The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-05 00:00:00

PARIS.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS:
CHRONICLE.—The news which we have received
up to this morning seems, when carefully sifted, to •
habit the completeness, rather than the qualified charac-
ter of Louis Napoleon's ruccess. Barricades have been
thrown up, but the want of heart manifested in erecting
and defending them may be taken as the measure of the
inclination to resist among the population of the Fau-
bourgs. Had there been no armed opposition at all, we
might have imagined that inaction was the resource of
men who waited their opportunity, whereas there can
now be little doubt that it is the result of indifference.
The Republican leaders, though appealing to the people
both in the name of the laws and of Socialism, have been
unable to create a tumult of the smallest moment.. A
few of their number, who were most forward, risked
Weir lives without encouragement, and lost them with-
out fruit. It seems even to be admitted that they made
a mistake in wearing the scarfs which belonged
to them as representatives of the people. We
some time since expressed a doubt whether
complex propositions could be rendered intelligible
to mobs ; and it is clear, in this instance,
that the workmen could not comprehend how the cause
of liberty could be identical with that of an Assembly
which they had been taught to regard as utterly inimical
to freedom. Theirs are not the only minds which it is
difficult to satisfy that the fall of the French Legislature,
deep as was the discredit into which it had sunk, is
nevertheless the crowning disaster of our ago and gene-
ration. It would be foolish and unreasonable to deny
that there are material advantages of the first order to
balance the moral and political disorganization which
connects itself with the ruin of the Parliament. Steel
and gunpowder dropped suddenly into the hissing and
bubbling vase, have changed the struggliug elements into
a formless and inorganic, but plastic and highly useful
precipitate. The great and terrible eventuality of next
spring has—with whatever amount of treasonable vio-
lence—been set aside by the stroke of tho President's
arm. There will be better securities for the social tran-
quillity of France than have been enjoyed since the
prosperous days of the last reign; and we ,may shortly,
have the panegyrists of the new one pointing to the re-
vived activity and commerce, and the renewal of confi-
dence in monetary engagements, as a brilliant contrast
to the stagnation and distrust which were progressively
augmenting up to the end of last week. Peace, splen-
dour, and comfort Louis Napoleon may possibly have
given to his country ; but he has jeopardized her ca-
pacity for representative institutions—he has made
another breach in the continuity of her freedom—he has
thrust the army into a position in front of the State,
which is utterly inappropriate to its constitution, its
tastes, and its habits of thought—and, worst of all, he
has, for the time, granted a general indulgence for all
those freaks of folly or violence which make up the
statesmanship of Continental despotisms. There
is but one man alive who can force this chain
of circumstance to gravitate in a different and
less deplorable direction. Louis Napoleon, master
of the situation at this moment, is, to a
great extent, master of the sequel. We are very
far indeed from believing him insincere in his submis-
sion of his claims to the award of the country. Even
if the French people be strictly limited to the some-
what narrow option which he has offered to them, they
will possess, in the Council of State and the two Cham-
bers, every formal requirement for a regime of liberty. It
is, however, among the most elementary of political
propositions, that free institutions, to exert any vitality
at all, must operate as a curb on the supreme ruler ;
and the.chances that its restraints will be tolerated and
respected are, of course, immensely diminished, when
the Sovereign has created or fashioned it himself. The
clinging vice of the new polity with which France is to
be endowed will be the memory of its origin—an
origin which is apparently to be stereotyped in
the history of this revolution, by the appeal which has
been made to the soldiers for their express sanction.
We apprehend that the experiment which Louis
Napoleon promises to carry through is in much greater
danger of being defeated by causes inherent in the
very nature of representative government, than of being
vitiated by fraud in its commencement. Several passages
in his proclamations have attracted attention, and have
tempted many to interpret them as the mere overture to
a Dictatorship. One of these defines the Council of
State as "supporting" its decisions before the Legisla-
tive Assembly, and the expression has been taken as an
unmistakable hint of the intention to re-establish that
shame and dishonour of the Imperial Constitutions—the
Tribunate. But we are rather disposed to attribute the
suspicious phrase to an unlucky mimicry of the First
Consul's programme, than to an already developed con-
spiracy against freedom of thought and speech. We in-
cline to the belief that Louis Napoleon is sincere, ac-
cording to the standard of ordinary human nature, in
the statement both of his motives and of his designs.
But even though the hues of that future which glitters be-
fore him should be tinged, in the moment of success, with
much more selfishness than patriotism, we imagine that,
when the imprisonment of representatives and the de-
struction of barricades have to be exchanged for
more refined strokes of policy, he will recognise the
utter impossibility of governing without taking the
country into partnership. After the recent events, he
must have the credit of at least as much acuteness as
personal courage, and none but a very middling intellect
could be blinded by deceptive analogies between his
situation and his uncle's. He has, indeed, given us a
near view of the 18th Brumaire, but it is such a glimpse
as one gets by looking through the large end of a teles-
cope instead of the small one. All the proportions are
extravegantly reduced. The Republic which ho has
destroyed is the rickety creation of M. Marrast, Ind not
that form of decayed, but gloomy and terrible grandeur,
which still exhibited the scars of the dark time when
she had bound kings in chains, and nobles in links of
iron. The instruments of attack are the conquerors of
Rome and Abd-d Rader, instead of the victors of Rivoli
and Jemappes. The leader is Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,
straddling in the foot-prints of Napoleon the Great.
