Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1850-05-04
FROM OUR PARIS CORRESPONDENT.
PARIS, APRIL IL, 1850.

Press and the salons. 1t was in reference to bill
regulating the punishment of deportation or exile.
The uncertain state of politics in France the exas-
peraton OF parties, tending, is not permitted to
doubt, to violent collision, of very doubtful ISSUE
give to this question an actually which explains
the interest il excited. Every public man and
almost every private man feels that il is personal
concern Of his own-that the law made to-day
might very possibly be applied to its authors to-
morrow. curious state things exists in France
respecting the penalty in question. Article IL of
the penal code defines deportation to consist in the
being transported and residing for life in place
determined by the law without the continental ter
ritory of the kingdom. The pain, applied to ordi-
nary offences, has had place, in the statute-book
since 1871, and applied to political offences since
1910. But the fact is that the place which was to
have been designated by subsequent law Gar tbe
residence Of the condemned never las been 50 do.
signated; 70 lie eject that under the empire,
those who incurred this pain were confined in the
fort of Chals. Castel and since then either in the
citadel Of Mount St. Michel or Of Doullens, within
the limits of France. It is in the latter that Bar
bes, Blanqui, and the other insurgents Of May and
June are now imprisoned. By the terms of the
present bill it is proposed that deportation and con-
finement in fortress shall be applied in all cases
of political crimes which, prior to the abolition of
capital punishment for political offences, were pun
ished with death. The bill designates the fortress
of Vathan, in the Marquesas Islands, as the place
Of confinement. Simple deportation without i'm
prisonment is awarded in cases where there are
declared to be extenuatng circumstances. The
Island OF Noukahiva is designated as the place Of
Punishment. The committee is of opinion that
| simple deportation may be legally applied to the
actual prisoners of Doullens. The pain already
existed; they were condemned to suffer it. The
present law only designates the place of punish
ment, and will not therefore be liable to objection
as an er post facto law. Confinement in the for
tress of Vaithan cannot be applied to them: this is
an aggravation of previous legislation.
The principal speaker against the bill was VIcToR
HUGO. This gentleman, this splendid orator, this
magnifceatgenus is henceforth lost ! am grieyed to
say, to the cause of order. 1t is thousand pites
that he, that LAMARTINE, that any men of their tenn
permanent, should be tempted to descend from the
ethereal element in which they find their proper
mode OF existence to swim in the troubled sea of
politics. Poets are not made Of the same stuff with
statesmen, and never attempt to play their part with
out quickly showing their incompetence and unfit
ness. Hoe handles and plough frames are not
made Of mahogany. Gold and silver have their
uses, but you cannot make an axe with them La
MARITIME has been fully tried, and found sadly
wanting in the practical qualities which an active,
successful, and useful participation in political af-
fairs requires. With genius, patriotism, and, l
may add, an honesty which none question, there
are probably not hundred men in France who
would be willing again TO place the helm of State
III his hands, unless it were with the. hope and con-
fdence of soon, by means Of him and because of
him, reaching crisis, which might bring about in
spite of him. the triumph of a cause which LAMAR
little thought and little desired to serve VIC
TOR HUGO is ahording another illustration. Seizing
or rather seized by great and generous dea it is
the fault OF these ardent imaginations to seek its
immediate realization, taking no account of the thou
sand practical considerations which the man of
mere talent and common sense perceves to render
immediate realization inexpedent or impossible.
Hugo had the misfortune to deliver in the As
sembly last January most able and eloquent
speech on the public education bill. The views
he took, and which thought no less wisely taken
than eoquenty and forcibly exposed, differed the
clerical party would tell you, toto coo from these
advocated by the Ministry and the majority. He
opposed the prlestly jesuitical influence in the
University, which he said had ever been detestabe
and would ever be pernicious. That speech was
hypocritically lauded to the skies by the whole
Left The Wontagnards made the orator the OBJ
ject of an ostentaous and noisy ovation. Previ-
ously there had been no sympathy between Hugo
and the Mountain lie had ever been ranked and
hated as belonging to the liberal but sincere and
firm friends of order, having no communion with
the men of the barbados. But the Left thought
the moment favorable to establish this communion
They skilfully improved it. They wished to gain
this magnificent orator, of the greatest " illus
trati0ns" of France, to their cause: and they
commenced course of artful perfdious wooing,
which, alas has ended in his seduction. His for
mer friends, it must be admitted, but too well pro-
noted the alienation of Hugo by their intolerance
and abuse. They called him deserter and traitor
even before he had descended from the tribune in
January they jeered and tw,ted him with the APP
plause elected from the Mountain hundred
voices from the Right and Centre shouted, !" Yes,
yes!' when the orator asked if he was sus-
pected" by them! From that moment Hugo has
been retiring more and more to the Left and his
speech of Friday last proves that he has only
few more PAGES to take before arriving at the sum-
nit Of the Mountain. Excepting its poetry and
frequent bursts of eloquence, which but one orator
in the House could equal, his speech OF Friday
might well have come from Jules Favre or Ledru
Rollin He summoned all his powers against the
deportation BILL From the beginning to the end he
momently interrupted by the murmurs and
protesations of the Right and the plaudits of the
Left Repeatedly the President was compelled to
call the Right to order. v. Hugo declared that the
bill was in fact re-estabishment of the pain of
death for political offences, which it was a chief
glory of the revolution of February to have abol-
ished, and which Government dared not expressly
to restore: only instead Of one executioner there