The Sun.
London, England, 1847-08-23 00:00:00

titning :Atz

LON )ON, MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 1847.

Public attention is at this moment directed to the
political and social relations of Parisian society by
the revelation of three crimes, evincing in their per-

petrators the most heinous depravity or the most dia•
bolical guilt. From the recurrence of these crimes
certain factious individuals are endeavouring to cast

odium upon a great nation—to involve an entire city
in a certain degree of complicity—to attach to the
most venerable institutions of France an aspect of such

atrocity as could only be imparted to them by direct
participation in the evil deeds of the rogue and the
assassin. Without pretending to become the pane-
gyrists of our neighbours across the Channel, with-
out, indeed, any inclination whatever to become their
apologists or vindicators, we do most solemnly pro
test against this species of wholesale impeachment,
we do most explicitly deny the logic of these infe-
rences by which calumnies are distorted into evi-
dences of crime, and insinuations are magnified into
testimonies of conviction.

Because M. TESTE ;s proved to have disgraced his
official authority by the most flagrant acts of pecula-
tion—are his Ministerial colleagues to be regarded

as, ipso facto, lovers 4nd promoters of corruption ?
Because M. DE BEAUVALLON is proved to have

pistolled M. DUJARRIER to the death, with malice

prepense—are the journalists of Paris in a body to
be scouted as cut-throats and desperadoes ? Because
the unfortunate Duchess DE CHOISEUL PRASLIN is

butchered under the most suspicious, as well as the
most diabolical, circumstances—are we to abhor the

august nobility of France as a race inured to infamy
and capable of acts of the most hideous and tremendous
character ? Were such a system of reasoning admitted
as just and sequential, who could escape from a similar
degree of complicity ? Could any class, could any
city, could any profession, could any handicraft,
could any nation ? Good GOD ! the whole globe
would be darkened by supposititious as well as by
actual criminality,—it would be peopled with imagi-
nary monsters as well as with those demons of huma-
nity by which the land is polluted, by which OMNI-
PYTENCE is derided, by which the face of His divine
creation is profaned. The population of the four
continents would be one enormous congregation of
men habituated to licentiousness and bloodshed. Not
one creature would be free from the general leprosy
of suspicion, not one but would be morally in the
eyes of his neighbour an outcast and a ruffian. And
yet it is by this ruthless principle of insinuation that
the factious logicians we have alluded to are actuated ;
it is this horrible principle which is avowed by some
of our European Contemporaries ; it is with these
insinuations that their columns are disgraced.
It is impossible to deny that the present Adminis-
tration of France is composed of statesmen odious to
many millions, that the literary world of the French
metropolis has been rendered to a considerable extent
notorious from the shameful lives and vicious propen-
sities of its most conspicuous ornaments, that the
Peers of France have not been very materially elevated
i i public estimation by many recent disclosures.
Yet, acknowledging all this, it would be a grievous
misprision of justice, it would be totally opposed to the
dictates of common sense, to deduce from three isolated
occurrences the infamy of the French Ministry,
of the French Press, and of the French Peerage, in
the aggregate. As well might we say that all Italian
princes must be ruthless and tyrannical, because
C,Esett BORGIA desolated that peninsula by his arms
and his diplomacy. As well might we loathe the
noble name of SHIRLEY, because LAWRENCE, Earl of
FERRERS, was hung on the gallows at Tyburn, as the
murderer of his steward. As well might we despise
every coachman in the United Kingdom, because
DANIEL GOOD had driven a carriage; every school-
master, because EUGENE ARAM had fingered the
grammar ; or every member of the constabulary,
because JONATHAN WILD had practised as a thief-
taker.
While, however, we express our indignation at the
manner in which the conduct of M. TaSTE and of
M. DE BEAUVALLON is made to reflect injuriously
upon all contemporary politicians and journalists in
the French dominions, we would especially protest
against the line of argument which has been adopted
since the dreadful assassination of the Duchess DE
CHOISEUL PRASLIN. We would insist upon the in-
justice of the latter inferences, inasmuch as the
guilt of the accused is as yet only hypothetical,
morally conclusive as the details of that frightful
catastrophe are, the wretched husband of the Duchess
DE PRASLIN has yet to be declared her murderer.
His hair matches with the lock found in the dead
hand of his wife ; the embossed coronet on the
butt-end of his pistol has left an impression
on her ghastly forehead; the floor conducting
from their separate sleeping apartments is dabbled
with blood ; the hilt of a poniard, marked with the
same damning stains, is discovered in his chamber,—
all these things may seem to the majority equivalent
to a verdict, but his guilt or innocence has yet to be
pronounced. The imagination of the public is suffi-
ciently harrowed, moreover, by the circumstances of
this dismal tragedy, to require its horrors to be
enhanced by virtually implicating in its atrocity the
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pular passions to an extraordinary extent, and
to enkindle indignation in the hearts of the most
frivolous of the Parisians. Her destruction, too, in
the dead hour of the night, stabbed and cut about the
throat, and bludgeoned over the head ; her mortal
struggle with her destroyer ; the marks of a bloody
hand upon the wall and bell-pull ; the " ruffled"
sound of the bell itself; the groans of the victim, the
furtive shadow of the murderer, the breaking in of
the room door, and the spectacle which thereupon
discovered itself to the domestics, are sufficient to fill
the whole capital with commotion. Why then,
at such a moment of unnatural excitement, are these
dastardly insinuations thrown out—that the infamy of
one =if= is to be considered as the Prevailing °ha'