The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-08 00:00:00

trials on the river where so many obstructions occur, and
as their Lordships hoisted the Admiralty flag on the
Niger to day, an excellent opportunity c tiers to promote
a deserving and most zealous servant.

After the trial their Lornships left at Sheerness for a
visit at that port. •
The Plumper broke down, and was towed back to
Woolwich.

The Lords Commissioners of the Adtpiralty occupied
so much time in officially inspecting Sheerness Dcekyard
that they had not time to proceed to Chu!ha►n, and re-
turned to Woolwich in the Dover, and arrived at Wool-
wich at ten minutes before seven Pm. Ti.e Niger had
arrived about live minutes previous in excellent condi-
tion, and all on board much pleased with the result. The
Niger, from her performance to-day, isexpected to•rnake
10} knots on the next trial, and she has every appearance
of proving an excellent sailing vessel.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOUR.NALS.
FROM THE MOONING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIMES.—The French Revolution of 1848 has been
fruitful in phi nomena ; but no phenomenon has been
more striking than the fate of M. Lamartine. His move
ment and his brilliancy were those of a meteor. His
obscuration has been as sudden and as startling. For
two months he was the star of promise and hope that
gleamed with solitary lustre athwart the darkened sky
of France. Every other actor in the melodrame of its
politics was viewed by some party or another with sus-
picion, jealousy, or dislike. The rich hated Louis Blatic,
the bozo geoisie dreaded Ledru Rollin. Foreigners looked
with mixed fear and distrust on men who were pledged
to principles subversive of civil order, it not hostile to
international concord. But Lamartine conciliated all
classes and all opinions. His tone of refinement de-
lighted the high born end well-to do. His eloquent
liberalism charmed the disciples of liberty and equality;
his apparent moderation disarmed the sullenness of
foreign nations, while the dash of chivalry and the op-
portune courage he displayed won for him the admira-
tion of his own. Throughout Europe there was not for
two months such another man as Lamartine in fame, for-
tune, and popularity. But all these precious and glori-
ous attributes were short lived. In less than anothermonth
a change came, and what a change! To any man it
must have been a bitter reverse—to a Frenchman almost
death. It was not that he incurred obloquy, or persecu-
tion, or imprisonment. Far worse—he fell into obscu-
rity. He became of no note, of no esteem, of no influ-
ence. The man in whose train the mob of Paris
shouted, by whose words their passions had been lulled
or their enthusiasm roused, the man to whom foreign de-
putations had paid homage and foreign statesmen offered
flattery, became the subject for a schoolboy's moralis-
ings and a cynic's snarl. He sank by one sudden
plunge from the pedestal of the great to the shelf of the
equivocal. He exchanged fame for something which to
a Frenchman was worse than infamy. is it strange that
he should resent this stroke of fortune and this sample
of ingratitude.? He has accordingly penned a justifica-
tion of himself against charges which his own ingenuity
has framed. In this production, it is needless to say,
there is much eloquence, more fancy, and some justice.
The main and irresistible reply to it consists in the very
fact that there should have been any reason for writing
it. Why is not M. Lamartine what he was four months
ago? Great as his powers may be, both as an orator and
a poet, they will be infinitely greater than the world ever
believed them to be if they restore him to hi former place.
Who but an ingenious advocate would have fabricated
for his opponents such a count as this, with which M.
Lamartine introduces his case, viz., that he " was ardent
in his ambition, but weak in the exercise of power?"
Ardent in his ambition 1 " And feeble in the exercise
of power!" This, too, is a gratuitous assumption; but
it exhibits the rhetorician's art. It creates for him an
opportunity of describing the second as he described the
first Revolution; of painting the second Assembly as he
had painted the first Convention. No; M. Lamartine
was never accused of weakness as a member of the Pro-
visional Government. All people and nations remember
the indefatigable orator who was perpetually addressing
vast, heterogeneous, and alien assemblies; the intrepid
Minister who was daily facing danger and death; the
discreet correspondent with foreign states, who persisted
in repudiating a policy of aggression and interference.
Not only may we say on these points " Quis irecusavit
but also, " Quis non laudavit 7" But what shall „e say
when a man of M. Lamartine's social and political posi•
lion condescends to enter into a minute detail of his pe-
cuniary affairs in order to meet the imputations of mal-
versation, corruption, and public robbery? What shall we
say of the country where such insinuations against public
men are lightly made and easily believed ? What shall
we say of the morals and purity of a people whose
statesman, so lately the god of its idolatry, is accused of
having turned a desperate revolution to his own good
account, and of having eked out his own fortunes from
the misfortunes of his country? But what shall be said
of the man who, thus assailed, deems it requisite to
publish the state of his liabilities and assets, his leases,
releases, acquittances, and even the transactions with his
publisher? "I blush," he says, "to expose all these
particulars; but the people have a right over the reputa-
tion of their representatives." Indeed ! This is a new
doctrine. M. Lamartine's real sin is not Communism.
It is not treachery. It is not love of war. It is not
peculation. It is not weakness during the time of
the Provisional Government. On all these points he
defends himself largely; and they are all superfluous.
His real sin was weakness in the Executive Govern-
ment. He connected himself with Ledru Rollin,
a man of uncongenial sentiments and more than equi-
vocal character. Ile connived at his political and his
