The Sun.
London, England, 1871-02-13 00:00:00

considerable sensation in Paris.

he says, " which is about to be nominated wi
have to decide only upon the question o
peace or war. It is for the sovereign people to answer by
limiting, if it thinks proper, the powers of its representatives.
Those who desire that an Assembly should be allowed to
declare itself all powerful, to do what it likes, do not con-
sider that they are confiscating the rights of the elector
for the benefit of the elected, and putting the servant in
the place of the master. No journalist and no party,
says the Patrie, can dare to limit the political power of
the representatives of a nation. I admit this, but such
powers may be limited by the nation itself which Confers
them, and every journalist who believes this to be the
wisest course under certain circumstances is bound to say
so. The question then is whether or no it would
be wise for universal suffrage to say to the
Assembly which it is about to create; " Thus
far shalt thou go, and no further." Is it, or is it not
true that France has not at this moment the free disposal
of herself, that a barrier has during four months—four
ages—separated Paris from the provinces, and that they
are ignorant of each other's state; that the elections are to
take place, so to speak, before the head and the body
are reunited and the circulation restored. Is it, or
is it not, true that France . lacks the time
indispensable for a deliberate choice, and is forced to decide
with feverish haste under pressure of confused senti-
ments, in darkness, or at best in twilight nearly as decep-
tive ; that the forthcoming Assembly is to meet under the
supervision of the enemy, and that to leave Paris
the deputies of Paris—l cannot finish the sentence—it
is too heart-breaking ! And it is to such an Assembly
that we are to entrust the high mission of reorganising and
regenerating France ! Will not the authority of its deci-
sions be called in question and the stability of its institu-
tions affected by the stigma of its origin ? Must we not
apprehend that we shall very soon see all its
work undone, being accomplished in circumstances which
impede all freedom of action, all calm exercise of judg-
ment? The time for the electors to decide is very short,
hut it is not the less necessary that public opinion should
specify the limits of the assembly's powers. Let us not
speak of the assembly as sovereign. There cannot be two
sovereigns, and the nation is the true one. The editor of
the Opinion Nationale thinks that if the assembly has as its
mission to make peace first and to reorganise France
afterwards, the second part of the programme will
render the first acceptable. It is just the contrary which
I fear. I tremble lest the first part of the programme
should compromise the second. I hold that an
assembly condemned to the humiliation of sign-
ing a heartrending peace, or charged with
the awful responsibility of voting a war of
desperation, will be under the worst conditions
for putting its hand to the work of renovation with the
least chance of success. M. Gueroult asks me whether,
since I regard the Assembly as a holocaust to the national
wrath, and its only mission to acknowledge our defeat,
and inscribe it in a treaty, I would accept a seat. I reply
Yes, but it is not because I am blind to circumstances. By
an unprecedented reversal of the natural order of things,
the election this time will be an execution ; the elected
are the condemned. lam so convinced of this that my
first feeling was to abstain. A well-known opponent of
this disastrous war, I thought that I was not bound, after
twenty years' absence from my country, to vote its moral
abasement or its ruin. But a sense of duty soon replaced this
feeling. I recognised that France in distress bad an un-
doubted right over the reputation as over the life of her
children, that the humiliation of all was, like the danger
of all, a misfortune in which each was bound to share;
that, in presence of his country bowed down,
none could claim to stand upright, that the
day is not far distant when human reason will denounce the
superiority of brute force, and that the hour has come
when we, as Frenchmen loving France devotedly, must
serve her at any cost, even though our devotion should
but be repaid with ingratitude, and our names, by an
injustice which is not without precedent, become a bye-
word in history."