The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-16 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUS7 16, 1869.

The centenary of NAPOLEON'S birth was yesterday
worthily celebrated. A General Amnesty was an-
nounced through an Imperial decree, countersigned
by all the Ministers. The wording of this decree
was simple but comprehensive, being restricted to a
iingle sentence. In it NAPOLEON 111. said—" Wishing
celebrate the centenary of the birth of NAPOLEON I.
by an act which responds to our feelings, we decree
1. full and complete amnesty for all political crimes
and misdemeanours, offences against the press
laws, the laws on public meetings and coalition of
working men, as well as other political offences."
No invidious exceptions, it will be seen, were made
in this act of grace, which was as full and as
unconditional as it could possibly be in its open-
handed beneficence. Another imperial decree ac-
,:ompanied it—granting an amnesty to all soldiers
and sailors undergoing sentence for desertion.
Simultaneously there have appeared official intima-
tions—especially deserving of notice as indicative of
he full acceptance by the EMPEROR of the liberal po-
licy upon which he has recently adventured in regard
o the general reorganisation of his Government—an-
nouncements, that is, of numerous decorations having
been conferred upon members of the Corps Legislatif,
belonging to the 7 iers Parti—the very party identified
with the cause so recently triumphant, the course of
Constitutional or Parliamentary, in lieu of Absolute,
or, as it is called, Personal Government.
Contrary to the hopes and expectations of the
army at Chalans, in the midst of which it was in-
-ended that the EMPEROR should spend his fête day,
that is, yesterday, His MAJESTY was at the last mo-
nent prevented from going thither—according to one
version, because, of a s _were attack of rhyamatistn
tccording to another, because, of the regretted de-
!llse, at tnidnight between Friday and S itur lay, of
4arshal NIEL, the Minister of War. lb .vever it
,nay have been in regard as to the immediate c Luse
,f the EmpEstott's absence from Chalons yesterd ty,
is to the fact of his not going thither, there can be no
loubt whatev2r. Remaining himself at the capital,
he despatched to the Camp at Chalous the young
PRINCE IMPERIAL as his boyish representative.
.liter agrand military High Mass, yesterday forenoon,
in the midst of the Camp, thirty thousand troops of
ill arms defiled before his Imperial Highness, who
listributed medals among the soldiers. Twenty-one
years LOUIS NAPOLEON has now been at the head of
France—the last seventeen of those years as EMPE noR.
[he restoration of the BONAPARTE dynasty to power
is therefore not an event of yesterday. And, during
those seventeen years of the Second Empire,
France at any rate has not degenerated.
On such " foughten fields" as Magenta and
Solferino, she has won new glory at the
point of the sword and at the mouth of the can-
non, with the Emperor NAPOLEON 111. himself there
at the head of her troops as Commander-in-Chief
of the Imperial forces. France has gained victories,
too, in no inglorious wars, fighting side by side with
the soldiers of England in the Crimea and in China.
Under the reign of her present ruler, she has witnessed
the immense development of her peaceful resources,
commercial, agricultural, industrial, manfacturing—
in the spread of postal communication with the ends
of the earth—in the expansion of her systems of
railroads and of electric telegraphs, of steamboats and
of submarine cables. Within this same interval of
time, moreover—during the lapse of these fruitful
seventeen years last past—France has seen herself not
only prosperous but beautified—her chief cities, and
especially her outports, but, above all, her magnifi-
cent capital, almost rebuilt from the very founda-
tions. In the mercantile world France has witnessed
the substitution of Free-Trade for the old-world, and
now thoroughly obsolete, system of Protection. In
the political world she has witnessed the gradual
transformation of a Dictatorship into a Free, Liberal,
Responsible, Parliamentary, Constitutional form of
Government. The Empire under NAPOLEON 111., is
now, in 1869, what the Empire under NAPOLEON the
GREAT was in 1815—when BENJAMIN CONSTANT
became an enthusiastic Bonapartist. She is, in other
words—under an Imperial Head—a Crowned De-
mocracy. Recognising all this, knowing all this—
it must be allowed that the Centenary of the birth of
the GREAT NAPOLEON could hardly have been cele-
brated under happier auspices. Yesterday's Imperial
Decree of a General Amnesty is as a Wreath of Im-
nam tulles cast upon his glorious tomb by his suc-