The Sun.
London, England, 1848-03-06 00:00:00

Tilt_ Stis, LONDOX, MONDAY EVENING, MARCH 6, 1846,

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

PROCEEDINGS AT PARIS.

We have received the Paris papers of Saturday and
of yesterday.
The Moniteur of yesterday publishes the following
important circular from M. DE LAMARTINE, the Secre-
tary for Foreign Affairs, to the diplomatic agents of
the French Republic. It is a complete and most
satisfactory explanation of the future foreign policy
of the great French Republic.

" CIRCULAR OF THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
TO THE DIPLOMATIC AGENTS OF THE FRENCH

REPUBLIC.
" Sir—You know the events of Paris, the victory
of the people, its heroism, its moderation, its pacifica-
tion, the order re-established by the concurrence of
the whole of the citizens, as if, in that interregnum of
the visible powers, the reason of the public were alone
the Government of France.
" The French Revolution has thus entered into its
definitive period. France is Republican. The French
Republic has no occasion to be acknowled in order
to exist. By natural law as well as by the law of
nations it exists—it is the will of a great people,
which does not demand its title but from itself.?
Nevertheless, the French Republic, desiring to enter
into the family of governments instituted as regular
powers, and not as a phenomenon corning to disturb
the order of Europe, it is proper that you promptly
make known to the Government to which you are
accredited the principles and tendencies which will
henceforth direct the foreign policy of the French
Government.
"The proclamation of the French Republic is not
an act of aggression against any form of government
in the world. The forms of government have
diversities as legitimate as the forms of character,
the geographical situation, the intellectual, moral,
and material development of nations. Nations, like
individuals, have different ages. The principles
which govern them have successive phases—monar-
chical, aristocratical, constitutional, republican go-
vernments, are the expressions of the different
degrees of the maturity of the genius of the different
nations. They demand more liberty in proportion
as they feel themselves capable of supporting
more. They demand more equality and democracy
in proportion as they are the more inspired with
the feeling of justice and love for the people. It
is a question of time. A nation goes astray in
outrunning the hour of that maturity, as it dis-
honours itself in allowing it to escape without seiz•
ing upon it. The monarchy and the republic are
not, in the eyes of true statesmen, absolute princi-
ples which are enemies to the death ; they are facts
which are contrasted to each other, and which can live
face to face, while they understand and respect each
other.
" War, then, is not the principle of the French
Republic, as it became the fatal and glorious neces-
sity of the Republic in 1792. Between 1792 and
1848 there is half a century. To return, after a lapse
of half a century, to the principles of 1792,
or to the principle of conquest and of em-
pire, would not be to advance, it would be to
retrograde with the advance of time. The revolution
of yesterday is a step in advance, and not one back-
wards. The world and ourselves wish to march to
fraternity and peace.
"If the situation of the Republic in 1792 ex-
plained the war, the differences which exist between
that period of our history and that in which we live
explains the peace. Apply yourself to the under-
standing of these differences and explain them to those
around you.
"In 1792 the nation was not one. Two nations
(peuples) existed on the same soil. A terrible strug-
gle still prolonged itself between the classes dispos-
sessed of their privileges and the classes who had just
succeeded in achieving equality and liberty. The
classes dispossessed united themselves with the cap-
tive royalty and with jealous foreigners to deny its
revolution in France, and to re• impose upon it the
Monarchy, the aristocracy, and the theocracy by in-
vasion. At the present day there are no longer any
distinctions and inequality of classes. Liberty has
freed all. Equality before the law has levelled every-
thing. Fraternity, of which we proclaim the appli-
cation, and of which the National Assembly is to or-
ganize the benefits, is about to unite all. There is
not a single citizen in France, to whatever opinion he
may belong, who does not rally to the principle of
the country before everything else, and who does not
render, by that very union, all attempts impregnable
to the attempt and to the fears of invasion.
" In 172 it was not the entire population who
entered into possession of the Government. It was
the middle classes only who wished to exercise
liberty and to enjoy it. The triumph of the middle
class at that time was egoistical, as the triumph of
every oligarchy must be. It wished to retain for
itself the rights achieved for all. It was necessary
for it to operate a strong diversion against the ad-
vance of the people by precipitating it (the people) on
the field of battle, in order to prevent it from entering
into the service of its own Government. This diver
sion was the war. War was the idea of the Monar-
chians and Girondins. It was not the idea of the
most advanced democratics, who wished like us the
sincere regards and the complete reign of the people
itself, comprising in that name all classes without
exclusion or preference, as the nation is composed.
" In 1792 the people was only the instrument of
the Revolution. To-day the Revolution is made by
the people and for the people. The people is itself
the Revolution. In entering into it, it carries into
it its new necessities of labour, of industry, of in-
struction, of agriculture, of commerce, of morality,
of prosperity, of property, of cheap living, of
navigation, and, in short, of civilisation, which are
all the necessities of peace. The people and peace
are but one word.
"In 1792 the ideas of France and of Europe

