The Sun.
London, England, 1848-10-25 00:00:00

Vitt3ll * •

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 114$

~..,1 flank

It is stated that, at the Cabinet Council held yes-
erday, it was finally decided that the Royal mercy
should be extended to Mr. SMITH o'.l3aiam and
the other State prisoners who were convicted of
high treason at Clonmel. This course, so strongly
in accordance with the views we have advocated from
the very beginning, will be received with the greatest
pleasure by the community in general.

Among the many plans adopted by the " Bearish
fraternity," for the purpose of depreciating the value
of railway stock, and plundering the unfortunate
shareholders, there is one that has been attended with
peculiar success, and which has tended in a greal
degree to produce the present extraordinary and most
unfounded panic. Statements of the most exagge-
rated character, respecting the amount to be levied
for the completion of the different lines that had
already received the Parliamentary sanction, were
gravely put forward. In the calculations on
which they were based, it was assumed that
the full amount that could by a possibility be
raised, either by the creation of stock or by
way of loan, would necessarily be levied,
and that' the shareholders would be compelled to pay
up those large amounts within an exceedingly limited
period. No credit was given for the large amount
that has already been borrowed and already expended
by several of the companies in the completion of
their undertakings. Nothing was , allowed for the
number of Bills that passed through Parliament, in
which no steps have since been taken to carry out the
proposed undertakings, and.which are now virtually
defunct, with but little prospect of resuscitation. No
account was taken of the number of duplicate entries,
in which the same; ;awl .figured in different accounts,
as where an passed for the construe-
d.= of a partifiar line, and another to authorise
SD gumpan7„ to subscribe for a certain
•

number of shares therein, and to provide a portion of
the capital to be raised by the second Bill, and which
should therefore have been subtracted from the
general amount, to show what really was to be
raised. If the parties preparing these specious
accounts desired to present a fair and accurate re-
turn all these elements should have been takeninto
the calculation, and a result very different indeed
would have appeared from that which has been so
prominently put forward. But the object was to
excite a panic, and it signified little whether the
argument was sound, provided it was plausible,
whether it would bear the test of close and accurate
investigation, provided it created an alarm in the minds
of timid and unreasoning persons, and induced them
to sacrifice their property much below its real value—
to rush blindfolded into the snares that had been pre-
pared for their reception.
A respected provincial Contemporary, the Leeds
Intelligeneer, has rendered good service by its able
exposure of the exaggerations to which we have above
referred, and by its estimate of the sums that are ac-
tually and bona fide to be collected, and which must
be provided by the shareholders, which amount to
less than one-third of that which has been stated.
The calculations which we have extracted from the
columns of our contemporary will be found in another
part of our impression this day. They are worthy
of an attentive consideration, and will most
probably relieve the minds of many from the vague
and unfounded notions under which they laboured,
and which, from their very uncertainty, occasioned a
greater panic than would have arisen if the very
worst anticipations of the croakers had been fully rea-
lised. The shareholders might exclaim—
" Shadows to-night have struck more terror to the soul
of Richard
Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers,
Armed all in proof, and led by shallow Richmond."
The dispersal of the mist by which interested and
prejudiced men have obscured their vision will,
however, restore their confidence, when they discover
the true extent of the difficulty that is to be en-
countered, and which, though formidable, is by no
means insuperable, when the resources and determi-
nation of Englishmen are taken into consideration.
The basis on which our Contemporary has framed
this estimate appears to be perfectly correct—an
account of all the calls that sin be made upon all
shares named in the " London Daily Share List" is
taken, assuming that the whole amount thereof must
be paid, which amounts in the whole to 62,760,335/. ;
to this is added the shares of other companies not
quoted in the London market, on which calls may be
made, which swell the account to 66,760,3351. ;
and in arriving at this result, it is stated
" that not a single line likely to make a
call is omitted ;" indeed, as the names of the
various companies, with the respective amounts to
be levied by each are given in eztenso, any possible error
may easily be rectified by these who have all the
anxiety to mystify matters, and to extend the sum
total to the very highest figure, if in their power so
to do. From this large amount, however, is to be
deducted the sums that might have been raised under
defunct schemes, or under projects portions of which
have been abandoned and the shares reduced ; also
calls to pay off loans, or to purchase completed
lines, in which it will be only a transfer
from one set of persons to another, these various re-
ductions amounting in the aggregate to 26,641,0491.,
will diminish the sum total to be raised in these
various undertakings to 4A,111,2361., which is the
amount that now resaai,ns to be called up, and
which will be spread over more than three years, so
that on the whole, in place of three and a half
millions per month to be provided by the
country, the average will not exceed one million per
month, the greater portion of which will speedily be-
come reproductive, and indeed bring some of the
large sums already expended into profitable opera-
tion. This is nothing so very terrible after all,
or of such a character as to inflict serious injury
upon the community in general. Bat still further
reductions might be effected in the amount if due al-
lowance were made for the'calls to be Made by the old
companies to pay up the shares they hold in new
lines, and also for the Irish lines, the construction
of which will be postponed, or very possibly effected
by means of Government assistance, which will, of
ud ttispatLeu, "iec weal belleie mete-IS a
good time coming, and it will come—let
them determine not to sacrifice their pro-
perty for less than its fair value, but to
retain it in their hands until a fair price is
offered, and that price will eventually be offered.
Above all, let them not encourage the " Bearing "
system by sending in their shares to enable those
parties to complete their speculative contracts, by
which they must become severe losers, if the share-
holders do not play into their hands, to their own
grievous loss, perhaps ultimate ruin.