But if the persrinages of the opening scene are incom-
parably meaner on the second performance than on the
first, the difficulties to be overcome, before the piece
can be played out to the close, are greater in themselves,
and immeasurably greater when compared with the fa-
cilities for surmounting them. The exhaustion of the
public mind, which was the true secret of the first Napo-
leon's victory, was such a listlessness as is produced in those
who have passed through a Reign of Terror, and not
such as follows the half-laughable scandals 6f the last
two years. Yet, complete as was the weariness bf France,
nothing but a career of fabulous glory prevented it from
changing into active hatred and determined hostility to
the usurper. Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram
were mighty victories abroad, but they were likewise
so many coups d'Olat at home. It was the roar of the
cannon on a hundred fields which stilled the atmos-
phere of France. No such means of pacification are at
Louis Napoleon's disposal. Timid spirits are warning
us that he will march his impatient legions to the Rhine
or embark them in flotillas for Englend; but we have a
security considerably more reliable than Ehrenbreitstein
or the Martello Towers, in the Socialists who will rise
over every inch of ground he vacates. There is but one
other expedient, to which we hope he will be guided by his
keenness of judgment, if not by his rectitude of moral
perception. If h e will really surround himself with re-
presentative institutions—if he will really give the people
an interest in the business of government, which is not
to be taken away at pleasure by the head of the firm—
we do not see why be should not found a system at least
as durable as those which have preceded it. It would
be shameful to deny that he has perpetrated a crime;
but much of the responsibility presses on those who
swept away a nearly consolidated Government, to put a
card. board Constitution in its place—and very much more
upon those who, skulking behind the fragile barrier,
tempted, goaded, and menaced him, till he advanced and
shivered it in pieces.
TIMES.—In the distant days of King
Louis Philippe,
when France still' laboured under the yoke of constitu-
tional monarchy, and bounded her military ambition by
a campaign in Northern Africa, it was sometimes whis-
pered by far-seeing observers, that the future master of
France was probably skirmishing in the gorges of
Mount Atlas, and that the African army and its chiefs
trained in that rude school of barbaric warfare, would
one day make their country feel the edge of the sword
which had drunk so deep of Arab blood. The days of
that prediction are now fulfilled. Paris itself has be-
come the scene of the last razzia of General St. Arnaud;
and all that remained of greatness or independence in
the political Assemblies of France has been driven like
cattle into a pen by the military marauders who hold
supreme authority in the capital of that great nation.
For this end countless millions and innumerable lives
have been equandered in the obscure warfare of that
ther a pparcoinfenss;i professional
Algeria° dependency. An army was. formed and flat-
and
become the
uelleensputsfin
guardianst enrngdn by
sanguinary
the
of
nspublic indulgence
onbultiso; ofou order
until
lr dfer.isntpmo t co,
agction were at
the forms of
basis of usurpation and absolute government ; and
from this staff of officers, deaf to. the rights and
the men
length selected, not for the superior. quality of their ser-
nlauwnsstiotfutEtnunryegaunvefrrneemdeonmt:
vices, but for the laxity of their principles and the
energy of their ambition. Such are the instruments by
which this revolution has been commenced, and may
even be consummated; such are the men by whom,. if at
all, the Imperialist Government of France must be re-
established. We presume that no doubt can linger in
the minds of our readers as to the true nature of this
catastrophe. It is not a free appeal to the nation; it is
not a dissolution of the National Assembly, to be fol-
lowed by the convocation of another constituent body
and the revision of the Constitution by any elective
authority—a measure which the circumstances of
the case and the subsequent approval of the nation
might, perhaps, have justified. Had the Pre-
sident confined his arbitrary interference to the
object of revision which the country demanded, he
had still in his own hands a cause which has now
been much compromised by the violence and precipita-
tion of his late actions. But the question now propounded
by the Government is simply whether a dictatorial and
constitutive, power is to be conferred Napoleon;
and
on Louis
,d
and this qdestion is first to be answsie in the terms of
Yes or No, within forty-eight hours, by the army.
Popular election, with the blind and clumsy machinery
of universal suffrage, is to be consulted
next week; but
to-day, to-morrow, immediately on the receipts of orders
from the Minister of War, the officers in command of
detachments throughout France are to take the votes
of the troops on what is ludicrously. termed a
plebiscitum, investing Louis Napoleon with absolute
power. The army is, therefore,directed by its votes as well
as by its arms, virtually to decree the form of the go-
vernment, and to anticipate the choice of the people.
These military orders for a Pimtorian election are ac-
companied by no less peremptory instructions to the
civil agents of the Government throlighont France.
The Prefects are commanded by a circular dispatch of
M. de Moray, Minister of the Interior, " to superbeclo all