The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-19 00:00:00

EY 11114' I ING EDITION.

t ors, the joi•
the shopkeepers (name hateful
to the ears of the mighty soldier !) are now the
undisputed rulers of France ; and of such is the
National Guard of Paris composed. By these men
were the remains of Bonaparte surrounded in their
passage to the tomb which has been, at length, pre-
pared. for hiss in the capital of what was once his
Amp ire This fact seems to us to have been more
eloq,uent of decay,—of the fleeting nature of earthly
porup—ef the instability of earthly schemes of policy—
than even the pall, and the coffin which contained the
conqueror's bones. The bones of the great soldier, the
patron of agriculture, the contemner of moneyed
schemers, and of mere shopkeepers, have been, after a
'repose of twer,ity years, disinterred, in order to furnish a
holiday to tb.e gaping crowd of loungers who keep shops,
and who affect the style of military men ! These per-
eons have„ of late, prated about Bonaparte, as if Bona-
parte h'Ad been of their number, or been a favourer of
their "• order"—as if, indeed, the presence amongst them
of ti-,e ashes of the man who so often led the hosts of
Tr ance to Victory, must suffice to convert the tradcs-
r.seia of Paris into formidable antagonists to the armies
of all Europe besides. Some periodical writers, too, as
wall as a body of Parisian students, have been exceed-
ingly enthusiastic, of late, in their demonstrations o
reverence for the memory of Napoleon. No man ev „
looked with less of favour upon the pretensions of p.
litical writers, than did the late Emperor of Fr "„.
He would have reciprocated but little of the.t sym.
pathy which M. Thiers professes For his memory
—nay, under the sway of Bonaparte, M. 'niers, and
his fellow rhetoricians would, in all proaability, have
'been compelled to exercise their talents for journalism
in foreign countries. As for the students—La .Jenne
France—Bonaparte would have regarded their extra-
vagancies with infinite contempt. He had no predi-
lection for mysticism, or exaggeration, such as these
young men delight in. He would, in all probability,
have given their ardour a new direction, by drafting
them into the ranks of his army. Amongst all the
clavieS which we have enumerated—the republicans,
the socialists, the bourgoisie, the journalists, and the etu-
de sits—there existed little else than the affectation of
sverence for, Bonaparte's memory. Yet these classes
leave been chiefly instrumental in getting up the recent
elemonstration. The royalists—the sticklers for the di-
'vine right of the old line of monarchs—could not, of
-course, be expected to regard a procession in honour of
Napoleon, with especial favour. Let the classes, how-
ever, which we have specified, be deducted from the
numerical strength of the procession which so recently
excited Paris, and need we wonder at the failure of
that procession to produce those results, which some
persons expected from it ? The truth is, that the Bo-
napartists are a feeble party in France. Circumstances
have utterly changed within the last quarter of a cen-
tury. Society has assumed new forms, and is acted
on by new sentiments, or if by old sentiments, yet by
these in new modes of operation ; the schemes of po-
licy, therefore, which were more or less suitable to the
.emergencies of forty years ago, are unsuitable to ex-
isting necessities and relations. If, besides, the political
system of Bonaparte might, fairly, be deemed the very
perfection of wisdom, still the energy and the genius of
Bonaparte would be required to sustain it in opera-
tion. France will, however, find it more easy to pro-
duce another revelation, than another Napoleon. The
great procession was, in short, an utter failure—a fai-
lure, the causes of which it is not difficult to dis-
tinguish.

(From the Times.)
A letter has appeared in the newspapers from that
'philosophical politician, the well-known Joseph Hume,
to his adopted countrymen, the Irish, in which he
exhorts them to study the working of democracy in
America. The recommendation is ludicrous enough as
addressed to some hundreds of thousands of poor fellows
whose heads have never been turned to anything be-
yond a hod of mortar; but, if addressed to people capa-
ble of understanding the matter, it would be a rational
and useful suggestion, though for reasons exactly the
opposite of those which influence the sturdy Radical of
Kilkenny. To the actual working of democratic institu-
tions in America, so far as in a new country it has been
possible as yet to discern their efeets, we adverted in
our paper of December i, on the authority of M. de
Tocqueville. But that these practical consequences
may be fully understood and quite seen through, we
shall do well to bestow some thought upon the theory
they spring from, more especially as the people who
bold that theory are the next neighbours of the Queen's
Noah American subjects. It is instructive, though
strange, to behold how man, with minds well able to
apprehend both the evil of power when confined to the
bands of a privileged few, and the true reasons why such
power is an evil, can yet he blind to the still broader
and grosser evils of the same power when committed to
the universal mob ; and how hopelessly impatient is
modern republicanism of any restraint upon the despo-
tism of the majority. Such opinions in America are
not limited to the lower people ; there is also a chartism
of the more educated classes. In a number published
within the present year of a monthly Journal called the
Democratic Review, whereof the writers are evidently
wen of cultivation, we find a prominent ambitious
article, entitled " Democracy," which may probably
be taken as a fair indication of the sentiments most
acceptable in the circle to which it is addressed.
