The Sun.
London, England, 1870-11-12 00:00:00

RE SUA, LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1876.

SIR W. STIRLING-MAXWELL ON THE
TWO NAPOLEONIC EMPIRES.

" A certain collector," said Sir W. Sterling-Maxwell,
in his lecture on the " Two Napoleons," at Stirling, on
Tuesday, " keeps in a cabinet of coins a drawer which he
calls his history of the French Revolution. You find
there twelve five-franc pieces and a few vacant spaces.
The first of these coins, dated 1788, exhibits
the mild features of Louis XVI., by the Grace of God
King of France and Navarre ; the last, dated
1853, a pair of well-known and well.waxed moustaches,
now at Cassel. Each of the pieces represents a change
or a transfer of power ; nine of the twelve represent revo-
lutions, always violent, generally bloody." On this text
Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell proceeded to found some interest-
ing remnrks. How far the stereotyped phrase which has
so often been reproduced of late, that the Emperor was
" our firm and faithful ally," must be received appears
(Sir William went on to shew) from the following balance
•)1 accounts between us and the Second Empire : "We
,we the Ernisiror the Russian war, into which we drifted
in his wake, with its losses in blood,- and £80,000,000
added to onr debt, and with the check given to the
designs and the power of Russia. Sonic, I believe, will
be doubtful whether we ought to set down this item to
profit or loss. We believe we owe the Emperor such free-
trade as we enjoy with France, and much intercourse
which has engendered, and will continue to produce
friendly feeling. We had to thank him for an offer of
passage for troops through France during the Indian
Mutiny, an offer which happened to be coupled with an
extraordinary flood of abuse in the French press, of
which the Emperor was at that time the absolute
controller, in fact the 'responsible editor. We
owe him, in a great part, that Italian revo-
lution which gives Italy a chance of becoming a
great and prosperous country such as our philanthropy and
commerce love. On the other order, we owe him our im-
mense share of those bloated armaments, and that huge
military expenditure which his example forced upon
Europe. Our fleets and armies being the most costly in
the world, our share was proportionally greater than those
of our neighbours. In the year of the coup d'etat, our
naval and military estimates amounted to £13,000,000.
Since Louis Napoleon became our firm and faith-
ful ally, they have seldom been much under
£26,000,000. There has been, besides the costs, very large,
and possibly still unknown, of fortifications ; and the
costs, impossible to calculate, of our volunteers. Last of
all, there is the secret treaty:by, which he proposed, with
the assistance or connivance of Prussia, to seize upon
Belgium, a neutral State which Great Britain had
guaranteed, thereby entailing ' upon us a choice
of war or dishonour. Such is, I believe,
the state of the account." The preparations with
which the Emperor embarked in the present war, Sir W.
Stirling-Maxwell illustrated by the following anecdote :
"In the `Confessions' of Rousseau, there is a story how
that singular man, being then ignorant of the art of musi-
cal composition, gave out that he had written an important
piece, and invited his musical friends at Lausanne to per-
form it. The piece was written out in several partitions,
on the usual ruled paper, and had all the appearance
of music. But when the musicians came to try
it, they found that they produced nothing but a
medley of discord, and that they and not their instruments
were played upon. As Rousseau arranged his musical
signs-and assembled his performers, so Napoleon seems to
have surrounded himself with the terrible machinery of
war." The results, now known to all, were shewn
to have been anticipated by Napoleon himself. Some
time after his establishment on the throne, one of the
chiefs of the British Museum saw him at the Tuileries,
and told him that the Duke of Aumale had been lately
occupying, for the purposes of study, the room at the
Museum which the Emperor had used during his exile.
" Ah," said the Emperor, " I shall very likely one day
replace him, as lie replaced me."