The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-04 00:00:00

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The French law of the Press is a intft-ftFaifitei--.7
nal regulation with which we have nottiolt ifionr S
duty frequently or pointedly to meddle. It is A
part, and perhaps an indispensable part, of a
system under which the French nation is content
to live, and so long as they do not complain of it
neither shall we. But the case is altered when
; a severe reflection on the English Government is
made the ground of a warning; and when it is
assumed that the good-will of a nation which
allows to itself the most unlimited liberty in can-
vassing publicly its own acts and those of its neigh-
, bours is to be conciliated by censure or punishment
directed against its critics, it is time for us to say
a word on our own bchalf. So far as the warning
recently given to the periodical in which have
lately appeared the sentiments of M. de Montalem-
bert on the present state of Italian affairs may be
considered as a proof of the good-will of the
French Government, we appreciate the aet just in
proportion as we appreciate that good-will.--that
is, we need scarzely say, very highly ; but, so far
as the warning seems to imply that there is any
wish in this nation that the already impaired
liberty of speech and writing in France should
be still further curtailed in deference to our feel-
ings and susceptibilities, we beg entirely to repu-
diate the assumption. To say truth, such an attempt
to spare our feelings comes a little too late. We
have for years been the target at which a large
portion of the French press have been in the habit
of launching their arrows, the only mark at which
they could aim with perfect harmlessness. By all
means let that impunity continue. On our own
ground, and on our own domestic topics, we ought
to be ashamed if we are not a match for the whole
press of France without requiring a too powerful
Government to enter the lists in our behalf. In the
field of reason and argument we are quite willing
to confront even M. Dc Montalembert himself, and
we desire no triumph over him except such as rea-
son and argument can give us. Little as we agree
with him in his conclusions, he has not transgressed,
nor, indeed, reached the limits of free and fair dis-
cussion, and we feel humiliated at being obliged to
combat an open and honourable adversary, who,
while we can write and say what we will, is obliged
to measure every phrase and to exclude every con-
struction which a jealous and 'hostile Government
can force upon his words, if he would not buy his
rhetorical triumph at the expense of fine, of impri-
sonment, or of banishment. _ _ _

M. De Montalembert has written with his usual
force and eloquence an appeal in favour of the Pope
and his Government. As far as the restraint under
which every political writer in France labours
would permit, and further, indeed, as the result has
proved, than was prudent, M. De Montalembert
has expressed his disapproval of the conduct of the
French Government. England, of course, could ex-
pect no better treatment. M. De Montalembert
has, indeed, done us the justice to show, what can-
not well be denied, that for the present state of
affairs in hely in general, and in the Stntes of the
Church in particular, England is in no degree respon-
sible. We did all we could to prevent the war,
we did nothing whatever to impede the peace,
for which we were avowedly most anxious,
and the whole of our offence is strictly limited
to an open sympathy with the people of the
Legations in their anxiety, if possible, to be
emancipated from the leaden dzspotism of the
Pope. M. de Montalembert considers the conduct
of England to be ignoble. The word is harsh, but
from such a man, on such a subject, we could ex-
pect nothing better. M. de Montalembert is of all
men best calculated to represent the conflict be-
tween the spiritual and temporal elements. He is
a complete duality, two souls in one body—a tem-
poral Montalembert, who is a of the school
of Somers and "Walpole ; a spiritual Montalembert,
whose views, whose prejudices, whose animosities,
are not a hair's-breadth above the level of the
monachism of what he delights to call the great
ages of faith—the barbarous, the ignorant, we had
almost said the brutal, middle times. He has made
to himself an eclectic theory with regard to England.
He admires, he extols her laws, her constitution,
her free spirit, her gigantic progress ; he sees but
one grievous fault in her—her Protestantism. This
learned and acute man has actually persuaded him-
self that England is what she is, not in conse-
quence, but in spite of her respect for individual
opinion and private judgment, and that, while her
industrial, commercial, and martial greatness would
remain the same, her moral and intellectual tone
would be much raised if she could only be induced
to exchange Protestantism for Catholicism. He
actually believes that a nation which has risen
to an unparalleled pitch of grandeur and prosperity
by allowing to its people freer action, freer speech,
and freer thought than have ever been enjoyed
elsewhere, would sot the seal on its success by
abandoning the very means by which it was at-
tained, by abstaining from the perusual of almost
every great author she has produced, in obedience
to the Index Expurgatorins, and by submitting her
actions to the control of Bishops and Cardinals and
her thoughts to the direction of monks and friars.