On Monday the 21Sd of October, the National
Assembly completed its labours upon the Republican
Constitution. France may at length be considered,
therefore, to have emerged from the disorder conse-
quent upon a revolution. A glorious fane has risen
" like an exhalation " from the ruins of three succes-
sive dynasties. The corruption and the deitris of the
monarchical system hare been swept away—new and
enormous foundations hare peen dug out—the super-
structure has been reared—and, to complete the
great edifice of the Republic, there are nbw only
wanting the garniture of the organic laws and the
cupola of the Presidency. When that shall have
been accomplished the Republican institutions will
then in truth be consolidated; Democracy will then in
truth be one and indivisible; it will then in truth be in
a condition to carry out effectually its beautiful and
sublime principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
Until such time the Government of France must
necessarily continue to he of an essentially provi-
sional character. Until the organic laws shall have
been definitively decreed, until the first President
shall have been elected and installed in the Republi-
can palace of the capital, the country must neces-
sarily continue to be liable to the perils of censpiracy,
and the terrors of rebellion. It is for this reason
that the rapid advance of the representa-
tives towards the completion of their vast
and momentous labours is a circumstance
worthy of eliciting our fullest and most unani-
mous felicitations. When the sage axiom of Sir
JAMES MACEINTOSH, that "Constitutions are not
arcade, but grow," is borne in recollection, it must be
acknowledged that the National Assembly has evinced
anything rather than an undue tardiness in its de.
liberations upon the project of the new Constitution.
Everything considered, we do think that the Mem-
bers of the Assembly are entitled to the most unqualified
eulogiumi for the rapidity with which they have
laboured to secure the weal of 35,000,000 of citizens.
Their assiduity has only been equalled by their devotion
and while they have studiously economised the public
tams, while they have sacrificed all thoughts of personal
convenience, while they have had to encounter the
most appalling difficulties, from the invasion of the
hall of sitting in May to the tremendous insurrection
of June, when many of them were struck by the
bullets of the insurgents, while they hare sedu-
lously avoided everything like idle ceremony or
unnecessary procrastination, they have adorned the
history of the land of their birth with the solid deeds
of patriotism and the luminous glory of oratorical
eloquence. In testimony of the one, there are the
118 articles of the Constitution, deliberated, digested,
modified, rejected, or decreed. In proof of the
other, there are the brilliant harangues of the
master-orators of the age, some of the finest
examples of rhetorical inspiration that have ever been
heard in any language, some of the noblest displays
of genius and enthusiasm that have ever thrilled
through the bosom of a senate or flashed across the
imagination of a civilized people. Among these
magnificent revelations of oratory, the mind of pos-
terity will revert in a particular manner to the

