The Sun.
London, England, 1840-09-05 00:00:00

DISTURBED STATE OF THE

FRENCH OPERATIVES.

(From Galignaui's .31essenc.r of Thursday.)
The continued meetings of workmen in and around
the metropolis begin to assume a character which
requires the prompt and effectual interference of the
executive to repress them. Yesterday several meetings
were held on the plains of Saint Denis, Aubervilliers,
Bondi, and Pantin. The authorities sent out a consi-

derable oody of police, and as the people would not
disperse on the regular summonses being read, many
were taken into custody. In the evening between 300
and 400 were conducted to the Prefecture of Police,

under a strong escort of horse and foot municipal
guards. Duriag the morning the men employed in
the cotton manufactories had struck, although they
had for a long time had plenty of employment at
good wages. An assemblage of between 500 and
600 entered the mills in the rues de la Ro-
quette, Charonne, and Piepus, and seduced or
forced away all the workmen. A commissary of police,
on being made acquainted with what had taken place,
went out to meet them with a detachment of municipal
guards, but on his approach they retired. It appears
that the vidahgeurs of Montfaucon had also been forced
to join the strike. Yasterdl afternoon there was also
an assemblage of journeymen bakers, and some symp-
toms of a strike. The workmen disclaim all political
objects whatever, and confine their demands to an in-
crease of pay to those who work by the piece, with
a reduction of hours for those who are engaged by
the day.
It is not without painful feelings that the Govern-
ment sees the sad attitude assumed by certain classes of
workmen, who are acting under evil councils as to their
duties and their real interests. With a view to put an
end to sufferings, which arc evidently too highly coloured,
the workmen of several branches have, for some time,
shown demonstrations which have a tendency directly
opposed to the object which they have in view. It is
not by creating alarm in the capital, and to trade, which,
living as it does upon public confidence, easily takes
alarm, that new markets will be created for labour, wages
be raised, and prompt satisfaction be obtained for the va-
rious interests which put forward their claims. The work-
men will not easily succeed in making it be believed
that they are so distressed, when they are seen assem-
bled in tumultuous meetings, and forcibly entering
workshops for the purpose of compelling others of
their fellow-workmen who are satisfied with their posi-
tion to join them. Such proceedings are not calculated
to excite sympathy. The Government did not wait
for these symptoms of emotion to take into considera-
tion the condition of the workmen, and if it now regrets
the false direct on which interested classes give to their
claims, it is chiefly because what is good in their inti- n-
ttons may be paralysed by improper conduct, and by the
unfortunate intervention which political passions are
perhaps too ready to attempt. If the workmen will
listen to our advice, they will abstain from assemblages
and menacing procession& which are disapproved of
by all good citizens, and which cannot any longer be
tolerate]. More pacific and at least equally efficacious
means are at their disposal, for setting forth their de-
mand to the Government, and, in the event of their be-
ing well-founded, they will always be received with in-
terest if presented in a proper form.
The Constitutionnel has an article rather more diffuse
than that of the Messagcr, but so much in the same
spirit, that it is unnecessary to give an extract. This
journal observes, that the workmen have taken advan-
tage of the moment at which their services were most
required, there being a general demand for hands, to
put forward their claims. The Debats, alluding to the
article of the National on the reform dinner, says :

" The National considers it a calumny on the Radi-
cals to say that they shouted Vive le Roil 'We pass
over the sadly insulting expressions of its article, but
we cannot hut express our astonishment that there should
be a political party which puts itself so much out of the
constitution as to consider that it is outraged by its being
believed for twenty-four hours that it cried Vive le Roi !
What a singular susceptibility ! The word reform, when
it is uttered by the Radicals, signifies only revolution, re-
volution with violence and armed force. The words pro-
gress, equality, fraternity, and humanity, arc rejected
by sensible people when they are used in Radical
Journals, or in the harangues of a banquet, and the
shops are closed when these words are heard in the
streets. This party avows that it understands only one
way of reforming society—making of it a table rase.
The principle of the Radicals is war, war on all points,
constant war—not Reform. Is not their protest against
royalty a protest against the Chambers, against Govern-
ment, against laws, property, trade, commerce, in short
against all existing institutions ? Without doubt the
existing state of things may not be the beau ideal of
perfection. Under al! governments there will be Re-
formers ; in every political and social body there will be
a progressing party ; but we reform only what we have
at heart to maintain. The progressing portion of society
can only act by resting upon something that is fixed and
stable. Those who do not acknowledge this eternal
law, will neither discuss nor reform—their only object is
war upon society at large."
We copy with pleasure the following article from the
Courtier Francais. The sentiments are the more gene-
rous and the more honourable to the writer, as he has
been one of the most ardent adversaries of the policy of
the British Cabinet on the question of the East, and one
of the most energetic in demanding an abandonment of
that policy, as being indicative of an unfriendly feeling
towards France. We arc happy, however, in being able
to state from an authentic source, that the cry of
" Death to the English," which the Cour rier reprobates
in such strong and proper language, was only uttered by
a few drunken men, and that it was speedily put down
by the indignation of the persons who heard it as the
proetasion passed. This information hag, we believe,
been also communicated to the courtier Francais, which
will, without doubt, notice it in the next number of the
journal. Deeply as it is to be regretted that men even
under the influence of drunkenness should give expres-
sion to such savage sentiments,it is more than an atone-
ment to see them thus indignantly reprobated by one of
the most icfluential organs of the daily press :
" The National contradicts a journal which had
stated that the Radicals, on their return from the ban-
quet of Chatillon, mingled with their singing of the
Marsellaise the cry of Vive le Roi. We wish the
National could give a contradiction to a report. which
has reached us from various quarters, that the Radicals
joined with the Marsellaise the savage cry of Death to
the English. If such a cry was uttered, we do not
hesitate to say that it was an outrage upon public tran-
quilly, and merits the indignation of every honest
mind. Since the year 1830, the French who have
visited England, or chosen it for an asylum, have always
found there a courteous hospitality. At the Coronation
of Queen Victoria, Marshal Soult was conducted in
triumph through Great Britain in honour of the French
nation, the English taking pleasure in personifying an
allied nation in the man who is, perhaps, the most bril-
liant living expression of its glory ; and more recently
M. Guizot was received at Ramsgate with an enthu-
_

siasm which cannot be described. Shall we re-

ply to such demonstrations by public insults to the
English name, as if politics were only a vocabulary
of insults, and as if murderous cries in the public
streets were a noble revenge for the treaty of the 15th
of July ! The English Government has separated it-
self from France ; must we make English citizens re-
sponsible for this faithless conduct ? This would be the
more unjust, as the most enlightened persons in Eng-
land, as well as the laborious classes of the population,
mress the strongest sympathy for the alliance with
France, and the mos% sincere desire for peace. The
Morning Post, for the purpose apparently of alarming
the English, pretended lately that an Englishman could
not appear in the streets of Paris without being in-
sulted. What will the Tory Journal say, on learning
that the insult was addressed at the close of a Radical
meeting, not to a few individuals, but to the nation ?
The heroes of Homer provoked each other by insults
before they came to blows ; but in the present age only
the lazzaroni raise their courage in this way. Civiliza-
tion requires that an enemy should be fought without
inAilting him. We might permit a French regiment,
under the fire of an English battery, to cry Death to the
English but a cry of this kind in the streets of Paris,
whilst the two nations are at peace, is almost as ridicu-
lous as it is barbarous."