The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-31 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY. EVE.N.IIW, AUGUST 31, 1866.

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—Perhaps there may be more than one
opinion in France as to the merits of the present
Imperial regime, but we should not be surprised if
there were many disposed to prefer the rule of the
Marquis de Larochejaquelein. Had this accom-
plished nobleman the destinies of his country in his
hands, we know from his pamphlet, La France et
la Paix, that his policy would be La France et la
Guerre. The Marquis has never been able to digest
a United Italy; how can he be called upon to
swallow a United Germany ? He does not see why
Venetia should be annexed to the kingdom of Victor
Emmanuel. He is rather in favour of a restoration
of the old Adriatic Republic. Was not the Mar-
quis's " great-grandfather on the mother's side,"
Ambassador of Louis XV. to France's ally, the
Great Republic of Venice? And was not his grand-
father killed at the head of his regiment during the
Seven Years' War ? Why cannot. the policy of
France be what it was in the good old times of his
illustrious ancestors ? In those days France sought
her strength in the division of her " natural rivals,"
Germany and Italy. Why should she to-day con-
sent to the union of those two countries, and look
upon them as natural friends ? It is not that the
Marquis is afraid ; who is afraid ? France is not
afraid ; but her position is lowered in the most de-
plorable manner ; her neighbours are aggrandising
themselves at her cost. The ungrateful Italians will
get back Savoy and Nice ; the overbearing Ger-
mans will claim Alsace and Lorraine. Already such
are the boasts of those countries—boasts which the
journals of perfidious Albion delight in re-echoing
and applauding. Could the Marquis of Larocheja-
quelin or any other leader of Opposition take the
place of the Emperor Napoleon, we may know what
we ought to look forward to. An immediate alliance
of France with Austria and with the " nations"
now subjugated by Prussia, and war against the
latter Power with the least possible loss of time.
It is well that the Emperor has still a word to say
on the subject, and that he has sent Count Bismark
the assurance that there will not "in any case" be
an interruption of friendly relations between France
and Prussia. Apart from the futility of the alleged
provocation, it would seem as if the mere prospect
of war ought to strike the French as a most
terrible evil. Those who arc familiar with the con-
dition of France only a quarter of a century ago,
and revisit that country now after a long interval,
cannot fail to read as they run, on a mere glance at
the road between Calais and Paris, the marvellous
improvement in every branch of material well-being.
We are not such blind partisans of the Emperor's
Government as to ascribe all this progress merely
to its wisdom and providence; but there is little
doubt that a people's prosperity, independent of all
other causes, springs from the mere continuance of
peace, and few will deny that Napoleon's policy has
been in the main pacific. On general principles we
are not partial to what is . termed +"
personal "
government; we deem human life too precarious,
and individual judgment too fallible, to rejoice that
the well-being of the world should depend on the
arbitrary will of one man. Yet it has happened
more than once in France that one man has been
clearly in the right when the vest majority of his
people were wrong. Many of the greatest
achievements of France in our age have been
owing to the strong initiative of the Emperor
Napoleon, who has had to contend with power-
ful opposition, and to await in assured self-re-
liance till public opinion had time to veer round
to him. On the other hand, not a few of those
acts for which the Emperor is justly blamed have
been less the consequence of his own lack of
discretion than of his too ready deference to a
party cry, and too great eagerness to minister to
the foibles of a restless and ambitious people.
On what ground should the Emperor of the
French at this present moment depart from his
original programme, " The Empire is Peace ?" On
what ground should he seek a quarrel with Prussia?
Is it from jealousy of the aggrandizement of that
Power, and in vindication of the theory of com-
pensations and the rectification of frontiers ? Or is
it out of mere sympathy with the " oppressed na-
tionalities " of Hanover or Cassel, Homborg or
Frankfort, that all this clamour arises? If the
latter is the motive, if France thinks that violence
is done to the people's will in those small States,
how can she expect that two wrongs will make one
right? How can her claims to the left bank of the
Rhine, or to the Landau and Sarrelouis districts,
justify the usurpation of Bismark's Government?
Should France make herself a partaker of iniquity
and take a bribe for her connivance at her neighbour's
spoliation ? Count Bismark, we are told, proceeds to
the absorption of territories on the mere right of con-
quest, and without a previous appeal to the people's
suffrage. He has no faith in plebiscites, and acts in
these matters on a different plan from that followed
by Piedmont in Romagna and Tuscany, or by.
France in Savoy and Nice, at Alentone and Rocca-
bruna. But he lays his bill for annexation before
the Prussian Legislature. He consults a German
Representative Assembly on the fate of a German
population ; and not only finds a unanimous assent
to his views, bat has to parry the reproach of
timidity, and to plead the necessity which binds
him to half measures. For our own part, we must
be allowed to doubt whether universal suffrage is
the best means of getting at the people's real wishes
with respect even to the apparently simple question
of nationality. There is no doubt that the move-
ment in favour of ' unification' has become almost
irresistible throughout Germany, both North and
South. Count Bismark, whose daring no man will
dispute, is somewhat appalled at the ardour of the
people, and strives to moderate it, in consideration
less of domestic than of foreign obstacles that may
rise against the full and immediate accomplishment
of the nation's too eager aspirations. The
Germans are everywhere out-Bismarking Bismark.
Can there be any more decided approval of the
Minister's conduct than is expressed by the revul-
sion of feelings in favour of a man so universally,
and not undeservedly, detested only three months
since? The man himself may yet be, for aught we
know, as obnoxious as ever; but the work he has in
hand is the union and freedom —it is the creation
of a nation. There is hardly any means for
which he may not obtain a Bill of Indemnity iu
consideration of the great end he has in view. But,
perhaps, we shall be told that Germany should not
be united, whether she be willing or not ? M. de
Larochjaquelein is evidently of that opinion, as he
recommends that war should be declared before the
constitution of the German Empire may array all
Germany against France. " France," he says,
" must be the ally of those Germans who protest
against the violence which places them under the
yoke of Prussia. The moment the Germans be-
lieve that France desires war against Germany they
will all be united against her." Precisely so ; the
difference between Prussia and the minor States of
Germany is a domestic quarrel, like that between
man and wife, with which a stranger can only med-
dle at his peril. Any interference on the part of
France, any championship of the weaker against
the stronger, especially if backed by demands of
compensation or rectification of frontiers, is the very
best help that Count Bismarck and the promoters of
German unity could desire iu the furtherance of
their undertaking. The Emperor Napoleon knows
this, and, whatever may be his views as to the future
destinies of the German people, he is willing to al-
low them, as he allowed the Italians, to work out
their own problem without let or hindrance, well
knowing by experience that national instincts are
only strengthened by thwarting them, and that it is
not easy to say to a people, " So far, and no fur.
ther."