famous speech of ADOLPH!! Tnaus, in which, in.
- -

oxicated by the ardour of his logic, the orator

almost chaunted the lyrical refrain " Travail ! 71v.
sail!" when he pleaded for the independence of in-
dustry, and reprobated the seductive but pernicious
hallucinations of Communism ; it will remember
the sonorous voice and impassioned gesticulations
of LEDRII RoLtaN, when in one memorable speech
he rose almost to the colossal altitude of MIRABEAU
it will remember the delicate but earnest grace with
which MONTALBMEHZT advocated the rights and pro-
claimed the perpetuity of Religion in defiance of the

sneers of scepticism and the sardonic taunts of infi-
delity ; it will remember the self-possessed and effec-
tive declamation of ODILLON BARROT, the meditative
and seholarly discourse of VICTOR. HUGO, the abrupt,
generous, masculine, and soldier-like harangues of
EUGENE CAVAIGNAC ; and beyond all, and above
all, it will consecrate with its admiration
the various and extraordinary orations pro-
nounced from the tribune by the lips of
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE, orations which for depth
of sentiment, profundity of thought, nobleness of
principle, grandeur of style, and poetic beauty of elo-
quence, are worthy of the genius whose voice had
played over " the immense gamut which starts from
reverie, to mount to enthusiasm or sink to despair "
in that "gigantic evocation of all human miseries,"
the Yerbu IYOvissima. Such are the recollections
which have been already bequeathed to posterity by
the National Assembly, recollections which have
started into being within a brief interval of six event-
ful months, extending from the commencement of
May to the termination of October.
From- the morning on which the Assembly was
inaugurated, when the initiative address of the Pro-
visional Government was read by the venerable
DUPONT (de l'Eure), when BELANGER, the ballad-
maker, and LACORDAIRE, the Monk, first took their
seats in the National Senate, from the morning wile"
the nine hundred representatives proclaimedirth .
acceptance of the Republic from the esplanade in
front of the old Chamber of Deputies, up to the
evening on which the last article of the project of
the Constitution was decreed, the Members of the
National Assembly have fulfilled the duties en-
trusted to them by the population with a
conscientious exactitude worthy of themselves
and of their country. The successive Pre-
sidencies of Bucina, of SENARD, of MARIE, and
of MARRAST have been marked by the exertions of
an enlightened and patriotic Parliarcent. ARMAND
MARRAST has, it is true, been thrice elected to the
distinguished dignity which sits at this moment so
nobly on his shoulders, and has consequently been
afforded a better opportunity of revealing his capa-
cities than any one of his predecessors, but it is no
less true that those predecessors acted throughout
with admirable integrity. It was nevertheless a
fitting and honourable mark of the national approba-
tion of his conduct, whether as Mayor of Paris or as
President of the Committee of the Constitution, that
M. MARRAST should have been thus three times
elected to the Presidential Chair of the National
Assembly.

