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

the juges de pair, mayors, and other functionaries,
whose support they cannot rely on—to require from all
these functionaries to give in, in writing, their adhesion
to the great measure edepteel by the Government—in-
stantly to arrest every one who should attempt to dis-
turb public tranquillity—and to suspend every journal'
whose *Arguments might be hostile to it." Upon the
obedience or resistance of the civil and mi-
litary authorities throughout France to these
orders depends at this moment the success or
failure of this daring attempt, and the still wider ques-
tion of proscription and civil war. The celebrated
circulars of M. Ledru Rollin were not more despoti-
cally revolutionary, for the language of alt Governments
imposed by force is the same. But though nothing has
been respected, and even the Court of Cessation, the
last sanctuary of civil justice, has been intimidated and
dissolved by troops, the uniform obedience of an army of
400,000 men, of a scarcely less numerous host of public
functionaries, and of a nation of 36,000,000, to orders
entirely devoid of a pretence of legality, would be to us
the most astonishing recurrence which even the French
revolution has brought forth. Such proceedings resem-
ble Mallet's con-piracy more than the deliberate acts of
a great party. They originate with a very small number
of persons, who have not yet secured the positive ad-
herence of any larger class, except the army, which has
acted from discipline and passive obedience. The names
of the persons designated by the President to form a
"consultative commission" are either those of his most
devoted creatures, or of men whose consent to sit on such
a body had not been asked or obtained. One at least of
their number has addressed a letter to Louis Napoleon, in
hich he indignantly resents the use thus made of his name,
and declares that the only office ho holds is that which
he derives from the people. In fact, thus far, the iaa•
mense military add civil machinery of government in
France, the army and the police, appear to have been
set in motion by an unsubstantial power, and they are
expected to give the strength they can only serve to
transmit. The real claim of Louis Napoleon to the gra-
titude of France and to the confidence of Europe—one
that we have always been ready to admit—was that he
had given tranquillity to a nation still convulsed by a
paroxysm of revolution, and that he had respected the
conditions of peace abroad; and the principal motive for
desiring the prolongation of his power by legal means
was that this seemed the only mode of averting another
revolution. But the events of the last few days have
entirely changed his position. His power can only now
be prolonged by a revolution; and, in place
of the fallacious tranquillity in which the na-
tion hoped to rest, it is plunged into a fresh con-
flict, from which it can only emerge with the sa-
crifice of its liberties to a dictatorial authority, or
the destruction of that authority by the fury of a po-
pular convulsion. However we may be disposed to
question the ultimate success of such a coup d'etat, the
chief argument in Louis Napoleon's favour seems to be
that it is still more difficult to suggest any other expe-
dient. The monarchial parties are in a state of total
discomfiture, and the miserable intrigues of the Or-
leanists especially have only served for the pretext of
this conspiracy of the Government against the conditions
of its own existence. The Republic has already lost the
form in which it had been accepted by the nation, and
the man who had been elected in 1848 as a refuge from
its natural tendencies and inconveniences. Even the
Conservative party, which had exercised for a time by
means of the Assembly the power gradually regained
after the revolution of February, is now stricken, divided,
imprisoned, and exhausted. The Republic, re-estab-
blished after such an attack upon it, would have all the
force derived from a fresh popular convulsion, and
the triumph of extreme principles. It would, in
fact, be far more intolerant, absolute, and probably
aggressive than it was after 1848, and consequently
even more abhorrent to the mass of the community.
Yet what escape is there left from that last extremity
but to acquiesce in this usurpation? That argument
must have weight with the mercantile classes and the
more timorous or servile spirits of the country. But they
deceive themselves if they imagine that the whole autho-
rity of the law can be restored by the same power which
has just overthrown it for purposes of its own. Even if
such a power be established by the obedience of the army,
it will be encompassed by every species of secret conspi-
racy and open resistance. It will have its Moreau, and
it may have its Duke d'Enghein, for the glory of the
First Consul himself did not save him from an implacable
conflict with enemies whom he crushed even at the cost
of crime. France is entering upon a period of suspicion,
coercion, and suppressed or flagrant anarchy, to which
even the horrors of civil war may be invited to put a
term. From the immense amount of the military re-
sources of Government and the stern determination with
which they are employed, it was not to be expected that
any successful effort of popular resistance could be made
in Faris. Nevertheless, from an early hour yesterday
the streets of the capital, and especially the Faubourgs
of St. Martin and St. Antoine, witnessed a renewal of
the scenes of carnage we have so often had to record and
to deplore. In vain the Minister of War decreed that
every person taken in the act of raising barricades should
suffer according to the most rigorous laws of war, or, in
other words, should bo instanily shot. The barricades
wore raised, and they were defended by the indomitable
courage of the population from midday to five in the
afternoon against the forces of the army supported by
artillery. The insurrection was quelled, it is said; but
wo fear this conflict is only the forerunner of more ge-
neral disturbances, which can only be crushed by acts
of unqualified severity, and how is it possible for
a Government to submit its pretensions to the decision
of the country by universal suffrage, whilst that question
is in reality pending between the cannon of the army
and the barricades of the people? We do not doubt
that Louis Napoleon, who has shown indisputable firm-
nets in the conduct of this revolution, is profouudly de-
sirous to avoid a sanguinary conflict, and ho regrets that
the blow aimed chi( fly at his rivals in the Assembly
should fall with all its. hardships on the people. But
such are the terrible consequences of the responsibility
he has incurred. He has to face a determined Republi-
can party in all the cities of France, and the rural So-
cialism cf many departments. lie has to dispose of a
captive National Assembly and a silenced press. He
will soon have to provide for a population thrown out
of work by this sudden renewal of a period of disorder;
and even admitting that he be thus invested with dicta-
torial power, he has a task to perform from which the,
wi.est Government in the strongest hands might recoil
with dismay.

ADDRESS OF THE FRENCH EXILES TO
THEIR COUNTRYMEN.
The following proclamation has been sent to Paris
by the French refugees whose Eames are subscribed
to it :