The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-28 00:00:00

(From the Times.)
An ancient conqueror was said to have chained
victory to his chariot. The Emperor of the French
appears to have secured a similar hold on success.
If his visits to Windsor and his interview at Stutt-
gart recorded his admission into the family of
Kings, M. Dupin's. return to official functions at
the Court of Cassation may be considered as the
most authentic acknowledgment that the present
Government is practically and regularly established.
The weakness of the Empire has always consisted
in its dependence upon the army and the people, to
the exclusion of the refined and educated classes.
The literature of France is scarcely represented
among the supporters of the reigning dynasty; and
the old Parliamentary celebrities naturally keep
aloof from a system in which there is no place for
eloquence or for independent action. M. De Mont-
alena bert soon withdrew, from religious or sectarian
motives, his hasty adhesion to the Power which had
superseded the Republic. M. Guizot consoles him-
self for the loss of liberty at home by denunciations
of English policy in all parts.of the world. Even
M. Thiers, the most persevering and effective pro-
phet of Bonapartism, abstains from an open adhe-
sion to the heir and imitator of Napoleon. M. Dupin,
a personage of equal importance with any of the
ancient leaders of the Chamber, has been the first
to recognise the absolute monarch who now reigns
as the legitimate successor of three constitutional
sovereigns. The significance of his recent appoint-
ment principally depends on his public resigna-
tion of the same office in 1852. The Attorney-
General of the Court of Cassation has never been
considered a political functionary ; and even under
the Parliamentary system,. like the Quees Advo-
cate in England, he retained his post without refer-
ence to the state of parties or to changes of Ministry.
M. Dupin himself wasProcu re ur-G eneral for 22 y ears,
including the whole reign of Louis Philippe, the Re
public of 1848, and the beginning of the Dictator-
ship assumed by Louis Napoleon. During a large
portion of the same period he was President of the
Chamber of Deputies, and the coup d'etat of
December found him holding a similar position in
the National Assembly. During the continuance
of the Orleanist monarchy he was generally in op-
position, or rather he was at all times the acknow-
ledged leader of the so-called Tiers Parti, although
he was known to be the confidential friend and
adviser of Louis Philippe. "He revenged him-
self," it was said by an unfriendly critic, "on the
Ministers of the Crown for his complaisance to the
King."
No living French politician can look back on a
longer career of eminence. During the Hundred
Days M. Dupin voted against the serville procla-
mation of Napoleon as the " saviour of his coun-
try." After Waterloo he was one of the first to
propose the abdication and to resist the hopeless
pretensions of Napoleon 11. The Restoration
threw him into the ranks of the Constitutional Op-
position, and his professional engagements I rought
him frequently into cbnnexion with the parties who
were then proscribed. One of the ablest advocates
at the bar, he defended Sir Robert Wilson in the
affair of Lavalette, as well as a more illustrious and
unfortunate victim of the law. It was M. Dupin
who devised for Marshal Ney a technical defence
founded on the capitulation of Paris, and at the
same time drew up the apparently extemporaneous
refusal to profit by so -ignominious a plea, which
afterwards electrified the Court and audience when
duly delivered by the indignant prisoner. In the
midst of his forensic practice and political acti-
vity M. Dupin found time to become one of
the most prolific of modern writers on jurispru-
dence. It is said by those who depreciase his
powers that his treatises, which rival in number
those of Chitty or of Archbold, are rather ready
and useful than profound ; but their author has
never been accused of deficiency in any species of
practical ability. "He can even write Latin," it
was said, " bad Latin, it is true : but after all it
is Latin."

