The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-03 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, 111AY 3, 1870.

IHERE appears no good reason for doubting that
a serious conspiracy to assassinate the French
Emperor has just been unearthed at Paris.

The first disclosure was, indeed, received
with manifest disbelief, for the French mind was
predisposed to incredulity. Last February a grand
plot was discovered and announced to the world
with great solemnity. Many persons were cast into
prison; lengthy examinations commenced; the entire
disclosure would soon, we were assured, appear in
honest print ; but from that day to this
no tidings of the February plot have
come to hand. Whatever, however, may be the
merits of the earlier and darker scheme, the details
of this new conspiracy are so circumstantial as to be
fairly beyond imputation. That some plan has been
elaborated either to blow up the Tuileries with that
hideous stuff—picrate of potassium, or to assassinate
the Emperor, seems certain. One of the leaders is
Gustave Flourens, the man who attempted to raise a
revolution on the night of Rochefort's arrest, and
who has since honoured London by taking up
his residence in the immediate vicinity of the Hay-
market.

Acting with him are various members of
e association termed L'lnternationale, who have
apparently furnished the money, collected the
infernal materials, and drawn up the instructions.
Their tool is, or rather was, a young man
named Baurie, a science student, whose duty
it was to have been to attempt the act
of assassination, or to explode the mine. To
complete the dramatis personae, there is, as usual, a
mistress who betrays the scheme and the police are

for the present masters of the situation. The
time just when angry passions arising
out of the doubtful plebiscite question are
most rife—is favourable, not to the condo-
nation or approval of such a nefarious design
by the French people, but to the development of
that state of excitement in which unscrupulous poli-
ticians the more readily discover fanatical accom-
plices. It is not the first, nor perhaps will it br, the
last, design upon the life of the Emperor. And
assuredly the proceedings of the extreme Socialist
section of Paris are so outrageously extravagant as
to fully warrant the darkest suspicions as to their
hidden projects. A deed of blood would be a
fitting conclusion to language comparable
only to the abominations which many years ago
came from the press of Alaxat.
It is not difficult to foresee the effect of this plot.

How many votes it will gain the Emperor at the
coming poll of the people on the new constitution is
an interesting speculation into which we shall not
enter. But that it will confirm many waverers and
win many recruits is a safe presumption. Hitherto the
mind of France has been troubled with constitutional
questions. Many moderate men were justly in-
clined to withhold their support from the
Emperor through his persistence in retaining as part
of the, new Constitution the proviso that an appeal
to the people was a fixed right of the Sovereign.
Two Ministers resigned because they deemed this
right incompatible with the principles of parliamentary
government. 'Whether the electors shniad vote "Yes"
or "No," or abstain altogether, was a perplexing
Question. Much of this difficulty, however, is now