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

TO THE PEOPLE:"

THE REFUGEES IN LONDON WHOSE NAMES ARE SUB-
SCRIBED.
Will you be debased ? Will you be enslsaved? Will
you become henceforth an object of eternal contempt
and ridicule to the oppressed peoples who awaited their
deliverance at your hands ?
Louis Bonaparte has just crowded into a few hours
more crimes than it would have been thought possible to
include in the life of a man.
Like a thief, he has seized apon the liberties of his
country by a nocturnal surprise—a vulgar artifice,
which certain people have been rash enough to call
courage.
He has audaciously trifled with the sanctity of the
domestic hearth.
By the help of his swaggering soldiery and police, he
has silenced every voice in Paris excrpt his own. At one
blow he has suppressed all the journals, and has cast
forth into the streets of Paris, without bread, those of
your brethren whom the press supported. He has out-
raged, stricken down, and trampled under foot the na-
tional representation, not only in the persons of your
enemies, but also in that of Greppo, the t nergetic and
loyal representative of the workmen of Lyons; and in
that of Nadaud, the mason, who has so often and so
nobly defended your interests in the tribune.
Do you want to have a master? And do you wish
that that master should be Louis Bonaparte? Yen
have seen the air with which he traversed the streets
of Paris, hedged in by soldiers, covered by cannon,
and causing himself to be borne in triumph by his
staff; adding to the crime of high treason the„inso-
lence of a conqueror, and treating France as a con-
quered country—he whose military annals can boast of
nothing except the opprobrium of the Roman expedition
That the members of the majority are expiating the
ill which they have done; that the constitution which
they have violated in you is violated in them; that they
aro undergoing the chastisement through that universal
suffrage which they have destroyed; that they who have
made a portion of France pass under the yoke in the state
of siege, now.feel upon themselves the full weight of the
state of siege; that they who have sanctioned the trans-
portation of our brethren en masse and without judgment,
now find force where they sought justice—is a lesson not
more hard than merited. It is the penalty of retribution
which is inflicted on them, and it is not for us to complain.
But what it concerns us to understand now is, whe-
ther you are in the mood for a change of tyrants ?
For does this crime belong to that Assembly of which
he was the inspirer and accomplice?
Was it not he who, by his Ministers, proposed and
passed that odious law of May against which he now
rises up, because the candidature of Joinville has made
him afraid? Is not he, stilt more than the Assembly,
charged with the responsibility of having drowned the
Italian Republic in the blood of the Romans, mingled
with that of the French soldiers?

Among so many shameful and liberticide measures,
let one be mentioned, a single one, which did not exhibit
Louis Bonaparte acting in concert with the Assembly.
As soon as his ambition was threatened by the As-
sembly he became the enemy of that body. But forget
not that be has been its accomplice, so long as it acted
to oppress you.
He now comes forward to tell you- that the people is
sovereign; and at the same time he dares to demand ten
years of power—that is, the abdication of that so-
vereignty for ten years. _ _

lie seta himself up as the man of the Republic—of that
Republic which is the government of equality, and at
the same time he proposes the establishment of a senate
—that is, an assembly of dukes, counts, barons, and
marquises. Come, let us hasten, debased and clownish
as we are—let us hasten, in virtue of our sovereignty,
once more to instal an aristocracy, after so many battles
fought, and so much blood shed, to put down that aris-
tocracy for ever. It is the man of the Republic that
invites us.
He boasts of restoring to you universal suffrage, but
on condition that it be worked for his private advantage,
and not
master. for yours; since he is going for ten years to be
r
,4 No scrutiny of the list," ho says. Do you quite
understand what that means? It means that the elec-
tions are to be made by registers lodged in the offices of
the mayor. The great swindling manoeuvre which has
been practised upon France once in her history, is to be
renewed. Will you permit, precisely when it is pre-
tended to restore your right, that it shall be Sidled
from you?