The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-09 00:00:00

FRANCE AND THE ENGLISH PRESS.

An elderly gentleman of some literary accom-
plishment has put himself at the head of a forlorn
hope of the abject and the timorous, in an attempt
to circumscribe the outspoken freedom of the
English Press. The letters of Sir Francis Head,
though in terms addressed to a distinguished cotem-
porary, must be regarded as an indirect attack upon
all those English journals which, with less literary
power it may be, but certainly with not less bold-
ness of language, nor with leas strength of convic-
tion, have spoken what they have felt to be the
truth of the Emperor and the Empire. This sin-
cerity and plain speaking are repulsive to the taste,
and distressing to the nerves, of the accomplished
valetudinarian. His sense of propriety is offended ;
his nice perception of what is due to the comity of
nations is outraged ; above all, his apprehensions
excited up to the panic point. Trembling with
suppressed disgust and pale with coscealed terror,
the old man of the " Bubbles" and the "Fagots "
adjures us to be gentlemanly, and silent, and base.
" For God's sake, gentlemen, whatever you may
think and feel, don't express it. The Emperor and
the Empire are no business of yours. France has
chosen the one and likes the other. No other
government is possible there. If an evil (which
for my part I don't believe), it is a necessary
one. Remember, too, that this Imperator is the
master of 400,000 legionaries. The French nation
is irritable. The French soldier is impetuous.
London is defenceless. Beware." Such is the
quintescence of the Head letters. Sweep away the
nugce and the focci, and this remains. This is the
plausible baseness whose echo is now great in all
Clubs, and whose sound has gone forth into all the
regions of servility. These are the sentiments
which everywhere find ready currency with the
elderly and the selfish ; with the cold egotists
whose gods are comfort and cent. per cent. ; with
the feeble and contracted natures to whom the
vigorous play of free institutions is a bewilderment
and a terror, which they would gladly exchange,
though they shrink from the infamy of the avowal,
for the silence and order of servitude.