personal misdeeds. He allowed Louis Blanc to play his
own game at the Luxembourg, and Caussidiere and
Sobrier to prepare the arms and organize the soldiers of
revolt out of the funds of his Government and at the
head-quarters of his police. Ile did not take a decided
and decisive line at a crisis which required the most
marked decision of character and action. He played
fast and loose with men who he acknowledges " were
capable of serving or ruining" the Republic. He who
showed no fear amid the pikes and sabres of the
February mobs exhibited a weakness, an irresolution,
and an ambiguity, in the months of March and April,
which he does not explain and cannot justify. That his
own integrity remained unsullied through the glittering
temptations of a revolution which had surprised him
into power, and placed unexpected greatness in his
hands, we are willing to believe; but that other conside-
rations unworthy of a statesman and a patriot operated
very strongly upon his mind, and enaharrassed his reso-
ltition, appears but too evident from the report of the
Committee of Inquiry to which this pamphlet is in-
tended as an evasive reply.
CHRONICLE.—The policy pursued by the present
French Government against the Press is not only inde-
fensible, but suicidal, as, without any pretensions to pro-
phesy-, we may venture to predict. The small number
of remonstrauts in the National Assembly, and the im-
mense majority which has affirmed the acts of a short-
sighted Executive, have no weight, in their ephemeral
importance, to shake our opinion against those im-
mutable laws of justice and of progress, which no sword,
however trenchant, can cut, and no armed heel, however
heavy, tread down. The Gazette de France on the one
hand, and the Representant du People, or its successor,
the People, on the other, may be suppressed; Cabinet
Councils may deliberate, in impotent menace, whether
the Constitutionnel ought to be suspended; the creed of
MM. de Labourdonnaye and do Polignac may predomi-
nate for the moment in the heart of the Demo-
cratic Republic; but the Press, in our days, is as
inevitable as the Church of old —it must re-appear
to conquer. It is not the mere bead of a
h) dra, which some martial steel, heated by
party passion, may temporarily annihilate, but it
is a great necessity (as immortal as the want it
meets), which satisfies now, and will govern hereafter.
Well may M. Emile de Girardin, with hitter irony, re-
produce the early articles of the National, during the
infancy of the July dynasty; and well may he assume
as his motto, such sentiments as the following of M.
Armand Marrast and M. Armand Carrell : " Shame
upon the coward writer," says the first, in 1832, " who
would desert his duty because it involves a danger." " A
riginte like this," exclaimed one who was saluted by his
party as the consul elect of democracy, " shall not,
without our protest, call itself the liberty of the press."
It must be borne in mind, that the opposition to this
barbarous legislation proceeds, moreover, not only from
men like MM. Ledrueßollin, Theodore Bac, Felix Pyat;
but from those who the most impetuously signalized
their perilous hostility to the Red Republic in the hour
of crisis, and on the eve of its apparent ascendancy.
Foremost among the champions of order was then
to be remarked the Vicomte Victor Hugo ; and no
appeal was so eloquent, so admirably reasoned, so
impressive, as his address to the electors of
Paris at the end of last March. Now, we think him as
right, as spirited, and as forcible, as he was at that time,
in his recent defence of the liberties of thought, thus
extravagantly outraged. " Censure and confiscation,"
he indignantly says, " are crushing, at this moment, all
the organs of public opinion." Nor does General Ca-
vaignac, by these untoward practices, fail to provoke a
more insidious hostility. The Abbe de Genoude, whose
abilities are incontestible, and whose remorseless writing
Sir Henry Bulwer, we remember, not inaptly compared '
to the articles of the Standard during the Wellington
and Grey Administrations, has, since the extinction of
his journal, presented a petition to the National Assem-
bly. He prays, " That the powers which he has abused
may be withdrawn from General Cavaignac; that the na-
tion may be convoked for the nomination of a Chief of the
Re-public; that a general amnesty may be proclaimed;
that three Consuls may be chosen, to watch, to-
gether with the National Assembly, over the
interests of public order and the commonwealth
during the election of this prospective Chief; one Consul
to be at the head of all the National Guards, a second
of all the land and sea forces of the Republic, a third of
the laws and justice; and that these three Consuls shall
be Generals Lamoriciere, Changarnier, and M. Dupont
de l'Eure." The sting of these solicitations is, of course,
in the names of the two Generals thus mischievously
put forward. And it ought to be a matter of fear to
General Cavaignac, lest any of his military rivals should
bethink him of identifying himself with the truth which
he has assailed, should assert that freedom of thought
which he has so wantonly injured, and prepare to sup-
plant the present system, by another less uncongenial to
the first principles of the February Revolution. For
General Cavaignac is not yet entirely at his ease in his
stirrups; he has not yet traversed his eighteenth Bru-
maire. His " Africans" accord no preference to his own
renown over that of Lamoriciere, Changarnier, Bedeau,
or Bugeaud. And it must be obvious that an General
y
has only to take advantage of some mistake as f
as that to which we have alluded, on the part
l
of the present Executive, to achieve a success
which will probably subserve an ambition less mode-
rate than the one which at
the
Press, thisinstant predo-
minates and rules. Acts against in them-
selves, are of that class of blunders which are worse
than crimes ; but they are eminently so at a moment
when the slightest faux pas may introvert the roles. Ili
the meanwhile, although the despotism of the sabre alone
practically reigns in France, the Constitutionis under
discussion ; and ideologues barren, philologists as ab.