The southern press., 1851-03-29

4
This very impes4eet account nay sslRee 4
show how vivid and terrible. n the heasts sf ~
Freaeh people, are the aouvenirs of.theif arut
revolution. Morris the race OF the RObUapierres.
81. just and Coliot D'lierbois yet extinct.
There is even school here which makes Marut
its great political master, And has produced =
history, in four volumes, Of the frat revolution.
TO prove that Aarat was really the author OF ali
the great ideas OF his period. This school could
not exist, were il not for the bitter persecution
kept up in France against freedom Of opinion.
Oppression maketh even wise man mad, and il
certainly makes raying rfitical fanatics Of
great many Frenchmen. OF the fiftesn hundred
men now in prison for political offsuces. half
will probably come out, burning for yengeanee,
As to the bloody scenes OF the first revoiu-
ton, have never been able to see how any OF
them contributed To save the country; and Il IA
certain they destroyed the republic.
In the providence OF God, reformers, BE- thew
founders OF government or not, are held BY the
public opinion of their own times, to the em-
poyme II OF purer means than their antagonists
Calvin's part in burning Servetus will never be
forgotten, but who talks now of the hundreds of
human beings burned by the Popes Of the ak
teenh and seventeenth centuries. Tears are
shed in every country of the civilized world
over the hard fate of Louis XVI, but no one re-
| members the four sergeants put to death by his
order: All hearts shudder at the wholesale exc
cutions ut Paris in 1893. while the more nnmer-
GUS ones under Louis XVI, for the singIe Of
fence of smuggling, have passed from the memo.
ry of man. The fact that fifty thousand persona,
(the number Of seventy-two thousand is aetually
incredible) were put TO death in the reign OF
Henry VIII, for theft, is regarded BY most
readers OF history as curious thing in statistics;
k,,<t Ix, ga 4 4. :al L.
comparatively few cruelries perpetrated BY the
republicans under Cromwell And to conclude
these examples, which might be drawn from
every page in history, the revolutionists, who
sung songs in the king Of Prussia's palace and
insuted him n4edlessly, will be blamed as
rude and unmannerly populace, long after every
heart shall have ceased TO vibrate with sympathy
at the story of the nassacres Of the republicans
ordered by that very king, in Baden and
Sayony, under the name of military executions.
But the severity of an enlightened aud impair
tial public opinion, ought to impose salutary
restraint on reformers, while the interested cen-
sures Of equally guilty opponents may pass for
nothing. When the Roman Catholic writer's
call on us to weep over the unhappy fate Of the
martyr Sir Thomas More, we may fairly ask
them why they do not do 30 over the fate Of the
unfortunate James Bainham, tortured with the
lash, in the house of Sir Thomas More himself,
before being burned to death by his order If
the Roman Catholic party felt holy horror at
the assassination uf Ross and wish to brand
with dishonor the Roman republic, not in exis-
tence until three months after it took place, I ask
them to apply their epthets to Pic vi. who, in
1892, connived at, if he did not devise, the as-
sassination of Bassevle, the ambassador of the
French republic. To the legitimists who cx-
claim against the execution of Louis XVI, for
the crime Of high treason, and call it an assassi-
nation, the approach comes with an i'll grace
from mouths which, not three months ago, were
singing the praises of an attempt to assassnate
the Emperor.
The Vote Unirersal has been suspended for
one month. by order Of one of the courts. Sew
era Of its contributors, three Of its editors and
two Of IFS conductors have been sentenced to
different terms of Imprisonment, and TIE amount
Of its fines for the last three months is more
than eighteen thousand francs. Another journal,
LErenement, has been fined much more heavily
To government organized like the French, lib
erty of speech must be dsagreeable. The or
ganization of the bureaucacy will not stand tho
scrutiny of daily press its defenders are con-
scious of this, and net like those fraudulent
merchants who prefer to expose their goods only
in darkened shop. The hatred Of the bureaus
cacy for the press surprise no one; the same
motives for restraining the liberty ofspeech exist
now which, in old times, forced Socrates to
drink the hem!ock, for speaking disrespectfulIy
of the gods of mythology, and prescribed Cicero
for speaking against Antony.
The Swiss government has yielded on the
fugitive question to the representations of France
This latter power has a"reed TO receive, at the
frontier all refugees not French, and transport
them, at her own expense, either to England or
America. The refugees oace removed, France
will, probably, protect the independence Of Swift
zerland against the other power.