The Sun. — 1849-01-12 (London, England)

LONDON, FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 1849.  The political ingratitude which, so long contagious in France, has proved the destruction of so matiy popularities, has at last extended from individual members of the Assembly to the whole mass of the national representation. Prepared as we were for almost any fluctuation of sentiment in the m nds of those classes who have shown so much fickleness in their attachment, we may avow at once that this sudden revulsion of feeling throughout several of the departments has caused us no slight, and certainly no very pleasurable, emotions of astonishment. We regard with a sense amounting to loathing the suicidal, or we might call it, the parricidal, ferocity of this reaction against the framers of the Republican Constitution. In attacking the National Assembly, the miserable dissentients to whom we are referring are actually aiming the bludgeon of murder against the incarnate genius of the People. In endeavouring to destroy the great Republican Parliament which has laboured during eight awful months so nobly, so earnestly, so bravely, so gloriously in the cause of France, of Europe, of democracy, of civilization, of religion, of humanity—they are striving to stifle the popular voice, to smother the aspirations of a great race, to strangle the legislative Redeemer of the country. In the diminution of the in. fluence of LAMARTINE there was something touching. In the downfal of the power of CAVAIGNAC, there was something sombre and despondent. But in the assaults which are nuw being made upon the fame and upon the authority of the National Assembly—that Assembly which the one created with his eloquence, and which the other defended with. his courage— there is an evidence of criminality so heinous, and of turpitude so base, that the heart revolts •from the spectacle with feelings of unmitigated execration. In the National Assembly the world has recognised the embodiment of that beautiful and sublime idea which was first articulated on the 26th of FebruarY 1848, by the lips of the poet-statesman—thati dea which streamed like a gleam of light through the chaos of an abrupt revolution, telling the people that they might secure not only their salvation, but their glory and their happiness, by descending into the very depths ;of the country and sounding the great mystery of the rights of nations! The world has  acknowledged in the National Aqsemblv the re-,litir,anl; ,viii' it nessed, in the history of that, Assembly examples of valour, of self-sacrifice,•of calmness in danger, of dignity under insult, of loyalty to the population, and of devotion to the Republicrsuch as have had few precedents and fewer parallels in the annals of mankind. On the 15th of May, when scarcely compacted together, the democratic Parliament pissed through its first probation ; and it passed through that probation scathless and unsullied. During the four appalling days of June it had to battle for its existence, and not only for its own existence, but for the preservation of society, of liberty, and of civilization. Some of its distinguished members—men who shone either as orators in the tribune or as heroes in the fields of war—gloriously died at the foot of the barricades, fighting in the holy cause with which the National Assembly was identified. Hear the eulogiums which these memorable deeds have extorted from the reluctant heart of an enemy. Hear the language employed upon this subject by Monsieur