were unprepared to comprehend and to accept the
great harmony of nations among each other to the
benefit of the human race. The idea of the age
which was closing was only in the heads of some
philosophers. Philosophy at the present day is popu-
lar. Fifty years of liberty of thinking, of speaking,
and of writing, have produced their result. Books,
journals, and the tribune, have acted as the apostles
of European intelligence. Reason spreading every-
where, and overstepping the frontiers of nations, has
created that intellectual nationality which will be
the achievement of the French Revolution, and the
constitution of international fraternity all over the
globe.
" In short, in 1792 liberty was a novelty, equality
was a scandal, and the Republic was a problem. The
title of nations, which had only just been discovered

by Fenelon, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, was so com-
pletely forgotten, buried, profaned by old feudal
dynastic and sacerdotal traditions, that the most
legitimate intervention of the people in its affairs ap-
peared a monstrosity to the statesmen of the old
school. Democracy made the monarchs, and at the
same time the foundations of society tremble. To-
day thrones and the people are accustomed to the
word, to the forms, and to the regular agitations of
liberty, exercised in nearly different proportions in
all states, and even in monarchies. They will ac-
custom themselves to the Republic, which is its com-
plete form in all the ripest of nations. They will re-
cognise that there is a conservative liberty. They
will acknowledge that there may be in the Republic
not only better order, but that there may be more real
order in that government of all for all, than in the
government of the few for the few.
" But besides these disinterested considerations, the
sole interest of the consolidation and the duration of
the Republic would inspire in the statesmen of
France the thoughts of peace. It is not the country
that runs the greatest danger in the war ; it is the
liberty. War is almost always a dictatorship. Sol-
diers forget institutions for men. Thrones tempt
the ambitious. Glory dazzles patriotism. The
prestige of a glorious name veils the attack upon the
sovereignty of the nation. The Republic desires
glory, without doubt, but it wishes for it for itself,
and not for Caesars or Napoleons.
"Do not deceive yourselves, nevertheless. Those
ideas which the Provisional Government charges you
to present to the powers as a pledge of European
safety, have not for their object to obtain forgiveness
to the Republic for having had the boldness to create
itself, and still less to ask humbly the place of a great
right and a great people in Europe. They have a
more noble object : to make sovereigns and nations
reflect, and not to allow them to deceive themselves
involuntarily as to the character of our revolution;
to give its true light and its just character to the
event; in short, to give pledges to humanity before
giving them to our right, and to our honour, if they
should be unacknowledged or threatened.
`a`
nTyhoon lelrenicthhaßselpioubolciccawsiiolln to say that, if condi-
tions then, not make war
on
tions of war are laid down to the French people it
will accept them. The thoughts of the men who at
the present moment govern France are these :—lt
will be fortunate for France it war be declared against
it, and if it be constrained thus to increase in strength
and in glory, in spite of its moderation. It will be
a terrible responsibility for France, if the Republic
itself declares war without being provoked to it. In
the first case, its martial genius, its impatience of
action, its strength accumulated during so many years
of peace, will render it invincible within its own ter-
ritory, and redoubtable perhaps beyond its frontiers.
In the second case, it would turn against itself the
recollection of its conquests, which diminish the affec-
tion of nations, and it would compromise the first
and most universal alliance, the spirit of nations
and the genius of civilization.
" According to these principles, Sir, which are the
cool principles of France—principles she can pre-
sent without fear, as without suspicion, to her
friends and to her enemies—you will have the
goodness to impress upon yourself the following
decluctions;—,