The Sun.
London, England, 1840-09-23 00:00:00

BY M. DE LAMARTINE.

Again I repeat it, nothing of what I here wrote down
is personal. I respect the men themselves ; but I at-
tack the Ministers. I speak without hate, but with the
liberty of a good citizen who sees his country on the
point of being lost.
Is France, then, a country where the public mind is
sunk so low that every thing may l►e dared with impu-
nity in face of her ?
Or is France a country whose institutions are of that
perverted nature that her Government should thus ne-
gotiate her interests without her?

SuAi are the questions which every morning pass from
mouth to mouth among the alarmed or humiliated citi-
zens, who had not yet bowed their necks beneath the
audacity of this dictatorship, or beneath the discourage-
ment of patriotism.

For the last two months what has been our Ministry ?

A party-coloured Ministry the issue of four different
Oppositions—a Ministry sure neither of its majority
nor of its own opinion. A Ministry obliged to feel
its own pulse every morning, and ask, " What am I to
represent to-day ?" Is it to be popularity, or the crown?
The compete ?Tuck or the laws of September? The
souvenir of Napoleon, or the liberty of July ? The
Left which I cajoe, the Left Centre which I lull to
rest, or the Conservative party which I play with ? For
the last two months, I repeat, a Ministry like this kept
the country in a state of suffocation, and were under the
threats of the rudest shock which dislocated Europe.
The world is in battle array, and we scarcely know
way. Affairs are in even a desperate state, and have so
completely slipped out of the hands of the statesmen
who should bare conducted them that our Ambas-
sador at London utters himself a cry of distress, and
confesses aloud " that every henceforward is at the mercy
of accident or of subalterns," which is tantamount,
in plain language, to an avowal that the destiny of
the world is left to chance. The Ministry orders levies
of men, and an extraordinary credit of some hundreds
of millions, and leaves us in the vista, the hope of two or
three hundred millions more for the purpose of surround-
ing Paris. PubliC credit is fallen still lower than the
stormiest of times—still lower, that is to say, than a
revolution brought it in the days of July. There is no
longer a budget : that, like everything else, is under the
dictatorship. It is no longer the country which offers
freely her last man, her last ecu, voluntarily and glo-
riously, for her safety and honour ; it is one man who
seizes on them, one man alone, who has neither throne,
nor dynasty, nor heritage to lose, but who boldly signs
at his morning meal his martial dreams of the night.
The people must pay the budget c'est moi ! The pub-
lic press applauds ! the Parliament is sent about its
business! and, in fine, that the farce may be played out,
all that is called the Parliamentary omnipotence !
That is nothing I The Ministry holds within its
hand peace or war—that is to say, the blood of some
millions of Frenchmen—and closes it in the face of the
country and its legal rights. The Ministry stands at
the foot of the telegraph ; with a sign it can fire the world
by some ill-directed cinnot-shot in the East ; our fate,
the fate of us all, is at stake in this Cabinet ; the
Ministry has only to hold out its arm ; the whole of
France sees this man, looks on him, and holds its peace.
It does not seize hold of his arm to know, at least,
what he holds within his hand I

