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Sbpte3«SER M, 185:5. J TSE LHABBR. ^§©3
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THE HOPE OF ITALY. The presages of an It...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The " New Sort Of Despotism." "We Are En...
We applaud self-raised merit . But Louis Napoleon did not raise himself at all , much less did he raise himself by merit . His own attempts ended in failure and ridicule . A freak of fortune and the sinister aid of disappointed politicians , whose names will always be tarnished , raised him to a place of high trust , and put into his hands the power of destroying the liberties of his country . He used that power with more than common pertrocitwith
fidy , with more than common a y , accomplices more than usually infamous . He triumphed by merit in his political career just as a man who steals a deposit , who murders his sleeping friend , who debauches a woman under his protection , triumphs in commerce , in combat , or in love . The Coup d ' etat did not even show the physical courage which a brigand ' s trade requires . Its hero sat safe in the Elysee while his bravos aud his janissaries quenched liberty in blood .
But all is cured by the seven millions of votes . The Observateur Beige has dealt well with this part of the argument . How can English good sense be deceived by that fictitious condonation ? Supposing that the returns of the poll , given by convicted perjurers , were true , on what issue was the vote taken ? " What alternative was offered to those who voted No ? "Will the lowest sycophant of the Empire maintain that France was offered a free choice between the domination of Louis
Napoleon and a free constitution ? 'Will you submit , or be coerced into submission ? That was the question asked of France . And France , panic-stricken , deprived of all her statesmen , cowed by the vast army which her military vanity has raised up to be her scourge , answered that she chose submission . If the approval of France was really given , it still exists ; nay , according to Imperialist writers , approval has risen to enthusiasm . "Why then is not the universal gratitude allowed to find decisive expression in a free
press ? Why is not liberty of speech at least allowed to both sides ? Cannot La Guebonniebe , backed by the court and its bayonets , make the cause of order , truth , and beneficence , victorious in free discussion ? If the chief magistrate of a free country may use its army to destroy its liberties , and then plead the submission of the people as his justification , what liberty is safe ? Are these the lessons which the English people wish to be instilled into the heir of their crown by his sedulous host and affectionate companion ? Let us remember that the moral law is the
same for all . Let us remember that we too have violent factions , rancorous debates , popular aberrations , and that these have not passed unnoticed in high places . If we kneel for France , we must be prepared to kneel for ourselves . Many Englishmen who would be ashamed to applaud the erection of a despotic dynasty save their consciences by calling it Empire .
A writer in a courtly journal ( which once gave a picture of Louis Napoleon framed in chains and scourges ) speaks of France as having , for the sake of peace , submitted to a temporary loss of liberty . This writer seems a little dazzled by the fireworks of Versailles , when he speaks of the throne of Louis Napoleon as having risen in a blaze of glory out of the Revolution . Let him ask his host whether he is a dictatorate or the founder of
an hereditary despotism . We do not seo despotism yet . The firo still smoulders in the ashos of liberty . Honour and morality still throb . Tho selfrespect of freoborn citizens still lives . The fetters still gall . Thb memory and tho effects of free discussion still remain . Deference to public opinion and tho affectation of popular airs are still necessary to tho uaurpor . lie is still obliged to cog the press , and force
dramatists to illustrate the Empire . The next generation will be born under the yoke ; they will have seen no public morality but that of Mobny and Fould , read no politics but those of the JMxmiteur ; and they will be trampled on without fear . The third generation will be hereditary slaves . The popular beginnings of tyranny , and the moral abyss to which they lead , are no " new sort of despotism , " as the JEataminer , transported with the fetes of " Versailles , supposes . They are as old as the age of Tacitus and Suetonius . " Under Augustus , as under Louis Napoleon ,
caution , condescension , hypocrisy were the order of the day ; servitude was veiled under the forms of the republic , and court poets honoured the name of Cato . Under Tibeeius began that moral prostration , that lust of self-abasement , that train of infamies and horrors , which the judicial pen of the historian of the Empire has recorded , but for us , it seems , in vain . Many men are profound political philosophers till they come to deal with real events , and the tritest lessons of history cannot save them from the most puerile aberrations .
A sycophant of the Empire compares it to the reign of Louis XIV . TJnder Louis XIV . thought was more free , and sycophant writers were less protected and patronised . But to what did the reign of Louis XIV . lead ? If Louis Napoleon represents the honour of the French nation , why cannot he get a single man of honour to join him ? Has the type of heroism and virtue become so repulsive to the heroic and the good ? Wny could he find no instrument wherewith to work out
the salvation of France but a soldier who ( as he was told by an honourable veteran whose sword he took away ) might have had his own sword broken in disgrace ? Why can he find no ministers but men whose personal infamy is as unquestionable as their political abasement ? Why have not the great generals of France been at the head of her armies instead of the St . Abnauds and the Canbobebts ?
