The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-04 00:00:00

EVEN

PARIS.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS;
TIMES.—A country in a state of revolution is a coun•
try without law. The political compact is broken. The
limits of authority are effaced. The idea of right suc-
cumbs to the grasp of force; and it signifies but little
in principle whether such acts are done by the undisci-
plined hordes of a popular insurrection or by the regular
compression of military power. To those who seek
through all the vicissitudes of political life to maintain
inviolate the fixed principles of legal right, by which
alone society can be honestly and freely governed, it
matters comparatively little for what object or by what
forces these principles are violated. Governments
founded on such a basis are tainted from their birth, for
they are commonly the offspring of fraud as well as of
force, and they repudiate by their origin those sacred
obligations of respect for the law which it is the first
bu,iness of every Government to uphold. Such are in
ew words the principles by which the last revolution of
France will eventually be judged by those who share
our opinions. It is possible that success may disguise
the glaring violence of this transaction. It is admitted
that the absurd Constitution of 1848 placed the Pre-
sident and the Assembly in permanent hostility, and
!net the Assembly did not measure its conduct by
its real strength. It is probable that the organic:el force
of the army may prevail at this moment in a country
where no other positive force is organized, and where the
political leaders of every shade ale caught like fishes in
a net, and re moved by arbitrary arrest from the scene
of action. It rests with the French nation to determine
whether the supreme control of its government is to be
transferred by such measures and vested in such hands.
Bur, we owe it to truth, to freedom, and to history to
declare that every pledge of political duty has been
broken—that the moving force in these events is per-
sonal ambition, supported by unscrupulous instruments
—and that it is scarcely possible to conceive the estab-
lishment of a permanent or honourable government on
such a basis. Having said thus much, retaining, as we
still do, the hope that this revolution will not necessarily
interfere with the pacific relations subsisting between
the French Government and our own country, we shall
abstain from such incriminatory remarks as the occa-
sion might suggest, but which the gravity of the in-
terests concerned would render unseasonable, and per-
haps injurious to the public interests. We believe
that it is the fixed resolution of every Go-
vernment in Europe, including our own, to view
with perfect impartiality and absolute forbearance
every possible change that may occur in the Constitu-
tion and Government of France. It rests with the
French nation to resist or to submit, to establish or to
overthrow, to live as freemen or to croueh before the
iron or the leaden idols of despotic power. As long as
the rights of other nations are respected, and as long as
France shows more constancy to her treaties than she
does to her laws, it is due to her Government, whatever
it may be, to judge its actions rather with reference to
ourselves, than to a people whose fate it is to be the
spectacle and lesson of the world. Each successive con-
vulsion in this long series of events is but an incident
in one disjointed whole. Never having supposed that
the Republic of 1848 had any chance of permanent du-
ration, since it was imposed by force upon a reluctant
and astonished nation, we can can profess but little
concern at the humiliating mods of its extinction. But
at the same time we can augur nothing better or more
lasting for the power which seems destined to succeed
it; and even the present success—if such it should be—
of this desperate stroke would only increase our appre-
hensions of a fiercer contest at no very distant period. In
a word, if " stability" be the motto or the promise of
the new Government, that is precisely the quality
we are least prepared to find in it ; and in " closing the
era of revolutions," Louis Napoleon has very possibly
brought the country once more within the vortex of
anarchy. The proclamations of Louis Napoleon to the
people and to the army can hardly be relied upon for
the expression of any deliberate policy or any positive
engagement. But after the customary denunciations
heaped by every revolutionary power on the power it
has overthrown, we find in his address to the people
what we take to be a proposal for the resuscitation of
the Consular and Imperial Constitutions, framed on the
Alsk 6 Sieyes' plan of the Constitution de I'An VIII.,
and terminated by the Imperial Senatus-consultum of
the 28th Floreal An XII. (18th May, 1804). These
Constitutions caused all legislation to originate with a
Council of State named by the Executive Power. The
Bills so prepared were discussed and voted by what was
termed the Legislative body; and this body was fur-
ther controlled by the Senat Conservateur, named by
the Executive or self-elected. The Ministers under
such a system are, as it is expressly stated, to sie-
pend on the Head of the Executive alone. We
scarcely require to be reminded of the mute and
inanimate assemblies of the Empire to discover that such
a Constitution is a system of absolute Government very
thinly disguised. The name of the Republic is merely
introduced as a blind into this address, and the only al-
lusion to public liberty is that which places it under the
protection of the Conservative Senate. ,The address to the
army is a direct appeal to the only power on which the
Government actually rests. By one of those audacious
contradictions common at such times, the army is told,:at
the very moment when every part of the capital is under
military occupation, that it is " to assist the country to
manifest its will in calmness and reflection," and that as
the army is " the NW of the nation," it will of course
save France. With less dexterity, the army is reminded
that it has the popular humiliations of 1830 and 1848 to
efface, and that it it is united to the name of Napoleon
by common ties of glory and misfortune. The effect
of these proclamations on the population of Paris
was doubtless less favourable than had been
anticipated. The cry of " Vive le P.dpub-
lique," which the President bad dropped, greeted
his passage in the streets; and the aspect of the
capital has hitherto been that of hesitation, increased by
the compulsory silence of the press and the arrest of the
Parliamentary leaders. As to the assertion that an
armed conspiracy to depore the President, headed by
General Changarnier and M. Thiers, was on the eve of
exploding, we withhold our belief from it until further
proof; for the means of executing such a plot were
evidently wanting; and, on the other hand, the com-
plete and extensive preparations of the army and the
police, made under pretence of arresting a Socialist
movement, indicate a pre-existing determination on the
part of the Government. The wretched Ministers of
the Thorigny Cabinet were of course dismissed when
the moment of action had arrived. But of that feeble
band one man of vigour remained; we mean General St.
