The Sun.
London, England, 1858-02-04 00:00:00

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-72

[PS 40. STAMPED s`)•

THE FRENCH REFUGEES.

(Front the Times.)
Whatever interest this country might naturally
have felt in the legislation and police of the neigh-
bouring empire is now greatly augmonted by the
responsibilities we are supposed to incur by our
geographical 'position. In common with all the
other neighbours of France, we are expected so to
harmonise our municipal laws and usages with her
own, that those whom she rejects shall not gain any-
thing by coming among us, but shall be within reach
of France, even beyond her frontiers. This is a
case of pressure or political hydrostatics, if we may
se
edescribe
adts a fe
itt. As it is, when France puts on the
screw,
pounds per inch to the pres-
sure of her system, her less favoured or less con-
tented citizens escape into this freer atmosphere.
It is France herself that brings this about. We
don't invite those people. We are not even aware
of their presence, except by the annoyance they
occasionally give us. As we read our police reports
or pass through our less reputable thoroughfares we
become painfully aware that there are many fo-
reigners among us, but the first thought suggested
is by no means how best to retain them. We assume
that they were driven hereby crime, or misfortune,
or extreme opinions, and it is according to the
genius and vocation of this country to leave them
alone as much as they will allow us to do. France,
however, having first driven them here, holds us
answerable for their presence, and desires us to
give an account of their behaviour. This itself is
no slight .hardship. Frenchmen and Italians driven
here by France, ofoourse, are in a state of perma-
pent,conspiracriagainat !sr. They cannot meat
without' conspirffig; every Eine they dine at the
same restaurant it is a revolutionary. banquet ;
every interchange of letters is a criminal corre-
spondence, and every convening a cabal. A
foreign language and national peculiarities inter-
pose no slight obstacle to the surveillance of our
police, who might hear a good deal of French and
Italian mischief without being the wiser for it. Yet
we are to keep a better watch on these people than
the French did themselves. This hardship is now
to be aggravated. Franco threatens another turn
of the screw. She is tieing high pressure. The
bill before the Carps Legislatif places every partisan
the least committed against the Emperor or his
Government entirely at the mercy of the police. It
would hold deportation, the proviuces, Algeria,
end even the p-nitential prisons, always hanging
over their heads. It would reduce a large propor-
tion of educated Fiaece, perhaps a moiety of those
who are capable of opinions, to the condition of
convicts on their parole. Now, England, with all
its demerits, is a pleasanter place of residence than
Algeria under the eye of the police ; and an apart-
ment in the neighbourhood of Leicester-square is
more to the taste of a lively young Frenchman or
Italian than a well-regulated penitential establish-
ment. This measure, therefore, if it passes into
law, will undoubtedly send us more Frenchmen
or Italians, at the very time when the French Go-
vernment is calling upon us either to get rid of
these gentlemen altogether, or to keep them under
the eye of the police. The new pressure there is to
be met by an equivalent pressure here. We are
both to have -more of these bad subjects, and to
take more care of them.
The chief pressure of this Bill consists, net in the
provisions directed against incendiary publications
and correspondence, the manufacture or possession
of destructive materials, or anything that may here-
after be done ; but in the unscrupulous raking up
of the past. The seventh article appears to us by
the light of our own laws, a terrible one. It places
again at the bar, or, to speak more correctly, under
durance, the many thousands who were compromised
in the tumultuous period of the last Revolution and
its results, and why', having paid the penalty, have
since lived in peace. It proposes that any person '
who may have been arrested in connexion with
the events of May and June, 18t8, of June, 1849,
or December, 1851, and whom "grave facts" may
point out as again dangerous t- public safety, may
be confined in a department of the empire, or iu
Algeria, or expelled from the territo.y. The
" gravity" of the facts on which a new penalty is
to be imposed on these offenders long ago punished,
and now free, is, of course, en affair for the
Execuive, and every petty magistrate or chief of
police is to be at liberty to send to Algeria, or to
banish from France, any one who happens to have
been suspected ten years ago, and whose name ac-
cordingly exists in a judicial list. There are mon
who are made more moderate politicians by having
suffered a fow months' imprisonment for a monetary
indiscretion. There are also men whose ardour is
not abated, and whose temper is not softened, by a
recollection of this sort, and who therefore occa-
sionally give vent to sore feelings. In their case
the least allusion to the past, not in the most peni-
tential and deferential tone, will be a "grave fact."
It has only to be reported in the proper quarter,
and they will bare the alternative of Algeria, a
distant department, or England before them. They
may possibly think the last mentioned the best, and
not leave it to the French Executive to decide for
them. Thus we are threatened with a new impor-
tation of Frenchmen and Italians, old offenders,
and suspected to be :till dangerous. If there should
he such an addition to our existing responsibilities,
whom have we to thank for it but the framers of
this measure I But we are simultaneously called
on to keep persons of this sort in better order ; to
watch them ; to "repress" them ; to observe with
whom they associate ; to keep account of their
buying and selling ; to note their favourite studies ;
in a word, to make England do the duty of Algeria,
or " a department of the Empire."
It appears, indeed, from our Paris correspon-
dence that this clause has been found happily
impossible, and that the boldest of the Emperor's
advisers recoil from the prospect of another
unprovoked collision with several large classes
of Frenchmen. Many of these were prepared
to wing their flight at once before the net was
spread over them. The clause, therefore, is to be
modified. It appears, too, that the insertion of the
word " publicly," or the omission of the whole clause
directed against offensive language, will probably
for the present leave French society rather less at
the mercy of spies than it was to have been
placed by this measure. There is still public
opinion in France ; or, at all events, some of that
good sense which enables Governments "to see
a rock ahead," and give up a dangerous course.
But, whether this Bill passes or not, and however
it may be curtailed of its terrors, it exhibits the
present temper of those who surround the Emperor,
and wish to dictate not only his domestic but his
foreign policy. The original Bill is only too much
of a piece with the demands made upon the neigh-
bouring Governments. We, too, as well as France,
were to be asked to apply ourselves to the task of
defining, ascertaining, and enrolling the compro-
mised and still da. gerous members of society. We
were to place them under watchful eyes and ears,
and to be ready at the imperial summons to impri-
son, to deport, to surrender—any how to repress
them. France herself, it now appears, is not so
anxious to augment the responsibilities of Govern-
ment and the powers of the police. It probably
thinks, too, that it has enough espionage already.
Much as they value the Emperor, they value them-
selves also, and they value what is left of their
liberty and institutions. England can hardly do
less, and it may even do more.