The principle which it asserts is, that " the majority
of the whole number must have rule"—that is, a
majority must be at once the deliberate and the
executive power, the beginning, the middle, and the
end of the Constitution. This is the American doc-
trine of the democracy, which, the writer sets out and
concludes with saying, " must finally triumph in human
Teason, because its foundations are deep in the human
heart." The argument is stated thus : All men have
from nature equal rights, which in the social state are
not relinquished, but held in abeyance to be more
effectually wielded by the superior judgment and power
of associated man, and government is the agent of all.
These axioms are followed by three propositions--first,
that the basis of legislative representation is the person,
from which is drawn the corollary that the aggregate
of persons, the mass of the people, are properly the
judges of the means most conducive to their happi-
ness and growth—that is to say of all political
affairs ; secondly, that government, as being the agent
of society, should direct its operation to the good
of all the members; and thirdly, that, as the will
of the whole people is the source, and their
good the end of government, they are entitled at any
time to change it, as their growing civilisation may de-
mand. The conclusion from the whole is, that " De-
mocracy must finally reign." These doctrines, advo-
cated as they are by a great deal of the talent of the
United States, and seemingly backed by the experience
of at least the northern part of that great union, have
too direct a bearing upon the population of British North
America, and are too influential with some classes even
within the British islands, to be treated with the neglect
which may be abstractedly their due. In the United
States, where they have ucen pushed to a great extent,
though not nearly far enough to satisfy their vota-
ries, the mischief of them must long since have been
glaringly obvious, but for the peculiar circumstances
of a country abounding in new lands, which have
furnished a hitherto unexhausted resource, against
that heaviest of all pressures upon either a sove-
reign population or a subject one—the want of subsis-
tence. It is needless to observe that this resource must
become less and less available as the new lands become
appropriated by daily accumulating swarms of European
in common with American settlers, and as the appro-
priation of the nearer lands increases the distance, and
consequently the expense, the anxiety, and the hazard,
of migration, to the subsequent occupiers. As long,
however, as there continues to be in the United States
any thing like a cheap facility for the obtaining of land,
which is the obtaining of a livelihood, it is ridiculous
to talk of the democratic experiment as having been
fairly made in that country. When the Americans
characteristically tell us that the steam of their con-
stitution works in perfect security without the costly
appendage of our safety valves, they quite forget the
great hole it escapes through at the back of the boiler.
In what we have now to say we desire to be under-
stood as taking no part for the few against the wel-
fare of the many, no interest whatever for privi-
leged classes as such. If any given privilege be not
for the benefit of the people at large, we wish not its
existence. if it be for the benefit, in which case, in-
deed, it is more properly their privilege than that of
the class intrusted with it, the people at large cannot
call for its abolition without proving themselves unfit to
be the managers of their own interests. What privi-
leges shall exist, and in what bands, whether as a cheap
reward of past service, or as a means of obtaining ser-
vice for the future (which form the twofold object of the
British peerage), i
or as
an encouragement to genius and
perseverance (which s the object of the monopolies con-
ferred by the laws of copyright and patent), or as a
temporary trust for the despatch of the public business
(which is the object of the peculiar powers vested in
each Minister of the Executive Government for t t
being)—these are questions, no doubt, of great import-
ance to society, but questions which all alike involve and
admit the infringement of the claimed equality, and
depend upon considerations not at all of right, but
of expediency. And it must be this, if anything,
which is meant by the democrat himself, when he tells
us that " in the social state, natural rights are held in
abeyance, to be more effectually wielded by the supe-
rior power and judgment of associated men, govern-
ment being the agent of all." It follows, that if the
institution of any trust, any power, any privilege, nay,
even any privileged class, be expedient for the people
at large, that is, for the majority of the whole people,
the mere circumstance of its deranging natural
equa-
lity will furnish no conclusive argument against it.
