The Sun.
London, England, 1867-04-17 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

--o----

La Liberte de la Presse et le Suffrage Universe!.
Par M. Dupont-White. Pp. 79. Charles
Douniol, Paris.
A remarkable paper appears in the current
number of Blackwood's Magazine—a paper entitled
" Universal Suffrage and the Ballot." It takes
into consideration those two great principles as
they are known to operate in the United States of
America. It is the result, manifestly, of matute
deliberation on the part of a philosophic observer,
on the part of one who has clearly thought the matter
out thoroughly for himself, who has made his own'
calculations, who has drawn his own conclusions,
who has scrutinised facts and figures with his own
eyes, and weighed the whole matter quite indepen-
dently in the balance of his own individual judg-
ment. Whoever he may be—for this contributor to
Maga, of course, writes there quite anonymously,
affording us not even the clue to his recognition
afforded by one of those half-masks of a nom-de-
plume placing within our reach the chance of a just
possible detection of his identity—Whoever, we say,
the writer of this able and vigorous disquisition
upon Universal Suffrage and the Ballot may be,
would, or we are indeed mistaken, be among the
first to appreciate the importance of this other
political treatise (upon a kindred subject and
having a kindred title) produced some time
previously, not as an anonymous contribu-
tion to a periodical as eminent as Blackwood,
but in the form of a separate and distinct
brochure, having its author's name frankly affixed
to it, and setting forth his arguments therein
with all due emphasis and deliberation, in reference
to the political situation in France, not in America
—in regard to a Despotism, not to a Democracy.
" Libertd de la Presse et le Suffrage Universel"
is the succinct title of this last indicated, though
in point of publication this much earlier-issued dis-
quisition ! M. Dupont-White---a name well-known
and highly appreciated among Parisian politicians
—is the author of it. Its appearance was by a
significant, and we can hardly help calling it by a
really impressive coincidence immediately anterior
to the imperial foreshadowing of those constitutional
changes in the Governmental machinery of France
by which the Emperor Napoleon 111. recently
affected at least to take the initiative (at
last) in the long delayed work of—it is
his own phrase--Crowning the Edifice. Whether
sooner or later—through the agency or operation of
these just-named constitutional changes—the Edifice
is in very deed to be Crowned, or not—certain
it is that the announcement of them by the Em-
peror himself, was immediately preceded by the
publication (chez I\l. Charles Douniol, Rue de
Tournon, 29) of M. Dupont-White's searching and
remarkable disquisition Sur la Liberte de la Presse
et le Suffrage Universel. As significantly it was so
—as that M. de Lamartine's " llistoire des Giron-
dins," directly preceded the events of February,
1848. It being, here, in neither instance, implied by
us, of course, that the connection between the two
was as that between cause and effect—the coincidence
in each case being in this place simply pointed out
as a coincidence. Yet even so regarded—that is
purely as a coincidence—each has obviously its
significance. Directing attention, however, more
particularly in the present instance to the eloquent
brochure of M. Dupont-White, in respect to
" Liberty of the Press and Universal Suffrage,"
it may be as well to remark at once that
he enters into an examination of those two vitally
important themes—themes of more especially vital
importance to the forty odil millions of the French
population—as a friend of one and (almost) as a
foe of the other ! As a champion or vindicator at
any rate of that 2Egis of all Liberty among civilised
communities, nobly entitled, here in England, by
Edmund Burke, " the Fourth Estate !" As the
avowed adversary, at any rate, of the in-
discriminate and wholesale application to all
such results, of that potent " popular right,"
according to some (teste Bright), that mere
" political privilege," according to others (teste
Disraeli), the right or privilege to vote for
the election of legislative representatives. In
other words—M. Dupont-White is heartily and en-
thusiastically for Freedom of the Press, and, if not
against, certainly very cold-bloodedly in favour of,
Universal Suffrage ! For the one, and, almost avow-
edly as we have said, against the other with the
fervour, devotion, and enthusiasm of a publicist who,
though in intellect a philosopher, is in heart and
soul intensely and essentially a patriot. Perhaps,
for that matter, we should rather here have
said that, strictly speaking, M. Dupont-White
is with enthusiasm in favour of Liberty of the
Press while, *on the other hand, he is abso-
lutely'rss ; indifferent to, if not actually contemptuous of,
Universal Suffrage. Nor can his comparative dis-
dain for the latter be very much marvelled at if
only it be borne in mind, for example, that out of
the furnace of Universal Suffrage, out of the
crucible of the Ballot-box, there have come, on the
one hand, a pure Democracy as in America, and, on
the other, a pure Despotism as in France. Give
me—that is France (our pamphleteer almost seems
to say in so many words) Liberty of the Press, and
I care not for Universal Suffrage ! At any rate,
by comparison ! That is, to all intents and pur-
poses, the gist, that is the gravamen, of M.
