The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-27 00:00:00

rHE SIJN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 27, 1869.

.1.1 , A.
till 71
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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCT. 27, 1869.

Instead of a revolutionary outbreak yesterday
taking place in the French capital, the Parisians wit-
nessed a very different spectacle indeed. Through-
out the whole day the city, from one end to the other,
was in a state of profound tranquillity. A single
political mountebank, whose name had never been
heard before, made himself ridiculous to a few by-
standers, by attempting to read some doggrel lines in
front of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, and
was simply hooted for his pains. As for the Em-
rErtoß, he was known to have returned to his
metropolis upon the previous day, and to have
taken up his abode, not at St. Cloud, but—so as
to be in the midst of the Parisans on the very day
so many were looking forward to with considerable
solicitude—in his own birthplace, and, therefore, in
his own proper home, the Palace of the Tuileries. The
Parisiens knew of this characteristic return of the
EMPEROR from his hunting seat at Compeigne to his
favourite resort upon every possible opportunity—
namely, the very heart or core of supposed
danger—and a crowd of them were, consequently,
on the look for, him in the neighbourhood of
the Tuileries, for the purpose of giving him
the welcome any signal display of pluck always com-
mands. NAPOLEON 111. gave the people the oppor-
tunity they were in quest of, by appearing in the
garden of the Tuileries, where he was immediately
greeted with a burst of acclamations. This occurred
when he was quietly walking on the Terrace, simply
accompanied by M. BEVILLE, without any guard
whatever in the way of attendants. Upon the pre-
vious evening, the eve of the day that has now passed
over so very peacefully, but that the implacable foes
of the Empire were looking forward to as to a
day of disaster, the EMPEROR went to the Opera,
and there also was received with loud and prolonged
cheering. Among the highest circles, therefore, as
well as by the people in the streets, he has been
greeted with loyal enthusiasm immediately upon his
return among the Parisians ! The whole capital on
the anxiously expected 26th being, as we have
already intimated, but as we here purposely and
gladly reiterate, marking its confidence in the vali-
dity of the constitutional changes recently intro-
duced into the whole organisation of the Government
of France, at the instance of NAPOLEON 111. him-
self, by :remaining from sunrise to sunset, from
the midnight of the 25-26th, to the midnight of
the 2G-27th, in a state of profound tranquillity.
It is, of course, wonderfully humorous—vide TEN-
NIEL'S cartoon in Punch—the delineation, by the Prince
of Political Caricaturists, of the Emperor NAPOLEON
HI., as another Hero of Niagara, in the midst of his
grand tour de force, traversing—on a bicycle formed
of groved wheels labelled respectively, the large one,
Personal Government, the small one, Representative
Government—a rope, inscribed, in its turn, Mes-
sage of July, a rope suspended (above the rapids and
below the falls) at a giddy height over the boiling
surges of Revolution. It is all the more ludicrously
comic from the balancing-pole, grasped in the hands
of the imperial performer, being lettered at either
end—Repression—Concession ! The waxed moustach
of the Napoleonic emulator of BLONDIN, in their hori-
zontal elongation, "not to put too fine apoiut upon it,"
seeming to supply the EMPEROR, as the new arch-type
of the Socratic " Balanced Man," with a sort of an
auxiliary miniature equipoise. The whole conception
of the scene, the whole execution of it, from the
clinging pressure of the feet upon the treddles to the
vigorous grasp of the hands upon the pole, the impe-
rial crown worn askew, the watchful eyes gleaming
out askance—it is impossible not to recognise as a
masterpiece in the shape of a pictorial sarcasm.
But, after all, appreciate though we must per-

force, the whole comic effect of it—it is at once a
capital joke, and an exquisite compliment. Looking
at it, and remembering how yesterday passed over
in Paris, one cannot help recalling to mind that hap-
piest phrasecver applied to the actual Hero of Niagara
by some one who described M. BLONDIN, the Tight-
rope Performer [was it not, by the way, Mr. SALA in
the Daily Telegraph who employed this most felicitous
expression ?] as " that man with the brain of a
chamois !" Having regard to the abysses over which
the Imperial performer, has now, for a whole score
of years together, been guiding, upon a most
exquisite balance, the powerful but delicate ma-

chinery of the Government of France, one cannot

help, again, bearing whimsically in remembrance
that reply said to have been recently made by one of
M. BLONDIN'S attendants to a spectator who
had been speaking of the desperate risk the performer
perpetually ran that some day he might fall off the
rope—" Fall off the rope? M. BLONDIN fall off the
rope ? But—he can't !" As though he had been
trying all his life, and had not yet succeeded in doing
so, in spite of his utmost endeavours. Talk of
sensationalism !