But, whatever may be the dispute on the sub-
ject of government, at all events on that of legisla-
tion the American writer conceives himself impreg-
nably intrenched behind the lofty and plausible as-
sumption that the " basis of representation" (that is,
of the
,elective franchise) " is the person
;" in other
words, that there can be no exclusive right to select
those in whom the legislation is placed," because,
every indivnichial is interested in the use or abuse of
that power. On this reasoning no regard can be
had to the alleged unfitness of any member of society

from infirmity of understanding, defect of knowledge,
or want of independent position ; and minors and
females, heir ,g interested equally—nay, indeed, from
their helplessness, interested even more than equally
—with ma! e adults in the use or abuse of power,
beccrne ,itled to an equal voice in the appointment
of their rs presentatives. Oh no, we are told, that is
no part of the scheme ; the interest and convenience
of the pc( pie require that these be still excluded. Be
they so , no one presses for their admission ; but
then w' 17 at becomes of " the person as the basis of
legislat Ive representation ? " Be they excluded, for
the in tereat and convenience of the people of your
count ; but then with what face can you, or
your disciple Mr. Hume, charge it as an injustice
agair ,Ft the constitution of our country, that it has
deer 3ed the interest and:convenience of its people to re-
quit e a somewhat stricter exclusion than you think
recr Jisite in your own, a somewhat closer application of
Yo' sr principle of selection ? If you lay it down that a
sot of the capacity or independence requisite in the
oter shall be conclusively presumed from a certain
AZ or age, why may not another constitution draw a si-
lnilar inference from certain grades or habits of life ?
You, with the person for your basis, shut out a frac-
tion of no less than about five-sevenths of all the persons
in your society ; and then, because the fractional pro-
portion which your neighbours fix upon happens to be
six-sevenths, you treat them as invaders of an universal
principle and selfish enemies to the rights of man.
Add to this, that on the executive part of the ques-
tion your argument expressly lets in. for the people's
benefit, what you call the abeyance of their natural
rights ; but if the principle of waving these rights for
the people's benefit be admissible with respect to
what is executive, it must be equally admissible
with respect to what is legislative. How far, in
any particular state of circumstances, the peo-
ple can really benefit from the waver, by
some among them, of their " universal right" (which,
however, we have seen to be witheld by democracy it-
self from five-sevenths of all human society) is a ques-
tion quite open to discussion both in America and in
England : to the present purpose, which is that of trip-
ping up the abstract argument of an universal, perva-
sive, indefeasible,linvariable right, it is sufficient to have
shown that democracy itself allows that right to
less than one-third of those in whom it is declared to
be inherent, thereby admitting the principle that
the political rights of individuals are capable of
being superseded for the benefit of the people at large.
We certainly are not disposed to quarrel with the
writer's second proposition, that government, being
the agent of society, should direct its operation to
the good of all the members : nor the third, that the
people are entitled to change their government as the
advance of their civilization may require. But the
conclusion to which the author jumps is, that " de-
mocracy must finally reign." Now, the democracy
he pants for is not, he says, " the fierce and turbulent
spirit of ancient Greece, which was only the " mon-
strous misgrowth of faction and fraud, still less that
wild reckless spirit of mobism which triumphs, with
remorseless and fiendish exultation, over all lawful au-
thority, all constituted restraint." The last is a tem-
porary sort of misgovernment, a reign of terror, which
in its very nature is incapable of permanence, though
unhappily very capable of recurrence. The other, the
Greek form, is the only one in which anything at all
resembling popular supremacy will ever maintain itself
for any considerable length of time. But that which
these enthusiastic Americans desire, and which Mr.
Hume, we apprehend, has ultimately in view, is an
equal distribution of political power to every one of the
members of society, (that is, being of male sex and full
age), to be exercised by all for their common welfare, as
the appropriate "judges of the means most conducive to
their happiness and growth." This is the kind of
democracy which the author before us fondly anti-
cipates as being " finally to reign." Suppose the ex-
periment then to be made in any old country, that is, in
any country so fully occupied that its population
presses upon its actual means of subsistence, which is
the case of all old States, and must, ere long, be the case
of the new likewise. The multitude now becomes
armed with universal power, which is exercised in the
choice of certain representatives, sent up, however, not
as the directors of the people, but as their attornies,
not to govern the constituent body, but to obey it, to
execute " the means " which the many " shall judge
most conducive to their happiness and growth." Those
means, that is, the whole policy of the State, foreign as
well as domestic, the people are to settle for themselves,
and they will instruct these faithful representatives ac-
cordingly. Now, in these wide political pursuits, the '
most rational and estimable classes of the people are
usually the most reluctant to meddle. Such interference
takes them from their employments ; it makes ene-
mies and bad neighbours ; and it is usually suffered,
therefore, to fall into the hands of less respectable
men, whom vanity, or interest, or spleen impels
"to leave a calling for this idle trade." The legisla-
tion of such folks is always with a crooked leaning.
