The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-03-28
THE AMERICAN UNION.


ENGLISH REPLY TO THE DUKE DE PERsIGNYs
CHARGEs-CoNsPIRACIEs AND sQUABBLEs OF
OUR FOREIGN ENEMIES.
From the London Times, March 10.
M. de Persigny has delivered a great speech,
said to have been weeks in preparation, which
is rather to be regarded as a State paper than
as Legislative argument. His object is to
prove that the Emperor has made no real
change in the Constitution, but has only
simplifed and formalized some successive
notifications. This explanation is intended
to reassure those who were beginning to
tremble for the integrity of the Imperial sys-
TEN, and to dispel the triumph of those who
were hailng the dawn of constitutional free
dom. France, he says, has not, and is not to
have responsible Ministers, and she is far bet
ter without them. 1t is not they that make
a nation really free.
So far as the argument is confined to France
with such stray lights as can be borrowed
from classical antiquity, we must admit NJ. de
Persigny to be an authority on the French
part of the question. But when he crosses the
Channel, takes a sketch of our own Parlia-
mentary system, and, by the working test
contrasts it unfavorably with the correspond
ing institutions of his own country, we must
beg to interpose, and protest against the
fidelity of his picture and the soundness of his
reasons. X For centuries France has
mistresses, by intriguers, by theorists, by
every class that disdains responsibility, and
pushes a right, or sentiment, or a creed, or
a scheme to its fatal conclusion without check
or remOrse.
Whether the great idea was the destruction
of nobility, or the determination of a heresy,
or the establishment of a great nation and
greater monarch, or some other grand concep-
tion of political vanity, it was allowed to run
its course and found fitting authors and abet-
tors. Absolutisms and oligarches never appeal
but to the rock which renders back the echo
of the words. So they only go to meet their
doom. But, of all the grand ideas that have
been the bane of France, which is that which
NJ de Persigny conjures up before us, to con-
found our national cons science and pronounce
our doom? When the golden opportunity
lately presented itself, England shrank from
aiding France to break up the United States
by supporting the Southerners, and by esta-
blishing a Mexican empire. BY this time, it
seems, we ought to be resting together after
the demolition of the great American republic,
or winning glory in the still unfinished enter
prise.
But under no Government whatever would
England have marched one foot in such des-
perate and gratuitOus crusade. The sense OF
the whole nation is against founding empires
and destroying them upon calculation o.
political consequences, either in the Old
World or the New. Such projects are, indeed
oftener found in palaces than in parliaments
and in hearts as well as lands insulated from
| social relations and their natural control. l
| this be all--and this idea is to be the touch
| stone of our respective metals-we are con
tent to stand the ordeal, and to be Thankful
that we are not a nation of great ideas anC
| irresponsible rulers.