This is M. de Montaletnbert's theory, but it is not
ours. We believe that it is not in spite of, bat
mainly by reason of her Protestantism, that Eng-
land has become what she is, and that it is not in
spite of, but by reason of her Catholicism that Italy
has become what she is. If it be true that it is by
the independence and self-reliance of individuals
that England has attained her present greatness,
we hold that whatever tends to diminish that inde-
pendence and self-reliance tends to diminish the
elements of success. We cannot all be two persons
distinct from each other—slaves one-half the day,
and free the other half ; and as we have cast in our
lot with freedom, we must even take it altogether
and claim for our psople the right of selecting for
themselves the means of their eternal as well as of
their temporal welfare. M. de Montalembert tells
us that the days of Wellington and Nelson, of
Burke and Chatham have gone by, and he warns
us against the folly, in cur declining state, of pro-
voking the wrath of 100,000,000 of sincere Catho-
lics. We should like. tie know why they,
should have more to fear—now that we have re-
moved the temporal disabilities from the Roman
Catholics, under which they groaned during the
lives of the great men who, as M. de Montalembert
truly tells us, are dead—from his devout 100,000,000
than we had at the time when we debarred our
Roman Catholic fellow-subjects from the rights and
duties of citizens. The temporalities of the Church
of Rome must be valuable, indeed, in the eyes of
her faithful sons, if they prize their retention
more highly than the emancipation of their co-reli-
gionists from laws which pursued them through
every period of their existence, and endeavoured,
not in vain, to embitter and degrade their life from
the cradle to the grave. From such a censor we
may accept the epithet of ignoble without shame
and without surprise.
The position which M. de Montalembert takes
up with regard to the question between the Pope
and the Legations, when clearly defined, over-
throws itself. lie admits the right of resistance in
case of misgovernment as broadly as anyesWhig
member of the Convention which placed Wnliam
and Mary en the throne of these Islands. lie does
rot deny that there has been misgovernment, if not
by, at any rate in the name of the Pope ; but he
refuses altogether to permit the subjects of the Pope
to be the judges whether the extent of that mis-
governmcnt justifies them in deposing their present
ruler and placing the Government in other hands.
To allow the people to judge of this would be,
according to M. de Nlontalembert, to sap the founda-
tions of ail government. With whom, then, is the
decision to lie ? Not with the Pope himself, for
that would be to deny the right of resistance
which M. de Montalembert distinctly admits ;
nor yet with the misgoverned people, for whom,
indeed, he has not the slightest sympathy, and
of whose intolerable grievances he never says a
single word from one end of his pamphlet to the
other. They have the right of res:stance, but
that right they must not exercise until their right
is made clear to the apprehension of minds like
that of M. de Montalembert himself ; and to him,
and such as he, the right will never be clear,
because he tells us distinctly that the spiritual
and temporal power must be united in the Papal
States in order that they may be separated
elsewhere. The upshot of all this is that the sub-
jects of the Pope are alone, of all mankind, bound
to submit with patience to any degree of tyranny,
' corruption, and injustice ; that they are selected
from the rest of the human race to fill the honourable
part of victims to the spiritual necessities of the
foreign members of the Roman Catholic faith ; and
that, once having been given to the Pope by Charle-
magne, and again secured in their allegiance by the
presence of a French army, they are bound in fetters
which they must never attempt to break. If it be
ignoble to dissent from this view we are willing to
undergo the stigma. 1% e have never held that it is
our duty, either by secret intrigue or by open force,
to deprive the Pope or any other bad Sovereign of a
single subject or a single square mile of territory;
but we are equally clear that the question whether
the Government of the Pope is any longer endurable
is a question not for M. de Montalembert, nor the
Archbishop of Bordeaux, nor the Emperor Napoleon,
nor the Emperor Francis, but for the people who
have the misfortune to live under that Government.ion
We claim for them the right to decide that que s,
for themselves, and we fearlessly denouncee aet stuandbld
human freedom the acts of any Government oyr the
versive of the first principles of
society
doctrines of any Church that inalienable right.-7shall seek to deny
them that indestructible and human
Times.