A certain outward magnanimity is easy to those who are triumphant . But we could prove that such magnanimity may hide a depth of meanness within by examples drawn out from very remote times . The magnificence which dazzles fools is easy to one who has an unlimited command of the public money . Such magnanimity and such magnificence look mean to Grod and to good men compared with a single effort of self-denial , or a single act of duty . We all saw these things clearly enough after the Coup d ' etat , and since then nothing is changed . Nothing is changed but our diplomatic interest . We have sold morality for a diplomatic interest and for a show .
\ Ve have never refused Lours Napoleon the credit due to him for the alliance ; we have always held up his conduct in this respect as a lesson to the constitutional statesmen of France . But alliance with the nation does not involve complicity with the ruler . These transports of sycophancy are gratuitous and useless . They will not cement a lasting friendship between the nations . They are ecstacies as evanescent as delirious . They are Windsor Castlo in fireworks at Versailles .
The origin of the war ( to whatever good ends it may turn ) was Louts Napoleon ' s intriguing selfishness . For his electioneering interests ho—a believer in nothing but his star—restored the Papal despotism at Home . For his electioneering interests he agitated tho quostion of the Holy Places , and thus brought on the embarrassments which led to
war . If wo aro to rodross the wrongs of tho world wo must collide with Louis Napoleon in tho end ; for tho greatest wrong -in tho
world is the occupation of Home- —Home , which our friends of liberty unaccountably forget to mention , though the reign of terror there is as bad as at Naples . We are fighting against the Czab , who is the centre and support of military despotism in the East ; we are at the same time enabling Louis Napoleon to become the centre of another circle of military despotisms in the West . Spain will be drawn in ; a Mubat dynasty will be created at Naples ; the Pope is a French Viceroy . Sardinia , Bavaria , Wurwill
temberg move among the Satellites . What will then be the position of England ? We are sanctioning , we are worshipping , the principle of military despotism , and we shall not sanction and worship it in . vain . There are lessons which all kings easily learn , which they will learn with double ease under so polite a tutor as Louis Napoleon , and in so splendid a school as Versailles . Dishonour , however politic it may seem , is always foUy in the end ; and England will find before long that it has been her folly as well as her dishonour to stifle her own conscience and betray the cause of liberty and duty .
Sbpte3«Ser M, 185:5. J Tse Lhabbr. ^§©3
Sbpte 3 « SER M , 185 : 5 . J TSE LHABBR . ^§© 3
The Hope Of Italy. The Presages Of An It...
THE HOPE OF ITALY . The presages of an Italian movement are multiplying , The governments admit the fact by preparing to encounter it . Never did the Popedom exhibit more convulsive energy , never were the Bourbons more savage in Naples , the Austrians more insolent in Lombardy . We count these circumstances among signs of hope . Before the great war of liberty , when eighty cities and towns within ten days threw off the yoke which
oppressed them , Europe was shocked by the bloody assize of Faenza , as it is now shocked by the fantastic atrocities of Castellamare . Moreover , the liberals of all countries discuss the issue , as of an event near at hand . Even the lingering relics of Muratism reappear , as though every nephew of the Napoleonic race were destined to grasp a revolutionary sceptre . No one who is possessed of the faculty of vision can doubt that an Italian catastrophe is gradually approaching . The Pope , oppressed by fear , knows that the judicial sword cannot rid his holy throne of its
enemies . The King of Naples , a mad Damocles , exhibits the cowering fears of Claudius and the ferocity of Domitian ; Uadetzky , armed with the proxy of despotism , parades his troops in Lombardy ; but in Turin as in Rome , in Vienna as in Paris , in Naples as in London , the rumour grows that these things aro not to last . In a word , Italy , at tho right moment , will make one more effort to free herself from military domination . It is time , then , that Italians of all classes of opinion should bo reconciled to a common policy . The wars of independence , in which italian blood has been shed like water , have
too often been checked by precipitate action , by the premature rivalry of cities , and by the selfish asperities of factions . This is tho danger which the patriots must avoid . It has been their curse ; it is the encouragement of their enemies ; indeed , it has been the perpetual fruit of foroign intrigues . No sooner is the political motion of Italy manifest to the diplomatic arbiters of Europe , inte
than points are raised concerning the - rests of tho reigning families . Is P rince Mubat , tho nephew of his undo , to bo ignored P Can diplomacy croato a sovereign to govern a united Italy — ft" y k perhaps , the royal blossom of n nntioimlwarF But , amid all their controversicH , i ; ho , ^ » s -tile small MurntM ; Boct . on <^ ^ X nenr to linvo one fixed pom * ol- u In no minrtor do wo Jiml rojwniod the old appeals ? o frio ulfl in one country or another . And thoao liberals aro perfectly right who main-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 8, 1855, page 11, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08091855/page/11/
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