The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-17 00:00:00

all information, and under the terrors of martial law ;
and by this he asks for dictatorial power to tread
under foot all principles of constitutional liberty and
individual freedom, in order to substitute in their
place that machinery of puppets with which Napo-
leon travestied the action of a free government. Count
Montalembert comes forward to the French people
and asks them to sanction this, because such tyranny
cannot be more dangerous than the Constitution
just overthrown. "By returning to the unity of
power," says Count Montalembert, "we get over
the most difficult point of the way to a real
social regeneration, that of ideas and morals." So
that in order to correct the ideas of Frenchmen
and improve their morals, Count Montalembert
proposes the despotism (unity of power means nothing
else) of Louis Napoleon. Louis Napoleon has given
up education to the clergy ; he has restored Rome to
its old " unity of power" in the Pope ; he has re-
established synods; he has, in short, done everything
for the Church. The Church is all I care for, says
Count Montalembert, and Louis Napoleon may do
what he will with the State. Such are the political
principles of a man of eminence and talent, the avowed
need of the Roman Catholic Church party in France
—a party which professes itself at certain times, and
in certain places, to be favourable to the great cause
of civil and religious liberty. So blinded is Count
Montalembert by his fanaticism that in the events of
the first half of December he can see nothing but the
few barricaders shot, and can feel nothing butthe
escape of society from Socialism. He has no pity for
his colleagues of the National Assembly, or the com-
panions of his legislative labours, hurried off to prison
or to exile. He is lost in admiration of the brutal sol-
diery, who kept up an hour's fire at the houses and win-
dows of the wealthiest and least disaffected quarter in
Paris, who shot down with glee every well-clad group
that stood confidingly before them, and who laughed at
the sufferings of the wounded. The " Socialists," as
Count Montalembert calls them, were masters for
months after February, 1848. They did not make
a single arrest nor sacrifice a single life, except in
actual combat. They left the antagonist press free.
They refused to run a muck at Europe, and sum-
moned a free assembly to decide upon the fate of
France. The "Socialists" are at least free from blood ;
whilst Louis Napoleon, the saint; whom Count Mon-
talembert holds up for the adoration of the Church,
sent to the grave more innocent victims in one day
than even Robespierre sent in many to the scaffold.
Robespierre's victims, too, were tried ; they enter-
tained opinions hostile to the republic. However
innocent of crime, there was some pretext for their
,laughter; whilst there was no pretext whatever for
that cold-blooded and wholesale massacre with which
Louis Napoleon inaugurated his reign. And yet
French Catholicism, represented by Count Monte-
lembert, would make use of the Socialist bugbear to
persuade people to set up and worship the idol of the
Elysee. The candid, the truth-loving Montalembert
copies the Moniteur in attributing every insurrec-
tionary movement throughout France to Socialism.
The peasants of the Niovre having risen in insur-
rection, the whole town of Clamecy took up arms
against the decree of the 2d of December. But
Clamecy is the country of M. Dupin ; the seat of
his property ; the scene of his influence. Have the
past opinions and present treatment of M. Dupin
nothing to do with the insurrection of Clamecy—and
is its very excess to be set down to Socialism ? The
officer in command at Lyons, a whole regiment of
artillery at St. Brieuc, divers persons and bodies in
different parts of France, have declared against the
decree and against the act of the 2d of December.
Is this Socialist ? And Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, and
all the towns and counties consigned to martial law,
are all these Socialist ? If so, Socialism includes all
the friends of constitutional monarchy, and numbers
all those moderate Liberals of the Chamber with
whom Count Montalembert has been pretending to act
in common,when in fact he has been merely waiting the
opportunity to betray every constitutional principle
and party to the first military mountebank who put
on the cloak of piety. A greater blow to the Papal
Church in France could not have been stricken than
by this public adhesion of its chief to the most un-
warrantable act of tyranny, treachery, and violence
that ever was perpetrated in any revolution. It is
plain, and Count Montalembert avows it, that if his
priesthood be allowed full sway over the conscience
of the people, he will, in recompense, applaud a mi-
litary dictator putting his heel on the neck of the
same people. He supports the throne of Louis Na-
poleon by the confessional. He hallows the right
of the usurper ; declares it quite as good as
that of the most legitimist monarch ; and he calls in
the name of the Church on the old Royalists to sup-
port it. If Count Montalembert could be supposed
to represent the totality of the French clergy
and the French Church, his present conduct, and the
reasons which he assignes for it, would be sufficient
to divorce that Church, not merely from the support,
but even from the tolerance and respect of every
party in the State. The Legitimist he divorces and
disgusts. The Constitution he sacrifices without re-
more and without shame. Anything or body of men
more liberal, more republican, or more popular than
constitutional monarchy he devotes to the infernal
gods. He erects the Church into a perfect indepen-
dent empire within the state, quite reckless of what
becomes of that state, provided only that the clergy
live thrive and rule. The Jews were accused of thus
living in the midst of Christian countries and Euro-
pean communities, attached exclusively to their sect
and to their money bags. This, even if true, had its
-xcuse ; for if the Jews felt no love for state or coun-
try, it was that state or country cared not for them.
But for a Christian church thus to consider its in-
erest apart, and to offer up every other element of
civilization than orthodoxy to the most ruthless
tyranny—that is a crime, a treason, and a baseness,
from which the Church, or the sect that cannot
purge itself, deserves to be for ever accursed and
eradicated.