Dupont-White's whole argument : that is the back-
bone of his entire disquisition. Fletcher of Saltoun
spoke not more sententiously or more emphatically
of the primordial value of the gift of song inspiring
the popular ballad-monger, as compared with the
authority devolving upon those legislators and
administrators among whom so little wisdom is said
to be in any way an essential qualification, accord-
ing to the cynical dictum of Oxenstiern. Freedom
of the Press, M. Dupont-White does not, it is true,
regard as an absolute political panacea. But—
short of that—he is its eulogist to the very utter-
most. He regards it as the first essential. He is
apparently content to restrict his demands to that
and to that alone—as a commencement. Liberty
of the Press first and foremost. Anything else you
please afterwards. The exordium of his pamphlet
—for the brochure is essentially oratorical in its
tone—the exordium of his pamphlet is perhaps
the very best part of it all. In it he descants
upon—how shall we better designate it than
by the very word itself ?—the decline of the
national esprit of France—that esprit which is
the arch indication of the genius and of the
aggregate idiosyncrasy, so to speak, of the
people—of the whole race of Frenchmen. Public
Affairs he regards as having sunk almost inde-
scribably in value in the national estimation—as
having dwindled into utter insignificance as com-
pared with matters of the most frivolous character.
At the first turn of the leaf, by the way, on
opening this pamphlet, we find disdain for
Universal Suffrage in the words qu'une base toute
ntatdrielle ne sugit pas a fonder yes gouvernements."
And, confronting this on the opposite page—under
the axiomatic assertion " r esprit baisse en France"—
we encounter this most sorrowful reflection on the
part of a philosophic politician like M. Dupont-
White—" Il faut etre bien jeune pour n'avoir pas
mentoire d'un temps ou la chose publique tenait plus
(le place dans les esprits, et trouvait des esprits plus
dclairds, plus inforines, plus curieux d'un avenir par
dela fin courant." Now, on the other hand, as the
s client signs of the general decadence, to what does
he point thdatre, la ddsuetude du sijlet: le
gout, c'est le (Milord," and so forth—while, around
him, he recognises--"popularite croissante des
journaux creux, des spectacles sus, des romans
arouses, de tout un art eiifin qui s'appele realisme
et que j'appelle egitisme, pour le choix fait de
certaines rdalitds. Li witness of all which he ap-
peals to the unanimous testimony of those homilies
d'oprit et d'dxperience, who have passed their whole
time in directing the public journals—such as they
..re—men whose testimony, he says, cannot be dis-
dlined, adding (as he says this), very finely, ." lls
sort a regard du public comme le cavalier qui a
la longue habitude d'une monture et qui la sent mollir,
delaillir sous sa main et entre ses jambes." Referring
to the ancien regime—in one sense almost wistfully—
he regrets in regard to it what he calls "the nobility
of taste, the elevation, and the intellectual culture
distinguishing an epoch—formal sometimes, but
passionate and sensitive to great things. . . In
those days," he mys, "you might speak of the com-