Arnaud, whom we had pointed out from his first acces-
sion to office as the probable chief of a military revo-
lution. Upon the occurrence of these events a por-
tion of the Assembly, exceeding 200 Members, pro-
ceeded to assert its legal rights, to outlaw the Pre-
sident, and convoke the High Court of Justice ;
but these last and feeble struggles of legal authority
were at once repressed by a detachment of light troops,
and the last protest of Parliamentary power was un-
supported by the people. This incident is chiefly of im •
portance at the present moment as showing that almost
every person of political eminence has not only with-
drawn from the Bonapartists, bur has pledged himself to
the most active opposition of 'which the aircumatances
admit. The names published as belonging to the-new.
Conseil d'Etat are those of men designated by the GoT,
vernment, but we have no evidence of their acceptance
of office. The question is not only how matters stand
under the direct military coercion of the present moment,
but what will happen when that coercion is taken off.
The press cannot always be gagged, generals and states-
men arrested, and their followers dispersed. But the
which Louis Napoleon has entered is
onestr u
terminate in itnratiohnis
of
favoeulrl
by the immediate and
his adversaries, or by the chances of civil war.
ggwlehicohn
caned only
Moreover, the effect of this coup d'etat on his own
character and prospects in the country has yet to be
determined. As long as he remained within the legal
bounds of his authority it wag certainly the wish of the
country to see that authority legally extended, and, in
spite of the occurrences of his earlier life, he had gradu-
ally won upon the confidence of the Conservative party
in France and throughout Europe. But the claims he
may now put forward to popular support for an unli-
mited personal power, relying exclusively on military
force, are totally distinct from his former claims to the
renewal of his office; and it by no means follows that
the same amount of national support will be given to the
successful chief of a military revolutionas he might
have received in the strict discharge of his constitutional
duties. Lastly, the services of Praitorians must be paid
for by imperial largesses, and the favour of the people
bought by not less costly concessions. Were such a
Government suddenly invested with omnipotence, it
would have to meet the present demands upon it at the
expense of its future resources. At present not a tax
can be legally levied, and we have yetle learn by what
proportion of the nation the Government of Louis Napo-
leon is still identified with the Government of France.
DAILY NEWS.—It is one thing to cast up the ac-
count of right and wrong between Louis Napoleon and
the dominant parties in the National Assembly; and it
is another thing to pass judgment upon the conduct of
the President towards the nation that elected him as the
protector of its liberties and the executive agent of its
will. It Louis Napoleon regarded nothing in France
beyond the Assembly,and if he regarded in the Assembly
merely that knot of quondam statemen which dictated
its votes first for the nullification of the Republic, and
then of Louis Napoleon himself, w© cannot say but that
his ire, and that even something more than constitu-
tional antagonism, might not have been justly called
forth against treacherous, selfish, and liberticide in-
triguers. They favoured the admission of Louis Na-
paleon into France at first, merely that his name
might be a bugbear to the ,Republic ; they favoured
his election. as President, •in order to use him
as an iron rod to flagellate the Republicans.
Heaven knows, Louis Napoleon was obsequious
enough to them in return! He turned his back on
the people, whose votes had really raised him to the
chief place. He lent himself to the passing and to the
application of every law which castigated, which fettered,
which mortified and disfranchised the people. And he
not only served the people of France so, but ho lent the
sword and the power of the country to crush all those
who struggled for liberty abroad. There was no ven-
geance, no reaction of the National Assembly, and of its
Conservative leaders, to which Louis Napoleon was not
ready to lend himself, until it became their good plea-
sure and their manifest aim to get rid of him, and to
oppose his reelection. Since then, indeed, ho has
waged war against them with an effrontery and a success
which exasperated theta beyond all prudence and self-
,session, and which has finally impelled him to the
rash attempt to crush the Assembly, by pulling down
the pillars and the edifice of the constitution
about their ears. Wo have little pity for the
Thierses and the Changarniers; but this does not
imply either admiration or respect fir Louis Napo-
leon, who is playing the part of his imperial uncle,
without his means, his talents, or his excuses. It was
most possible for Louis Napoleon to effect the revolution