Why ! France, then, must be a country as dumbly
silent as Turkey, more fettered than Poland ? No.;
France is a free and representative country. She reigns
and governs, as you perceive ; she has a Chamber, two
Chambers, electors, a political press, and she—holds
her peace. Why ! France, then, must be acting a great
comedy to amuse itself, making game of her own
institutions? Again—no. Why ! then it is her Go-
vernment who is making game of her and her in-
stitutions? That is possible! And if you do not
believe the fact, it is because truth sometimes goes so
far beyond the probable that the indignation of men
of true feeling cannot put itself upon the level of so
muck audacity, or descend so low into the depths of
so great a mystification. France learns, to her own
expense, that there is a dictatorship more hardy, more
heavy, than that of Royalty or of the Chambers—the
dictatorship of the passions. A personified passion is a
tyrant of which one is ashamed, but it is a tyrant.
Look at what is passing! Nothing is done under dis-
guise. The Chambers are told aloud, " Stop at home.
You would only inconvenience me. You may come
back when every thing is decided and irreparable—wilco
blood has already been shed, perhaps when I have in-
creased to the number of six hundred thousand our
army, impatient for glory—whca I shall have roused up
in the name of the public safety, the mobilised National
Guard—when some thousand millions shall have been '
given by ordonnance, or promised to all those of the
nation who are athirst for spoil and gain—when you
may preach peace and reason in face of army in battle
array, and a nation roused•by its alarm at that terrible
moment—when all sage advice is considered treason
by the people ?. Such is the liberty I give you—such
the tribune I prepare for you—such the approbation I
promise you!"
If we were a monarchy` the nation would belong to •
the Monarch.; in hazarding his throne he would lraaard
the future fortunes of his family ; in losing his throne he
would lose his own patrimony, the patrimony of his
posterity. These would be pledges and guarantees for
his conduct. But those men whose patrimony is glory,
and who have their fortune of a name to make, where
is their responsibility ? A sentence lately pronounced
contains a revelation upon that .—" What they have to
gain is a line and a half for their name in the history of
the world." A line and a half! You think that
modest, but it is to gratify this modest ambition that
such men ruin their country and upset all Europe!
If we were a republic, the National Convention would
be permanently sitting ; the Councils, composed of all
the men who predominate in the Assembly, and
who express either the opinions or the passions of
the mass, would be assembled night and day ; the
diplomatic and military Committees would commu-
nicate every hour the information obtained, the pro-
positions and notes of the Governments who negotiate
with us. The Generals would be summoned to give
their information as to the number and state of feeling
of the troops; the different Councils would come to
their resolutions in consequence ; and their resolutions
would be laid before the tribune and discussed in the
face of the whole country. The country would then
know what it wished, or what it did not wish. It would
stretch out its all-powerful hand over the public affairs,
and thrust aside with violence those who would hide
them from it. If the nation commits any act of folly it
would be a national act ; if it committed a crime it
would be the crime of the natioa. But now the folly
or crime of one man would be the folly or crime of the
nation. In that lies the difference. Thus is the Go-
vernment reduced to the proportions of one individual.
pAebolte
ospl
eu—aptehwi
no; with a
without
Kig—
a nnampoeipula in any
power
y Politicaltvi tthoonugtuteh. e
'The Constitution of 1790, which was monarchic
enough, as every one knows, had the following clause :
" VII. In case of an impending war, the Legislative
Body shall prolong its session into the usual recess, and
even be without any recess during the war."
It was on the 16th of May, 1790, that in the Consti-
tuent Assembly the longest and most patriotic discuss
sion took place which ever occurred in the annals of a
people. All the great geniuses, all the great charac-
ters, all the great good or evil passions of the country,
seemed to have been grouped together_ by fate to repre-
sent, in this first act of the French revolution, the
grandest drama of debate, eloquence, and action which
the rising nation could produce. Mauray, Mirabeau,
Bsmave, Cazales, Robespierre, Lameth, Duport, Du.
pont, Malhouet, and many others, struggled for nis..2
days in the public tribune. All Europe listened with
attention, and still listens to those magnificent speeches,
as imnerishable by their talent as the question was im-

perishable from its interest. And what was this ques-
tion ? To know whether the right of making peace
or war should belong to the nation or the King.
Mirabeau, incorruptible in his mind, but attainable by
his passions, had told the day before his genius to the
Court, and betrayed it that day. He spoke as
you ask ! He preferred I know not what line of po-
licy of Courts and Gibinets, which states the interests
of nations in the dark. and compromises them in silence
to the diplomacy of great nations speaking out openly
in their tribune, and discussing iu the face of day and of
thgmselves. The Court applauded him, and mankind
in general hissed him down. Bamave, who began to
disdain the easy part of tribune for the more difficult

part of statesman, spoke as defender of the rights of
the human race, and effected thus the triumph of the
right of nations. He demonstrated that to giVte up to a
Ministry the right of engaging a nation in war, a partial
war, was to disinherit the nation of its first right over
itself. He cited thousands of examples of nations whose
blood had thus been prodigally shed by their Ministers,
and that of England among others, in spite of Lord North,
obliged for seven years to pour out her subsidies in a war
commenced by the Crown and detested by the nation.
" I ask you," he cried," whether, when a war is once com-
menced we shall be able to declare it's time that it ought
not be continued? Recollect," he addid, " that Go-
vernments are almost always in favour of war, and the
nations of peace. Know that it is the interest of a
M:riister to declare war, because, in that ease, one is
obliged to allow him the m4nagenieut of the subsidies
of which he has need ; beeaus, in that ease his autho-
rity is iininerurab:y increased. It is he who gives
crintais:eiss, n.rinteates to a multitude of
posts; it is
be who leads a nation with cunning to prefer the glory
of conquest to liberty—be who changes the character
of a people and disposes it for slavery. The experience
nation has proved that the best method a clever
adopt to bury his faiths is to have them
pardonedoAfieinite
vesryr can
by his triumphs. When he finds it no longer
possible to render an 'sccount, Greece is set in flames,
and that is all the responsibility he has,"
At the termination of this memorable debate the first
clause, voted unanimously, was as follows :—" The right
of peace and war belongs to the nation. War can only
be decided by a National Assembly.'
This was the point at which your fathers had arrived
half a century age. Where are you now ? You may
see. Y'211,-B free nation, a democratic nation, the ra-
tion of 1789 and 180--you at that point that you