Now, then, let us tell, not these men, for they are
incapable of conviction and unworthy of argument,
but those who may have for a moment been misled
by their fallacies, why the free Press of England
cannot, without base treason to its highest func-
tions, proArate itself before that image of iron and
clay to which they offer up their feeble and fulsome
incense—the homage of meanness and fear. What
is it that we mean when we talk of the free Press
of England? The free Press of England is the free
expression of the moral sense of England—not of
the conventional basenesses of society—not of the
guarded unmcaningness of diplomacy—not of the
solemn and measured conclusions of administrative
power—but of those deep convictions and of those
high instincts which reside, and by God's blessing
will ever reside, deep in the heart of this people,
whose proud prerogative it is and ever has been " to
teach the nations how to live." The free Press of
England is charged with the, function of acting as
chorus in the eventful drama of European history ;
as Tribune in the complex polity of modern civilisa-
tion. The free Press of England cannot without
base recreancy to the high duties thus cast upon it,
consent to assist in silence at the triumphal pro-
cession of the successful conqueror of a nation's
liberty. Where public outrage is done to freedom
—where the landmarks of ancient right are defaced
and trampled down—where the expression of free
thought is made a crime, and the admiration of
-free institutions the passport to a prison,—there
the free Press of England, under pain of forfeiting
all that has made it a power and a shield, is bound
to speak boldly and aloud. It is its imperative and
solemn duty to proclaim to Europe that the moral
sense of England protests against t ese things. It
is there for the very purpose of m king that iapro-
test. Itis of high concern for the ture of Europe
that such protest should be made. 'What would be-
come of the hopes of the nations it the only power
that can speak out, among the only people that
dare speak out, should look on calmly acquiescent
at each evolving scene in that great drama of force
and fraud ? Are the old gentlemen who button
themselves up in the placid ignominy of comfort
content with the prospect of the Empire every-
where and England nowhere ? Is even their fright-
ened Ancient, the literary blower of " Bubbles"
and collector of " Faggots," resigned to such a
future? If not, let even these men for once seriously
bethink themselves of the mighty force of opinion
in regulating the destinies of the world. If the
English press had accepted the empire and its con-
sequences in silence, what would have been the
inevitable conclusion of Europe? Simply this—that
the foremost free State of the modern world had no
real value for her own institutions—cherished, in
fact, an intimate conviction that orderly despotism
was preferable to turbulent freedom. Let these
opinions be once firmly established, and the moral
influence of England as a paramount power in the
world's history is at an end for ever. It is our
freedom that has made us great, and our freedom
that keeps us so. It is the general conviction that
we treasure this freedom, that we would shed the
last drop in our veins before parting with it, that
gives hope and vigour to our only natural allies—
the friends of liberty throughout the world. The
press of England is charged not only with the
maintenance and defence of English freedom, but
with the hope of the world's future. A function
thus grave is not to be discharged without gravity
and earnestness. What the heart feels deeply, the
tongue and the pen will express manfully and boldly.
It is caly thu fribblers-of fashion or the sycophants of
slavery who are offended with the outspoken utter-
ances of a deep conviction, because their phrase-
ology may lack something of the emasculate repose
" which marks the caste of Vere de Vere."
There is another consideratien not altogether to
be forgotten. It is not only the ruled but the
rulers who have a deep interest in the maintenance
itself
stands this salutary freedom of speech. Power
stands greatly in need of the untrammelled expres-
sion of free opinion as a corrective to those excesses
which, if uncorrected, lead by ean unerring Nemesis
to one of two conclusions—universal degeneracy or
universal revolt. The great historian of the Decline
and Fall of Rome has noted it as one of the worst
aggravations of the old world's splendid servitude,
that the bounds of the Imperial despotism were
conterminous with the limits of human civilisation,
so that the victims of. tyranny had no refuge or
asylum from its pursuit. It may well be doubted
whether it was not at least as great an evil that
over that vast region there brooded the enforced
silence of stifled opinion and enslaved thought.
The excesses of tyranny were unchecked by the
voice of opposition ; the extremity of servitude
found no solace in the freedom of remonstrance or
complaint. When the Roman world was one wide
scene of leaden peace and languid contentment;
when material prosperity was at the highest point;
when all was luxury and ease and enervating
voluptuousness ; when no free thought stirred the
languid air, no free voice broke the abject silence,
then the Utopia of enlightened despotism, of or-
dered and regulated obedience, seemed to be realised
on earth. But we know the issue of these things.
It was no healthful calm that then held
mankind tranquil, but a fatal trance. The
faculties and energies of the race dwarfed

and dwiitcliA tinder the superincumbent
shadow of the Imperial throne. The manly virtues
died away in an abject deliquium of self-contempt.
The Roman world dozed and rptted into corruption,
with the rescripts of living Emperors for its lrtw',
and the Worship of dead Emperors for its religion.
But is our Europe ripe for this degeneracy P Have
the heroic struggles of the past, the restless ten-
dencies of the present, the irrepressible hopes of
the future, no other goal than this ? Is the ialoclern
world prepared to precipitate itself into this " Alia
vious pool" of silence and torpor ? We know that
it is not. Here and there, even in this land of free-
dom, the dotage of senile selfishness may fold itself
in its cloak of comfort, and sink resigned to this in-
glorious death. But the base contagion has not
spread. The heart of this people is sound, and its
spirit is fearless and strong. Elsewhere there may
be torpor and apathy,' but there is health and life
left here. As we think and feel, so shall we speak
and write. As journalists and Englishmen we re-
spect in others the privileges we exercise ourselves.
Leaving the Bubble-blower and his admirers to the
well-earned contempt of freemen, we hereby tender
our thanks to the great Journal which has never
more nobly exerted its power and eloquence than
in confronting, against the most dangerous and
insidious despotism of modern times, the bold ex-
pression of Engish indignation and the broad prin-
ciples of English freedom.—Daily News.