THE members of the United Kingdom Alliance
ought to be well satisfiei with their progress. They
are now in the position which the Free-traders
occupied when the Times, after opposing them for
years, one morning announced that the Anti-Corn
Law League was " a great fact." The time of
ridicule has long gone by; that is the primary stage.
The secondary stage also has been passed, for journalists
and politicians have ceased to answer the arguments
of the Alliance by platitudes about the impossibility
of making men sober by Act of Parliament. The
publicans themselves have admitted that there is no
such impossibility, by admitting that the Beer Act of
the last session will promote sobriety. In a word,
the great principle is now conceded on all hands that
Parliament has the power to legislate against intem-
perance, and that having this power, it is bound to
exercise it. By dint of incessant reiteration, the
Alliance have at last beaten into the thickest
heads the fact that drunkenness is the main cause of
our poverty, our insanity, and our crime. And as
politics are every year becoming more social, more
popular—as the well-being of the people has
taken the place which was formerly occupied by the
contention of parties—legislation on the most impor-
tant social topic of the day has become inevitable.
It is under those circumstances that our contempo-
raries, who have hitherto refused to consider this
question as one really calling for sober con-
sideration, now find themselves compelled to dis-
cuss it. It is amusing to notice their somewhat
awkward efforts to find a tenable position. For the
sake of consistency they are bound to call the sup-
porters of the Alliance bigots still, and to find out
some machinery which will differ, though in ever so
slight a degree, from that of the Permissive Bill.
They are like swimmers who for the first time find
themselves out of their depth. Those of us who have
long ago crossed the stream stand on the
bank looking at the strugglers with amused
satisfaction. We know that in spite of all their
noise and splashing they will at last have to land where
we have landed, and that their arrival is only a ques-
tion of time. For instance, the Pall Mall Gazette,
while maintaining the sarcastic tone which it always
held towards the Alliance, while the time-honoured
words " bigot" and " fanatic" are forthcoming as
usual, admits the whole principle of the Permissive
Bill, is "disposed to agree with so much of the
Alliance principles as would put the power of licensing
in the hands of the ratepayer." But this is really grant-
ing everything. All the rest is but a matter of detail.
, As the Pall Arall Gazette itself says " the question is

essentially one of degree rather than of principle."
Why then all these hard words and this sublime con-
tempt ? Merely, as we have said, for the sake of
maintaining the appearance of consistency.
Of course the supporters of the Alliance endure
hard words and contempt with the most good-
natured indifference. They are far too earnestly bent
upon accomplishing their work to care what
is said about themselves. They will be con-
tent to shut up their shutters to-morrow and
to let their very name perish from the memory of men
if only the nation will complete the reform which
now requires a special organisation. One raison
aretre has already ceased; they are no longer
needed to establish the right of the people to be
consulted upon a matter of such supreme importance
to them. All that they have to do now is to see
that the best machinery is devised for securing the
exercise of that right. They have suggested
one mode—that which is closely akin to the muni-
cipal franchise—the vote of the parishioners in any
one parish upon the question of license or no license.
The Pall Mall Gazette does not approve of this mode,
does not like the plebiscite, and wants a licensing Parlia-
ment, whose members shall be elected by the rate-
payers—one such Parliament for every county or
parliamentary division. We need hardly point out
that this arrangement would frustrate the very object
which our contemporary professes to desire, the satis-
fying of local wants. The Gazette does not contem-
plate the entire abolition of drink-shops, but only the
regulation and the restriction of them. Who so
capable of knowing their wants as the ratepayers
themselves ? who so likely to be ignorant of them as
gentlemen sitting in conclave fifty or a hundred
miles away ? The Pall Mall must try again. We
have no doubt as to the result of its experiments.
We shall see sooner or later the announcement that
the Permissive Bill is " a great fact."

DR. NEIVMAN RETURNING GOOD FOB

EVIL.

In his last published pamphlet, Mr. Fftmlkes, tne author
of "The Church's Creed and the Crown'h Creed" de-
nounces those Ultramontane intrigues, which are, as
the author believes, ruining the prospects of Roman
Catholicism in England and which have "so long
doomed to comparative retirement and inaction,
one of the master minds of the age, when, for tho
genius with which God has blessed him, and the influence
which he wields over countless thousands, he ought to
have been raised aloft on a pedestal as the Saint
Bernard of Europe." . No one can mistake this allusion
to refer to Dr. Newman, and it is certainly a suffi-
ciently stimulating hint to the curiosity which has long
been felt regarding tho unaccountable obscurity in which
his new Church has left him, that Mr. Ffoulkes adds :
" I have seen and read a pamphlet written by one
scarcely his inferior in ability, and fully his equal in
honesty, detailing this intrigue from beginning to end,
and disclosing such conduct in some cases as would have
made all concerned in it, however exalted their positions,
colour crimson, had it been made public. The noble
nature, however, which had been assailed, stepped in
between this pamphlet and the world just as it was ready
for circulation. A presentation copy gave him the first
tidings of what what was contemplated, and he replied by
telegraph, begging that it might be suppressed."