The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-16 00:00:00

will of the people as expressed by' universal suf-
frage." The Emperor replied :
" My Cousin,—Notwithstanding the distance, and a very
long separation, I have never doubted the heartfelt interest
with which you follvwed all the chances of my destiny. I
have felt great pleasure in the letter which br gs me your
congratulations. I thank you for them. The news ycu
give me of the vocation of your son for the military career,
and of his entering a regiment of Carabineers, has not been
less agreeable to me. When circumstances permit I shall
be, believe me, most happy to see you. Whereupon, my
cousin,. I pray God to have yon in his holy keeping.—
Written-at the Palace of the Tuileries, Feb. 9, 1853.

"NAPOLEON."
M. Bonaparte came to France in June, 1854. On
his arrival in Paris he received, through the Mini-
ster of State, an invitation to dine at St. Cloud,
where the Court then was. The invitation was ad-
dressed to Prince Jerome. The moment he entered.
the Palace the Emperor handed him a declaration,
drawn up by M. Abbatucci, Minister of Justice, M.
Troplong, President of the Senate, and M. Baroche, ,
President of the Council of State, setting forth that
"M. Jerome Bonaparte is to be considered in
France as legitimate ;" that " he is French by birth,
and, if he has lost the character, a decree can restore
it to him in virtue of the 18th clause of the Civil
Code."

In a short time M. Bonaparte perceived that his
presence in Paris and the kindness of the Emperor
towards him excited certain diicontent elsewhere.
He informed the Emperor of the fact, and received
from his Majesty the following letter :

"Mr dear Cousin,---I have received your two letters. I
had already received one from my uncle
.Jerome, who told
me that he would never consent to yourremaining in France.
I replied, that as the French laws recognize you as legi-
timate, I could not do otherwise than acknowledge
you as a relation, and that if your position in Paris was
embarassing it was for you alone to judge of that—that
Napoleon, if he conducted himself well, had nothing to
apprehend from family revelations, &c. You must, with-
out irritating your father, continue to follow the course
which you have proposed to yourself. I will write to-mor-
row to Fould about the arrangements we agreed on.
" Compliments to Jerome, and believe in my sincere
friendship. "NAPOLEON."
On the 17th of April, 1855, M. Bonaparte, being
then at Baltimore, received from M. Fould,..Minis-
ter of State, a letter announcing to him that on his
return to France he was to assume the title of
Duke de Sartene (a town in Corsica), "to put an
end to difficulties which you are aware of;" and
also that it was the Emperor's intention that his
son should bear the title of " Count de Sartene."
This proposition was rejected.
Prince Napoleon and his sister, the Princess
Mathilde, then demanded of the Emperor and the
Conseil de Famine, that "M M. Paterson (Mr.
Jerome Bonaparte and his son) should not exercise
any of the rights which belong exclusively to the
legitimate issue, and that consequently M. Jerome
Paterson and his descendants should be prohibited
from bearing the name of Bonaparte." The Con-
seil de Famine decided in favour of their bearing
the name of Bonaparte, but decided illegally, as the
memoir maintains, that they should not have the
right to avail themselves of the benefit of the 201st
and 202 d articles of the lode Napoleon relating to
succession. The Conseil de Fan2ille was composed
of MM. Abbatucci, Fould, Troplong, De Morey,
Baroche, and Orrano. The point is argued at
some length in the memoir.

On the 10th of November, 1855, Marshal Pelis-
sier, at his head-quarters before Sebastopol, named
" M. Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte" lieutenant in
the 7th Dragoons, Knight of the Legion of Hon-
our. This nomination was confirmed on the 24th
of the same month. But on the 13th of June,
1856, a letter of permission to wear the decoration
of the Medjidie of Turkey was addressed to M.
Bonaparte, jun., as M. Bonaparte Paterson." This
permission, granted to him under a name which
was not YE; proper designation, was not accepted.
At the same time, the proposition of the Duchy of
Sartene was renewed to M. Bonaparte, the father.
Under these circumstances the latter addressed the
following letter to the Emperor, dated July 25,
1856 :

" Sire,—l received the enclosed from my son a few days
ago. I kept it to reflect on its contents before I should send
it to your Majesty. It breathes the sentiments of honour
in which my son was brcught up, and I pray your Majesty
to grant his request. It is no real dishonour to a man to
be born a bastard and in accepting the consequences. Had
I been in that category I should have long since accepted,
with gratitude, the offers which which your Majesty con-
descended to make me. But as I was legitimately born—
and as I have always been acknowledged as such by my
family, by the laws of all countries, and by the whole world,
it would be the extreme of baseness and dishonour on my
part to accept a brevet of bastardy. I did not raise the ques-
tion, neither do I fear it. And if the family council (eon-
sell de famille) has rendered an illegal and unjust decision,
it at least stopped short of depriving me of the name I bore
from my birth to the 50th year of my age, without its ever
having been contested.

" The object and the victim of intrigues, calumnies, and
falsehoods, it only remains for me, Sire, to repeat the
prayer I addressed to your Majesty in my letter of the 20th
of March, to go with my son and wait in exile that justice
which I am convinced Heaven reserves for me, sooner or
later, and to request that your Majesty will be pleased to
("Tent me an audience to take your orders for the future.
b

"J. N. BONAPARTE,"

The memorial concludes by praying the tribune
to order that an inventory be taken of the property
left by his Imperial Highness Prince Jerome, and
that a partition be made of it :
" On this demand, which must be admitted in any case,
M. Bonaparte will be able to maintain the legitimacy of his
filiation and to repel any exception on the ground that the
affair has been already decided, which might be pleaded.
As for Madame Elizabeth Paterson, who has taken no part
in anything that has passed since the birth of her son, and
against whom to this day no direct attack has ever been
attempted, with whom it cannot be alleged that any deci-
sion, legal or not, has been pronounced, she will vindicate
the honour of her maternity, she will prove the validity of
her marriage, and she will claim all the rights which accrue
to her from the contract which preceded it. Now that
there is an interest created and present in the discus-
sion, and for the trial of the questions which this great
cause may give rise to, French magistrates holding the
code of laws in their hauls, and maintaining all the dignity
of their independence, will not make the holy authority
of marriage, and the sacred and legitimate rights of a
family, established for more than half a century, give way
to the ephemeral necessities of policy, or to the arbitrary
and capricious desires of absolute power, or to the We'd
complacency of its servants.

" BERRYER, Advocate.
" M. LEGRAND, Aveue."

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of
this case, for on the decision of the tribunals will
depend the legality of the first, or of the second
marriage.