The Express. — 1868-04-08 (London, England)

NAPOLEON I. was confirmed Consul for life in August, 1802, and Emperor in May, 1804, and of the plebiscites, upon a similar pattern, by which Naroxaorr 111. was elected President of the Republic in December, 1848, and Emperor of the French in November, 1852. By a singular logic of numbers all the millions of votes of all these plibiscites are added together, and the total is to be taken as the justification of the Imperial dynasty against all objectors past, present, or to come. Evidently nothing can be easier or more entirely satisfactory and convincing than this mode of argument. It is proved thereby to absolute demonstration that the French people have on four distinct occasions committed political suicide. There is a rumour, indeed, that the present ExPEROI is preparing another manifesto of some sort, irkethot jA the shape of a Letter to a Minister, or of an anonymous brochure, to allow his people bow  grateful they ought to be to a government which in twenty years has quadrupled the public debt, has founded a Latin empire in Mexico, established the unity of Italy, made deadly enemies of the Italians, preserved the temporal power of the POPE, encouraged the principle of great agglomerations in Germany, and created a moveable national guard of more than half a million of men to intimidate the Germans ; and, by way of crowning the oonstituticand edifice at home, has instituted a press law and a law of public meeting compared with which the moat reactionary and repressivemeasures of the last days of the Bourbon Restoration are charters and monuments of freedom. Some incorrigible malcontents in France appear to regard this feverish disposition on the part of a Sovereign to apologise to his people for a rigime so fruitful in benefits and blessings as the Second Empire as betraying a cutaro uneasiness of conscience. They regard this appeal as an involuntary self-accusing record which may possibly relieve its author for a moment, but will certainly delude neither his subjects nor himself. This is a somewhat harsh interpretation, perhaps, but it must be admitted that the policy of publishing such justifications is at least doubtful. They provoke reprisals, and when the EMPEROR points triumphantly to the phibiscites by which the French people have again and again sold away their birth• right of 'B9, some invidious critics remind the august apologist that the history of the Naroutome dynasty is not summed up in the national vote of 1804. To point the moral and adorn the tale of the First Empire, something should have been said of Moscow, Leipsic, and Waterloo ; of the Hundred Days, and the Acta Additionnel, of France desolated by conscriptions, wasted by glory, sick of conquest, sighing for peace, and freedom, and security ; of the tardy penitential avowal of the EMPEROR that it was time to endow the French people with all those liberties, of which he had persistently deprived them so long as Fortune favoured his inordinate designs and indulged his dream of universal dot mination. Why, it was asked, does not the pamphleteer, instead of reciting pldbiscites, recount the final consequences of those ten years of personal government and irresponsible power ? Other critics reprinted certain documents bearing date December, '4B, and December, '5l, and signed by the same hand, which certainly present a striking contrast. But these dates, it is true, in these rapid times, are but ancient history. What is more to the point and to the purpose as a significant commentary on the Imperial justification is the pamphlet which appeared on the same day from the pen of an eminent economist, bristling with facts and figures, and simply entitled " The Balance-sheet of the Empire." The object of this publication is to show, chapter and verse, precisely what France has paid in the course of sixteen years for the blessings and benefits of personal government. Poor Louis PHILIPPE'S budgets are what Mr. DiaLEL' would call " fleabites " indeed in comparison with these prodigious amounts of war loans and peace loans, and annual estimates to the tune of eighty millions sterling, all resulting—after sixteen years' experiense—in what 1  When the Emperor NAPOLEON, on the eve of his approaching sixtieth birthday, asks himself in the watches of the night what the en• thusiastic Carbonaro of 1831, the meditative Prisoner of 1840, the Exile of 1847, has done to justify his marvellous destiny, what will his conscience reply ? Has he closed the era of revolutions in France Has he established public order or public liberty en durable foundations ? Has he given more than a momentary gleam of prosperity and confidence to the material interests of the country ? Has he fostered and developed the moral interests of the nation ? Has he proved thathis government can bear to be discussed, and that he needs no diversion at the cost of hisneighboura from domestic discontent ? Has he secured to his own dynasty the possibility of a future ? Has he rallied and reconciled ,the old parties, or won the loyalty of the new generation ? To ask these questions is to answer them. The most vulgar sources of evidence suffice. Look at the quotations of the public securities; consider the forty millions sterling buried in the Bank cellars ; listen to the cries of the reluctant conscripts in the provincial cities ; seek for the successors of the few statesmen who consent to take their turn at the council table ; read the independent journals. Ask any Frenchman you meet, of whatever class, or party, or opinion, whether he believes in the future of the present dynasty; contemplate all the outward and visible symptoms of public morality—whether in finance, or literature, or the drama, or in the daily life and manners of society, and then say whether that wonderful creation of audacious will, which has been so much admired on this side of the Channel, is a monument of genius, or the throw of a gambler 1