of anarchy ; that

the Provisional Government raised the crown which
had been abandoned in the kennel by the fugitive
monarchists, and dedicated it for ever and ever to the
sovereign people themselves. They will not have
forgotten on this first anniversary of the most sudden
and most complete of all revolutions that the cause of
Democracry was doubly sanctified by the virtues of
the multitude and by the heroism of the revolutionary
Government. They will recal to recollection the
magnanimity of the people in the rapture of victory,
and the magnanimity of the political leaders of the
people in the agonies of a danger which has no
parallel in the history of mankind. They
will recognize again in the retrospect of those
renowned days, the inviolability of property,
when the palaces were invaded by the insurgents—
when that solemn inscription Mort atsx Yolturs ! was
scrawled at the street corners—and when the brave-
hearted ouvriers, the men in blouses, the toilers from
the forge and the loom, became the spontaneous vin-
dicators of probity and the guardians of the reputa-
tion of the people, by shooting with their muskets any
wretch detected in the act of purloining a silver spoon
or a picture-frame. They will remember, moreover,
how the Provisional Government emulated the mag-
nanimous proceedings of the populace, by declaring
even before the stench of the gunpowder had
cleared away, before the first stone had been
dragged from the barricades, before the embers of
the guard-houses in the Champs Elysibes had been
extinguished, that the punishment of death was
abolished for political offences. Not one incident
will be forgotten that tends to enhance the glory of

the crowd who effected the Revolution and of the
statesmen who established the Republic. The ho-
mage paid to Religion when the marble statue of the
DIVIDE AUTHOR of Christianity was carried between
the uncovered multitude through the streets to the
sanctuary—the impassioned eulogium pronounced
upon the democrats by the Abb6 DE LAGOA.
DAIRE, the BOSSUET of the nineteenth cen-

tury, when speaking from the pulpit of
Notre Dame—the facilities afforded to the
members of the dethroned dynasty and to the
Ministers of the conquered Cabinet to escape without
molestation from the confusion which they had them-
selves c,riginated,—nothing of all this will be lost
sight of. And least of all will be forgotten that sub-
lime occurrence which will live for ever in the most
heroic pages of history, to be loved through all time
by the most remote posterity ; that incident when,
again and again, at the peril of his life, with swords
brandished about his head, with daggers raised and
ready to descend into his bosom, with muskets pointed
at his heart and fingers pressed against the triggers, LA-
MARTINE rejected the red flag—meaning Terrorism, and
Pillage, and Cruelty, and Sedition—and electrified even
that infuriated rabble into obedience by one of those
sudden inspirations of eloquence which reverberate
in the very souls of the population like tones from
heaven.

While these events are forcibly recalled to the me-
mory of the citizens of the French Republic by this
anniversary of the 24th of February, it will not be
surprising if, in gratitude for the glorious acts of the
Provisional Government twelve months ago, when
France was rescued by that Dictatorship from indescrib-
able misfortunes, some generous thoughts are turned to
ALBERT in his prison and to Louis BLAric in his
banishment. Many of the faults and extravagances
of the more Utopian theorists and of the more rash
demagogues may, on such a day as this, be forgiven,

and forgiven, too, without an indiscreet temerity—
seeing that twelve months having elapsed since the
foundation of the Republican institutions, those
institutions are stronger at the present period than
they have been during the whole of that in-
terval. Within that intermediate time the Re-
public has. been twice saved from destruction—
it has been saved by the unarmed and
heroic eloquence of LAMARTINE, and by the
sword of the vigorous and self-denying CATAIGNACI.
It has had its martyrs, from DENIS, the Archbishop,
down to the least noticed of that Garde Mobile which ,
entered the civil battle of June as striplings and
emerged from it with the renown of veterans. 13.-
sides this, the Republic has received a Constitution,
and, through that Constitution, a PRYSIDENT. " The
country"—(these are the words of the electoral mani-
festo recently the Moderate Republicans)—
issued by "
The country wished by the imposing election of the
10th
NAPOLEON the
of December
BeceomNbAerrAittovlw aassociateathethste
regnglorthioeusniof
name
of
Republic." It has done so. By the election of the Prince
Universal Suffrage
LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, by Universal
speaking through the urn of balloting, France has
permanently consolidated the Democratic Republic
One and Indivisible. Her citizens can now look back
from the elevation of this additional year with loving
and reverential eyes at the last 24th of February.
They can laugh to scorn the whispers of those aristo-
crats and reactionnaireswhomaintained that the new-
born Democracy would be ludicrously evanescent.
They can point to the dangers they have surmounted,
to the good they have accomplished, and to
the position they have attained. They can
cherish with pride that motto which, though
reviled by the sycophants of Absolutism, is the truest
amulet of Republican France, that divine cry, which
is the voice of the Revolution—Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity. For these reasons it is, that the 24th of
February, 1849, is an anniversary not to be comme-
morated by midnight vigils and Lenten macerations,
but rgher with the refoicioge befitting a great people