Their sympathies are on the disreputable side ; they
adapt the law rather to shelter the irregular, than to
aid the regular, movements of society—to favour
tre:passers on property rather than proprietors, and
debtors rather than creditors —to assist capricious
changes as against fixed principles, and tear down or
dilapidate the fences of religion. If these consequences
should be obviated at all, it would be only through
the acquisition of a controlling influence by the higher
classes ; in which case all public affairs must become,
what too many of them are now, mere questions of
party, and the democracy, instead of reigning in the in-
tegral aggregate of its majesty, as contemplated by the
theorists, becomes a broken heap of balanced forces,
each pretty nearly powerless for any purpose of national
good. But these are the most favourable suppositions
(perhaps too favourable) of the probable exercise of
unlimited power by a democracy. The more likely
result, tee suspect, would be an immediate dissolution
of the whole existing older of society—a week's work,
that would require a century of repairs. The ques-
tion for the supposed democracy to determine upon is
stated to be, " the means most conducive to their
happiness and growth." Now the notion which
nine-tenths of them entertain of happiness is
eating and drinking (especially the latter) without
working, and the principle upon which that theory would
be executed would probably be again, as it has been too
often heretofore, an agrarian one—the simple resource
of reducing the inequality between the rich and the poor
by a general division of property. At the end of a
week there would then be a new set of rich, not those
who were the rich of last week, nor those who last
week were the poor, but those who have spent that
week in retailing liquor. These would have realized
nine-tenths of the distributed largess, and on the sixth
or eighth morning the poor would be as poor as ever,
with a gin headache, and no masters left to give them
wages for tissrir future labour. We say with Mr
Hume, " take a lesson from this !"

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
( From the Globe.)
The Paris papers are still full ,of the funeral of
Napoleon. We observe that one of our Morning
Contemporaries treats the ceremony as " a failure,"
while another says the spectacle was a fine one ; and
" zeal, amounting to enthusiasm, seemed to per-
vade the vast mass of population assembled about
Paris." Some of the Paris papers complain that the
great officers of the State, the class of functionaries
who owed so much to Napoleon, were not in the pro-
cession, but awaited its arrival within the church of the
Invalides. The Debats, on the other hand, says that the
ceremony, up to the moment of the arrival of the body
at the Invalides, must be exclusively military, that Na-
poleon was a " great man of war, and that, at an
epoch when social order could only be saved by ener-
getic will, he held the sceptre as firmly in his hand
as he had grasped the sword." The Constitutionnel
(i. e. M. Thiers) is of course complacent at the coming
off, though rather a day too late, of the spectacle which
the ex-Minister had intended should be played for his
" benefit ;" and consoles itself with the reflection that
" France had another grand page to add to her history"
—namely, M. Thiers' embryo History of the Empire.
Whatever may have been the degree of success of
the ceremony, it is gratifying to find that the efforts of
the public disturbers, at least, were a failure. We
refer to our Paris correspondent for details of all they
were able to do. With their noise and nonsense about
the treaties of 1815, they did their petit possible
to thrown ridicule over a solemn ceremony. The
seriousness and silence of the better-informed spec-
tators sufficiently sheaved that they knew better
than the gamins and schoolboys of Paris, where
to lay the blame of the treaties of 1815. The
Univers speaks out on this subject, with a courage
creditable to a French journal ; and which we have
no doubt meets approbation from the reflective
portion of the French public—a portion the preponder-
ance of which ought not to be concealed from us by the
noisy and abortive attempts of a desperate faction. " In
good faith," says the Univers, "from whence came to
us such reverses, after such successes—such humilia-
tion, after so much glory ? We retain nothing but
recollections—great, immortal recollections, it is true—
of all Napoleon's victories, of all his conquests. We know
all thatj has been said, in style more or less sonorous,
of the seeds of liberty, cast by our triumphant armies
over all Europe--of the sympathies which our generous
ideas, carried everywhere with our banners, have created
in
upon
ourselves? iiere
our favour in the bosoms of all nations. It is all well
tointoxicate ourselves with phrases, after having intoxi-
cated withlet
ugslohrya.veßnuot
lwiehs,onborovusinght Waterloo
u
pa hi loso
nebulousphy
of history, enveloping inexcusable faults in
fatalism. It ,
and as Napoleonshould, h
abrought i
avoided
Waterloo
and he could,
coalition, not ofprovokingonthilas;
Kings only, but nations, which pre-
cipitated him from the throne, and drew us down with
his fall."

(From the Standard.)
The pageant of Napoleon's funeral passed off in a
manner highly honourable to the character of the
French people, and in no lower degree promising of
tranquillity to the world. The purpose with which
M. Thiere devised the solemnity has been net merely
defeated—it has rolled back in ruin upon himself