HERALD.—The year 1866 is not one to be marked
with white chalk in the annals of France. Of the
fourteen years of the reign of the Emperor Na-
poleon 111. this has certainly been the least success-
ful, as in this year two misfortunes have happened
to his Government. The check to .his policy which
has resulted from the extraordinary success of Prussia
in the German war, and the retirement from Mexico
partly in deference to the attitude of the United

States, partly from a conviction of the hopelessness
of that distant enterprise, form exceptions to the
usual prosperity of the Emperor of the French,
who up to this time has had it nearly all his own
way in the world. By a successful employment of
the panacea of universal suffrage, he not only placed
himself at the head of the most turbulent and in-
tractable people that has ever taxed the patience of

rulers in ancient or modern times, but has managed
to restrain them within bounds, and direct their
impulses after a fashion which has been excelled by
no prince who has essayed to govern them since the
age of Louis XIV. Using the English alliance as
a sort of backbone to his policy, he has restrained
the ambition of Russia, defended the Christians of
Turkey, made moral protests against tyranny in
Poland, usurpation in Denmark, civil war in Ame-
rica, pushed forward the landmarks of civilisation
in China and Japan. Acting on his own respon-
sibility, and without hindrance from England, he
aided Italy in 1859 to shake off from her that
pressure of Germany which hindered her develop-
ment and prevented her union as one nation. So
far Louis Napoleon was successful. No enterprise
that he undertook seemed to miscarry. People said
of him that like Alexander, he should have a slave
at his bedside to remind him every morning that
he was mortal. They told him of that old fable
which taught that the man who was uniformly
successful should pray for some misfortune to se-
cure him against the anger of the gods. His was
the greatest power on the Continent of Europe.
His legions dominated one continent, and had in-
terfered in another to establish a monarchical go-
vernment on the ruins of a republic. He was the
arbiter of the Eastern hemisphere, he was a power
in the West, and yet there was something inse-