The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-04 00:00:00

M. DE MONTALEMBE.RT AND THE
FRENCH PRESS.

(From the Daily _Yews.)

No man of our time has better excuses for de-
spising his fellow-creatures than the present Em-
peror of the French. No man has a better right to
be disconcerted and surprised at the sound of a
solitary challenge of defiance in the midst of an
acclaiming chorus of contented lacqueys. The day
before yesterday all the puppy-dogs that fawn and
wriggle at the feet of power were preparing their
little yelp of satisfaction at the wisdom and policy
of an act of grace which had the double merit of
dismissing and disgracing a man of eccentric hon-
our and most inconvenient courage. When the
news came that M. de Montalembert had refused
the Imperial " pardon," these spaniels of success,
with their ever keen scent for mean motives, were
beginning to cry out, " Behold a martyr, who
will go to prison, and will pay a fine, though the
gendarmes won't have him at any price." What a
pity the flunky theory of resistance should miss its
mark ! What an anthology of epigrams inspired
by the spirt of the pantry we have lost now that
know precisely how the poisoned shaft of Imperial
clemency was arrested in its flight ! For the first
time these seven years, in France, irresponsible
power finds itself face to face with a will as un-
quailing and as resolute as its own, armed with a
just cause, and a " belief in right." At this strange
and unusual apparition the guilty conscience of
Usurpation starts, as in a troubled dream. Despo-
tism that hesitates is lost.

In the anxiety to connect the name of Montalem-
bert with a dishonourable date, and to season the
injury of a favour with the spice of insult, the bounds
of legality were easily overstepped. and a techni-
cal impropriety or two brushed aside, by one whose
idea of law is " something to be broken.,' On
Thursday morning, the 2d of December, the
Moniteur;announced with its customary glib assur-
ance and easy superiority, that the Emperor had
remitted the sentence of the Correctional Police.
Shortly after noon on the same day, M. de Mont-
alembert, less magnificent than the Moniteur but
more legal, presented himself at the Registrar's
office, accompanied by MM. Berryer and Dufaure,
to lodge an appeal against the sentence which the
Master of the Moniteur, making a law unto himself,
had, with a splendid negligence of phrase and a
superb indifference to legal forms, remitted in the
early morning.
Can the right of appeal duly exercised within
the delay allowed by law be arrested by a pardon
emanating from the Fountain of Dishonour itself ?
That is now the question which, if M. de Montalem-
bert and his counsel were disposed, like Favorinus,
the philosophical grammarian, to decline to argue
with a man in command of thirty legions, would
easily be solved according to la poi du plus fort.
But we have good reason to doubt whether the
illustrious apologist of liberty in these latter days
will be quite so complaisant as the Pagan of the
second century, " I have appealed," he says,
" within the term allowed by the law against the
sentence pronounced against me. No Government
in France has had, up to the present, the right to
remit a penalty .which is not definitive." The issue
is a very simple one. The cause is still sub judice,
and the condemnation, pending the appeal, is, pro
tanto, null and of no effect. Until the time allowed
by the law for an appeal had expired, was there
any final judgment recorded upon which the Im-
perial prerogative could separate ? Now that an
appeal is duly lodged there can be no matter of
doubt that the sentence of the lower court is sus-
pended, and that the defendant is no longer in law
a prisoner. Was he a prisoner at the moment when
the " pardon" appeared, when he had not yet
appealed, his right of appeal remaining legally
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technical considerations, the question that concerns
unexhausted ? These are points to exercise the
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.is—shall force or law predominate ? M. de
Montalembert's letter to the Cardinal Archbishop
of Paris leaves no doubt of his own high sense of
the eternal cause for which he is called upon to
plead. Protesting, with a noble and calm disdain-
fulness, which only valets will misinterpret, against
the last indignity of Imperial favour, which it was
reported the Archbishop had solicited, he writes:—
"Proud and honoured by a condemnation which
proves my fidelity to the political principles of my
whole life, and which comes so opportunely to jus-
tify in the eyes of Europe and of posterity all that
I have said or thought on the actual condition of
France, I have at this moment no other desire than
to leave to my judges the responsibility of their
acts, and I could only regard in the light of a real
wrong (injure) the slightest favour emanating from
the Imperial Government. In the midst of the
which I have been the victim, my
cthheantfieasisof
owfwhich I have been the witness, and of
honour has been intact. It is to preserve it from
all attempt, even in appearance, that I take the
liberty of expressing to your Eminence a disquie-
tude, perhaps superfluous, but perfectly legitimate."
Words like these outlive occasions and " sen-
tence" empires. It was hoped, no doubt, that the
terms of the " pardon" would detach M. de Monta-
lembert more than ever from the sympathies of the
Liberal party, by the perfidious association of his
name with the 2d of December; but the avrox ani-
mus of a man who never pandered to the vulgar or
bent the knee to perjury, is all too strong in honour