The doom of France, during the days which pre•
ceded the elder Republic, was sealed by the dissolu-
tion of the Constituent Assembly before the forma-
tion of the organic laws, and immediately after the
completion of the New Constitution. Profiting by
the terrible experiences of the past, the National
Assembly has wisely come to the determination of not
consenting to its prorogation until after the election
of the President, and of not agreeing to the sentence
of its dissolution until after the organic laws have
been inscribed upon the perfected chart of the Con-
stitution. By these decisions—decisions which were
only arrived at on Monday evening—the national
representation is meriting well of the country, is
affording evidences of substantial patriotism, and is
ounsolidatirg in a compact, durable, and gigantic
structure the French Republic, One and Indivisible.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris papers of yesterday.
The National Assembly on Monday voted the last
article of the Constitution, after having rejected the
amendment proposed by M. PUYSEGUR by the enor-
mous majority of 733. The honourable representative
found 43 members only who were willing to support
his proposition. The Constitution will now be re-
ferred back to the Committee for revision, and on
their presenting their report it will be voted as a
whole by the Assembly.
The ill success of the amendment of M. PUTSEGUR
does not speak much for the strength of the Legiti-
matist party in the National Assembly. The object
of the amendment was to submit the Constitution to
tike ludgment of the people at large, which, in the
rural districts of the south and west of France, would
be tantamount S!..Jihmittine it to the revision or_rathey
lons of I itls.
The 120th Article as it stood in the original stated
that " the provisions of the Articles 30, 39, 29, and 40
of the Constitution shall not commence to be applied
until of ter the installation of the President of the Re-
public."
The Committee proposed to substitute for this the
following—
"lmmediately after the vote of the Constitution,
the provisions of chapter 4 shall be applied to the Na-
tional Assembly. Immediately after the nomination
of the President of the Republic, the provisions of
chapter i shall be applied to him,"
The proposition for substituting this article for the
original (a proposition of which, it appears, seme of
the members of the Committee were ignorant), gave
rise to considerable discussion, in the course of which
NI. Dureuaz admitted that the new article was
proposed with a view to the question of the period
when the election of the President took place. He
said that if the President were elected before the
completion of the Republic he would find himself in
a position without example, because, while he was to
be elected as a magistrate existing in virtue of a
Constitution, and destined to carry out his functions
along with a legislative assembly whose powers were
regulated as well as his own, the new President would,
in the present case, find himself in the presence of a
constituent assembly which was absolutely sovereign.
It was to remedy this danger that the Committee
presented the new version. A long, confused, and
agitated discussion ensued, and in the end M. DTI-
FAURE, having admitted that the adoption of the
clause would prejudge the question as to the period
of the election of the President, he consented, in
the name of the Committee, to withdraw clause 120
altogether.
An additional clause was then proposed by M.
GLAis-BizoiN, and adopted by the Assembly, to the,
effect that immediately after the passing of the Con-
stitution the Assembly sbzld proceed to the passing
of the organic laws. This -closed the discussion on
the Constitution.
The French journals publish a .11ter from General
BARAGUAY D'HILLIERS, the PresiAnt of the club of
the Rue de Poitiers, authoritatively contradicting a
statement which appeared in the Demooratie Paci-
Axe of Monday, that M. TRIERS had, at the meeting
of the club on Saturday, used hostile language to the
Republic, and said that it was time for the people to
declare themselves in favour of monarchy.
The following note has been addressed to the
journals by Prince Louis NAPOLEON:-
" Persons of good information having informed the
representative Louis Napoleon Bonaparte that insen-
sate people were covertly working to get up a riot in;
his name, with the evident object of compromising
him in the eyes of the lovers of order and sincere Re-
publicans, Louis Napoleon has felt himself bound to
make these reports known to M. Dufaure, Minister
of the Interior, adding that he energetically repelled
the idea of his having any participation in plots so
completely opposed to his political sentiments, and the
conduct he has pursued since the 24th of February."
M. VASBENTER, the editor of the Represant du
Peuple, was on Monday condemned to one year's im-
prisonment, and to the payment of a fine of 2,000

journalfrancs, forof
the having
d thatto
ethrteielneu
calculated
excite the hatred of one class of society against
lthpAubulgisuhstd al.:
another, and to disturb the peace of the Republic.
The article purported to be a letter from a prisoner
in the Conciergerie, giving an account of the de-
parture of the first batch of the transports of June.
The publication of the journal had been suspended by
order of General CA VAIGNAC immediately after the
publication of this article.
Several of the Prefects in the departments have re-
signed in consequence of the appointment of M. Du-
FAURE as NI inister of the Interior. M. GUIAaD, the Pre-
-1
fect of Allier and of Aveyron, in addressing his letter of
resignation to M. DurAuaa, says, "It would be
superlatively ridiculous in an old and firm Republican
like myself to consent to remain under the order of
such an old and firm Royalist as you are."
Forty-five pieces of heavy artillery were on Mon-
day sent to the detached fort of Mont Valerian, which
has now 100 pieces of cannon mounted. The other
detached forts are also armed, and Paris is garrisoned
by at least 50,000 troops of the line, besides National
Guards And Garden Mobiles.