The Sun.
London, England, 1851-09-03 00:00:00

WEDNES DA Y

similar circumstances, to pursue a similar course.
1 The Prince de Joinville proclaims in stentorian tones
that he cares nothing fur France—that self is with
him the great ruling principle—and that if he can
only thereby subserve his own private ends, he cares
not what disastrous results to the country may spring
from the suspense which is felt as to what the course
of events under his inspiration will be. "He would,
and he would not." He would be a candidate, and yet be
shrinks from the open avowal of being a Presidential
aspirant. This undecided, unstraightfurward conduct
must not only diminish but extinguish whatever
respect may have been hitherto felt fur him. It must
also do great injury to the Orleans family. lie is
compromising others, as well as himself, by the course
he is pursuing. He is creating a prejudice &gainst
the entire Orleans family, which must prove eminently
prejudicial, if not fatal, to their pretensions to the
first magistracy of France, at any future period.
Even had the other members of the family disap-
proved of that course, they would still have been
sufferers from it ; but the injury which it will
entail on them will be doubly great when the fact
transpires, as it forthwith will, that they are parties
to it. They approve of it, and must, therefore, share
in the responsibility. They are not merely suspected
of concurring in the double-dealing of the Prince
de Joinville with respect to the Presidency; but
the fact is proved. They have been convicted of
the crime—for such we regard it—against France.
The Times of yesterday, through means of a com-
munication from Paris, which that journal authenti-
cates, by the very form in which the communicatio❑
is ushered into the world, makes an unreserved
revelation on this subject. Our contemporary gives
the day and the dates of the conversation which
be describes. The circumstances, too, under which
the interview between M. Guizot and the Duke de
Nemours, in the presence of a great many other
persons, took place, are given with a minuteness
which is a guarantee for their scrupulous accuracy.
The meeting took place at Claremont, on the 27th
of August, the day on which a great many of the
most devoted friends of Louis Philippe had assem-
bled there, from all parts of France, to commemo-
rate the anniversary of his death. M. Guizot, in
the presence of them all, and in the presence, too,
of the ex-Queen, the Duchess d'Orleans, the Duchess
de Nemours, and other members of the exiled
family, inquired of the Duke de Nemours the views
of the Prince de Joinville, and the members of his
family, with regard to the impending election for
the Presidency of the Republic. The Duke de
Nemours' reply was, that the policy of the Prince
would be a policy of abstention. He did not mean
to move in the matter. The answer was deemed
unsatisfactory by Guizot, and by all who were
present. The question was then put in
plain terms, and it was intimated that the
friends of the Orleans family had a right to a

plain answer. Such a question, as our contemporary
remarks, addressed directly and firmly, though re-
spectfully, under circumstances so peculiar, could not
be evaded. The Duke de Nemours was compelled

to be more explicit. lie was forced to admit, that
while he had not declared himself to be a candidate,

nor authorised any one to put up his name as such,
yet that, on the other hand, he had not prohibited his
friends from bringing him forward, nor disowned
their acts when they had done so. And be it ob-
served, that this course of procedure on the part of
the Prince is not only not repudiated by the Royal
Family at Claremont, but is directly approved of by
them. It was vindicated by the Duke de
Nemours, by the ex-Queen, by the Duchess
d'Orleans, and the Duchess de Nemours.
There is good ground, in the absence of actual posi-
tive proof, that the line of conduct pursued by the
Prince de Joinville has the special approval of all the
members of the Orleans family. France, at any rate,
will come to that conclusion, and she cannot be blamed
for doing so. The fact, then, stares us full in the
face, that in the intensity of the selfish views of this
son of Louis Philippe, he is quite prepared, should he
see any chance of success, to plunge his country into
a sea of the most frightful troubles, in his anxiety to
obtain the Presidency. Nor does he reek the means
by which the object he has in view may be accom-
plished. He knows it could only be by an alliance
with the Socialists and Red Republicans, who would
be willing to abet his plans, not because they are
friendly to him, but because they cherish an intense
dislike to Louis Napoleon. They do not love the
Prince de Joinville, but they hate the present occu-
pant of the Presidential chair. It is only, we repeat,
by an unholy and unnatural alliance with these
desperate demagogues that the Prince de Joinville
could have the most slender hopes of success. And
yet he is quite ready, perfectly prepared, to form an
alliance with the enemies alike of all morality and
of society,—the unrelenting enemies, moreover, of
his father, Louis Philippe. Though the passive can-
didature of the Prince, under these circumstances, is
well calculated to create alarm in France, because its
success would be tantamount to the ascendancy of
Atheism and Anarchy, yet we feel persuaded that in
the end, the thing will prove eminently advantageous
to the cause of Louis Napoleon. If there had been a
doubt before in any one'e mind, as to the propriety of
re•electing Louis Napoleon, there can be none now.
He will not, in the coming contest, be opposed, as on
the last occasion, by a genuine Republican, and an
ingenuous honcurable man. Instead of Caysignac,
the stern and true Republican, his opponent this time
will be a Monarchist, under the transparent guise of
Republicanism—one whom all the friends of order
will oppose, and whose whole strength will be in the
support which the more desperate characters in the
faubourgs can render to him. What the worth of
that support will be we need not stay to state.
Neither need we mention what the result of a contest
with Louis Napoleon will be, should the Prince de
Joinville ba so profligate and imprudent as fairly to
embark in it.

