The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-14 00:00:00

atentna AUL

LONDON, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1851.

REJECTION of the MINISTERIAL
ELECTORAL BILL BY THE FRENCH
ASSEMBLY.

At nine o'clock last evening the French Legisla-
tive Assembly rejected, by a majority of seven, the
Bill submitted to them by the PRESIDENT of the Re-
public and his Ministers, for the repeal of the Elec-
toral Law of the 31st of May, 1850, and for the
restoration of Universal Suffrage.
This is a defeat, a crushing defeat, alike to the
PRESIDENT and his Ministers, who have been sub-
jected to the insult of having their measure igno-
miniously rejected without even a first reading
accorded to it, and to the Bourbonists and part-pretre
fractions of the reactionaries, who cannot hope to
maintain by a narrow majority of seven the dis-
franchisement of 3,000,000 of Frenchmen. The
PRESIDENT and his Ministers are defeated, but with
them the law against which they strove is defeated
also. The law is, as we said a few days since,
doomed ; it can never be carried into execution, and to
the Republicans, the only party which throughout
these contests has acted upon high principle,
untainted by sinister motives or personal
ambitions, the victory now remains. This division is,
to all intents and purposes, a great victory for the
Republicans. The division has put the PRESIDENT
and his Ministers effectually hors de combat, and has
destroyed whatever faint chance the PRESIDENT
might have possessed of obtaining a revision of the
Constitution in time to enable him to become, with-
out a violation of the Constitution, a candidate for
re-election. It remains now for the Republican
party to secure that which was refused by the As-
sembly to the PRESIDENT—the repeal, namely, of this
Electoral Law, which 348 representatives of the
people have, by their votes, joined with theYaEsinercr
and his Ministry in declaring is a provocation to civil
war. Various opportunities will occur for enabling
them to attain this very desirable object, and thus to
save France from those dangers into which, to serve
their own personal ambition, the different fractions of
the reactionary and anti-national party—viz., the
clerical fraction, the Bonapartist fraction, the Legiti-
matist fraction, and the 13urgraves, are each en-
deavouring to plunge her. If 1852 should
pass over quietly in France it will be entirely owing
to the wisdom, prudence, patriotism, and
dignified forbearance of the Republicans ; for
never have any men so strenuously exerted
themselves to provoke outbreak and insur-
rection as that widely organised conspiracy
which, calling itself the party of order, has been
since 1848 assiduously engaged in endeavouring to
throw everything in France into disorder. We,
however, repose the utmost faith in the firmness and
good sense of the Republicans, and doubt not but that
in the course of a very short time they will procure
the formal repeal of that which it is now impossible
ever to carry into effect—the unconstitutional Elec-
toral Law of the 31st May, 1850.

However much the opponents of KossuTn have
assailed his character, their malignant calumnies have
altogether failed to interfere with its proper appre-
ciation. Embezzlement is not the least of the crimes
imputed to this very remarkable personage. He has
been traduced as one notoriously convicted of pusil-
lanimity, peculation, and licentiousness. Yet the man
whom these writers have dared to vilify as a coward,
a robber, and a profligate, has been greeted with the
welcome of a hero by many thousands of
Englishmen. So little is the attention paid
to anything asserted by the unprincipled apolo-
gists of Absolutism. Englishmen have judged
KOSSUTH by his career, by that career
which he himself has aptly designated as " an open
book." They have marvelled at the astonishing
powers of that humble lawyer of a village, that
homely writer of short-band, that secluded editor of a
newspaper,who by the simple force of his genius rose to
be the Dictator of Hungary, of that regal and aristo-
cratic race whose chivalric senators had, in a preceding
century, drawn their swords to the famous cry,
Illoriamur pro liege nostro 1 The people of Eng-
land have recognised that there was something more
than ordinary in the man who could attain
the chieftainship of such a nation solely by the
influence of his intellect and his principles, pouring
from the resources of his policy eighty millions of
florins into an empty exchequer, and creating from
the dragon-teeth of his eloquence a vast and well dis-
ciplined army, before the terrors of whose prowess the
imperial veterans of Austria and Russia quailed—an
army conquered at last not by superiority of numbers
but by stratagem, by the treason of GORGET more
than by the legions of the AUTOCRAT. The commu-
nity in this country have not only borne these facts
in remembrance in forming their opinions of Louis
KOSSUTH, they have themselves listened to the magic
of his voice, they have seen him face to face, grasped
him hand to hand, heard from his lips the history of
the Hungarian struggle, and of his own various and