One of his sources of influence has always been
derived from the ready humour which accompanies
his unfailing good sense. Although well born and
wealthy, M. Dupin always affected the character of
a rough country gentleman, or rather of a thriving
freeholder. Professedly despising the mob of the
espitei and rejecting their political pretensions, he
identified himself as far as possible with the tastes
and prejudices of the dominant middle class. In
the chair of the Chamber of the Deputies he exer-
cised that active authority which apparently suits
the French better than the courteous impartiality
of an English Speaker ; but it was in the tumultu-
ous Assembly of 1849 that he most fully satisfied
his friends of the party of order. Audacious but
awkward Jacobins were cowed by the sneers and
epigrams of the President even more effectually
than by his frequent and unsparing reprimands.
There was always room in the Tribune for the mem-
bers of the Conservative majority. The Republi;
cans, even when they oetained a hearing, were
compelled to face an unfriendly audience without
the smallest protection from the chair. Although
opposed to the encroachments of the President,
M. Dupin was inclined to remain passive in the
conflict between two irreconcilable authorities,
whom an absurd Constitution had placed side by
side. He refused to give General Changarnier a
contingent order to command the troops appointed
for the defence of the Assembly. On the morning
of the 2d December he invited the members to
meet for deliberation, but he readily submitted to
the summons of an officer at the head of a file of
trocps, and he even remonstrated with a colleague
who attempted to harangue the troops, reminding
him of the impropriety of interfering with military
discipline. On the establishment of the Dictator-
ship he retained his office in the Court of Cessation,
which he had not thought it necessary to resign
even in the anarchical days of the Provisional Go-
vernment.
The scandal occasioned by his return to the same
post arises fromhis intimate connection with the
fallen dynasty. Soon after the restoration M.
Dupin became the professional adviser, and after-
wards the confidential fiend, of the Duke of Or-
leans. After the flight of Charles X. he was one
of those who counselled Louis Philippa's acceptance
of the vacant crown. During the whole of the
King's reign the same relations were continued,
no withstanding the frequent opposition carried on
by M. Dupin in the Chamber. During the wild
and discreditable confusion of February, 1848, he
appeared in his natural position as the friend and
adviser of the royal family. It was M. Dupin who
proposed to the Duchess of Orleans that she should
proceed with her children to the Chamber of Depu-
ties ; and, accompanying her there, he announced
to his colleagues the abdication of the King, and
the accession of the Count de Paris under the re-
gency of his mother. When the violence of the
mob and the caprice of Lamartine had destroyed
the last chance of a legal termination to the crisis,
M. Dupin, after his practical fashion, acquiesced
in the Republic till the return of better times ;
but the universal submission to a state of things
which scarcely counted a single genuine sup-
porter was thought compatible with the strictest
principles of Royalism. The Republic," said M.
Tillers, " divides us less than any other arrange-
ment," and for a time his words seemed to be
true.

M. Dupin was intrusted with the care of the
large property belonging to the exiled royal
family, and at the death of Louis Philippe he
was named an executor of his will. It was in
this capacity that in 1852 he addressed to the
President of the Republic a well reasoned and
dignified remonstrance against the confiscation of
the Orleans property. At the same time he
resigned his office as Procureur of the Court of
Cessation. "It had been," he said, "his duty for
more than twenty years to call on the court to
enforce the law. It was impossible to retain his
position when all law was overruled." The subse-
quent judicial decision that the President had acted
in a legislative and sovereign capacity would cer-
tainly not have tended to remove his well-founded
objections.
The Orleans property has not been restored, but
the former Attorney-General has resumed his func-
tions. His personal dignity would have been better
consulted by continuance in retirement ; his ambi-
tion can be little flattered by a return to the position
which he filled in 1830, and his ample fortune seems
to exclude the suggestion of mercenary motives. It
is more probable that he feels that impatience of
repose which not unfrequently disturbs the old age
of energetic men. Even if a constitution is in store
for France, M. Dupin at 75 cannot afford to wait
for it. The six years of the English statute of limi-
tations will soon have consecrated by lapse of time
the Orleans confiscation. The old King's executor
has personal duties to discharge besides those which
he owes to his testator. If Franco chooses to be
governed absolutely, it is better that the laws should
be administered by a learned and experienced func-
tionary. Whatever may be the motives of the
veteran politician, his adhesion is a triumph to the
Imperial cause. Through the whole of his long life
M. Dupin has represented that large section of
ptthlic opinion which, especially with Frenchmen,
consists in the recognition of accomplished facts.