DAILY NE WS.—A fearful visitation has befal-
len the kingdom of Naples. The villages and towns
of one entire region have been laid in ruins by the
sudden and repeated shocks of an earthquake. At
rorento many dwellings were overthrown in a few
moments. For many miles round, in the district of
Basilicata, the fatal convulsion of nature spread terror
and dismay, while at Bari and Melfi whole streets
and all the principal buildings were levelled to the
ground, hundreds, if not thousands, of human victims
being overwhelmed in their fall. No previous pertur-
bation of the elements seems to have presaged the ap-
proach of the relentless foe. The summer air was
calm, and the clear wave broke upon the strand as it
had done every morn and eve for 70 years before.
Household traditions had indeed preserved the tale of
similar disasters some time about the year 1789 ; but
,he details of horror had long since come to be re-
garded as almost fabulous among an illiterate and
enjoying people. The difficulty of realising such
a catastrophe is of itself so great, that simple folk
may easily be forgiven their practical incredulity.
Let any book-learned and unfeeling cynic try to
imagine or explain to others how the earth, without
opening her mouth, can suddenly seem as though
she had swallowed up the busy multitude that
laugh and sing upon her bosom, so that in an in-
stant they go down into the pit—aud we shall
then believe that it is possible readily to conceive
the panic and consternation of those who have
escaped hurt or unhurt from such a scene. Nor let
the cold and sceptic temperament on which, perhaps,
we are sometimes too apt to plume ourselves in this
chillier latitude of: ours, judge too superciliously or
too severely the feelings wherewith the circumstance
above adverted to is dwelt upon, that it was at the
beginning of the prolonged convulsion of political
Europe, a like portent visited the trembling realm of
southern Italy. Superstition, whether social or reli-
gious, is sad enough to contemplate; we are among
the last that would say a word in palliation of the
blame justly ascribable to the systems of misrule that
generate its existence. We can infinitely more readily
forgive the constitutional perjuries of the court of
Caserta, and the 'baseness of its vassalage to trans-
alpine tyranny, than the deadening and demoralising
system of ignorance in which it deliberately holds
down its subjects. To tie or maim a people's hands is
guilt enough ; but to tamper with its eyesight is
the sin against the spirit of mercy, justice, and free-
dom, for which there is no forgiveness. Nevertheless,
if so be that government and governed are thus per-
mitted to subsist, and that the gloomy shadow of
intellectual darkness overlays the land, may not one
suppose that out of the depths a voice of conscience
may perchance arise, warning despotism of its ap-
pointed destiny, and " checking the exuberance of its
riot ?" If the King of Naples or his accomplice
councillors fear not the God who bath made all men
equally in his own image, and if they are deaf to the
shout of shame with which all emancipated Christen-
dom rings on account of their " cowardly and savage
cruelty" to the political dupes of their sworn profes-
sions of constitutionalism, is it not conceivable that a
rag of conscience may still be lett, that an indistinct
and shapeless recollection of the fate which seventy
years ago befell their predecessors in oppression, may
recur to their minds, and that the physical calamity
may have startled them from their day-dream of
irresponsible power, were it but for an hour ? We
venture not to preach to such =penitents from so
terrible a text. We loathe the dull presumption
that arrogates to itself the right of judging the
inscrutable visitations of Providence, and labelling
them as special punishments
for this or the other
error of mankind. But it is nowise inconsistent
with the humility and charity of the principles in
question, that we should hope, even against hope,
that a Sovereign whose ears are smitten with the
funeral dirge of myriads of his people, on whom,
amid the hum of peaceful industry, the sun bath i
sud-
denly gone down while t was yet day—should be
conscience smitten too, and driven to reflect, remorse-
fully, on the course to which he has so long and reck-
lessly given himself up. he King of Naples is a
Buurbon ; can any member of that doomed family
lay his head upon his pillow without remembexin