romantic vicissitudes. Reviewing the different
speeches delivered by this very extraordinary man
since his arrival amongst us, it is impossible to do
otherwise than admire the tact not less than the elo-
puence of those remarkable and diversified orations.
It will have been perceived through their medium how
' very peculiar is the capacity evinced by him to adapt
himself at once to his auditors, even when address-
ing them in a foreign tongue and in a land
remote from his own dominions. At Southampton
his manner was different from that revealed at Win-
chester in the inculcation of his ideas upon free and
constitutional government. At Manchester no less
apparent was this variety of bearing than it has again
been rendered at Birmingham. When responding to
the address presented to him in Guildhall, KOSSUTH
spoke in terms particularly suitable fur the citizens
of a wealthy and liberal metropolis ; while on the oc-
casion of his reply to a similar address handed
to him in Copenhagen-fields, at a strongly contrasting
demonstration, he spoke as became one who delivered
his sentiments in the hearing of a vast body of the
labouring classes. It has been by this admirable
skill evinced on his part, in catching at once the tone
most acceptable to his various hearers, that the
Governor of Hungary has contrived so successfully
to extend his popularity in all quarters, even at the
very moment when his name is most maligned by the
commonest dealers in vituperation.
That the influence emanating from the genius of
KOSSUTH should have become thus widely diffused
in England is, under all circumstances, by no means
surprising when it is remembered that he has ad-
dressed himself to a people conspicuous for their pos-
session of common sense—and that, moreover, with
the powers of a rhetoric seldom if ever equalled since
the memorable days of DEMOSTHENES. Prom the
few speeches already delivered by his Excellency
since the hour of his landing on the British shores at
Southampton might be culled passages such
as it would be difficult to find any-
where surpassed for grandeur of expression, for
irresistible pathos, or for oratorical beauty. Could
anything we ask, for example, be more conspicuous
in these respects than the sentences in which on
Wednesday he recounted his famous appeal to the
Diet, where four hundred representatives rose as one
man, and, lifting their right arms towards GOD
dedicated themselves by an oath to " Freedom or
Death ?" According to the interjectional remark of
the reporter, the solemnity of gesture and voice with
which this narration was given produced, as might have
been expected, a powerful effect upon the Assembly.
Then, continuing his relation of events, said Kos-
SUTH...—." Thus they spoke and there they swore in a
calm and silent majesty, awaiting what further word
might fall from my lips. And for myself :it was my
duty to speak, but the grandeur of the moment, and
the rushing waves of sentiment benumbed my tongue.
A burning tear fell from my eyes, a sigh of adoration
to the ALMIGHTY LORD fluttered on my lips ; and
bowing low before the majority of my
people, as I bow now before you, gen-
tlemen, I left the tribunal silently, speechless,
mute." Again the shorthand-writer interrupts his
record to remark that the orator here paused for a
few moments, overpowered by his emotion, with
which the company deeply sympathised. Then, re-
suming—" Pardon my emotions," said he, with a
sublime solemnity—" the shadows of our martyrs
passed before my eyes—l heard the millions of my
native land once more shouting, ' Liberty or Death !"
Than this we know nothing more touchingly
beautiful in the whole range of oratory. And
it has been in language thus elevated
and persuasive that KossuTa has opened his heart to
his sympathisers in England—speaking to them in
words of burning eloquence, though with the accent
and pronunciation of a foreigner.

Yesterday witnessed the completion of the series
of demonstrations in his behalf, by the presentation
to him ofrarious addresses from the metropolitan bo-

roughs

and afte:
ball in

the platform at Hanover-square Rooms,

!wards by his cordial reception at the
.Guildhall. KOSSUTH, after this suc-

of earnest greetings from the people

Esland, will cross the Atlantic, on his
e United States, we trust with improving
e believe with pleasurable recollections, we
111 with renewed hopes for the speedy and
imancipation of the Hungarians.