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    1092 THE LEADER. [Saturday ,

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    F RAN C 10 — T II E E MPIK K. (To the Ml...

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    Thn Crystal 1'Alack And Dksecratjon Of T...

    and tedious rituals they might say or hear on bended knees , if attending any orthodox establishment for Divine worship . What little faith can these men have in the efficacy of their most cherished religion , when they conceive it necessary to appeal to the State to aid their efforts ? Surely , if the influences of Christianity are so powerful , if its truths are so simple , so evident , and so unmistakable , what occasion is there for flying to Government for help in carrying them out ; what necessity is there for having the law to back them up ? If Christianity cannot be spread or enforced by

    preaching and expounding it , if it is so unreasonable and so weak that its defenders and promulgators are obliged to invoke the powers of the State , in order to prevent its downfall , then I am inclined to think Christianity is not long for this world , when its truths and regulations cannot he maintained , without having recourse to the paltry aid of Government or State . I apprehend it is almost time we had some more powerful incentive for the practice of morality , some more efficacious system , whose truths would be accepted by all , without force , and whose regulations would support themselves . Those ministers who advocate the closing of the " People ' s Palace" on the Sabbath , appear to imagine , that if they can only succeed in persuading Her most gracious Majesty the Queen not to affix her signature to the legalization of the Crystal Palace Company , unless they bind themselves to shut np on Sunday , the holiness of the Sabbath will then be satisfactorily established , and England will still remain a favoured country in the eyes of Jehovah ; they apparently forget how extremely improbable it is that those who would have visited the Crystal Palace , had it been open , will attend Divine Worship , now the other is denied them it is far more likely that many will spend their time in tap-rooms and low places of resort , who might otherwise have been employed in a mentally elevating and ennobling manner . But it appears to me that Government has no right whatever to interfere in a matter which is so strictly one of opinion only . If it interferes in this case , it might do so with equal propriety when granting licences to the vendors of alcoholic stimulants ; in a like manner no company should be permitted to exist , unless an agreement were entered into , that business should not be transacted on the Sabbath of the Christian ; and I imagine that all the gin-palaces and dram-shops open on the Sunday , produce infinitely more immorality than the Crystal Palace , or all the philosophical , literary , and scientific institutions in the world would do , if no restriction were placed

    upon the people attending them on this most holy day . Ijet Government do its duty , hut let it not , by showing partiality to one . sect , infringe upon the religious liberties of the people at large . If it be necessary that the Sabbath be devoted entirely to the worship of the Most High , let the Christian prove it , by pointing out the advantages , real or supposed , that would accrue , by an observance of this day according io his notions , and allow men to judge for themselves . If the world cannot be persuaded of the necessity for so much lip-service , it would be advisable for the Christian to keep his religious rites and ceremonies to himself , and not endeavour to force ; men into a performance of them , whether they can do so conscientiously or not , by applying to Government for assistance . Yours obediently , W .

    1092 The Leader. [Saturday ,

    1092 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

    F Ran C 10 — T Ii E E Mpik K. (To The Ml...

    F RAN C 10 — T II E E MPIK K . ( To the Ml it or of the Leader . ) . Sir , —The next act of tho gloomy drama enacting in France is about to commence in the proclamation oi the Kmpirc , though by what further convulsion the country is to obtain a free and Hcttlcd government il indeed such a consummation be written in the book oi her fate—is Htill shrouded in impenetrable darkness . On the day that the Empire is proclaimed , France becomes isolated from the Kuropean Republic . We are told that the country cannot remain stationary in the path it has chosen , and tlmt the l'Yench people will consent , to the permanent / re-establishment of the

    Empire 011 the condition only that its glories be restored with its name . If so , war will become a necessity of the very existence of the Imperial Government ,. If it can detach Austria from her coalition with ( . he northern powers , the l'Yench eagles may yet , be planted on the Rhine , and Louis Napoleon transmit the imperial sceptre . securely to his posterity . If , however , the other continental powers remain unshaken in their present , dispositions , France must go to war at the imminent risk of again having her frontier crossed , and her eapital occupied by an overwhelming hostile army , and may possibly be compelled to accept her old dynasty under circumstances of dishonour and submission

    unknown to her lor centuries . Meantime , it , is imposniblo to keep our eyes from the chain ot cauxct * which , generated in remote ages , and leudinir Ht > tho oxtruonlinury events of tho lrtflt nixty

    years , have as yet given us no clue to their final results , as regards either the internal government of France or its relations with foreign powers . More than half a century of freedom has failed to give the Trench people a political creed . " Constitutions , " says the legislator , " cannot he made—they must grow . " Since the reign of Edward the Third , five centuries ago , when Magna Charta and the law of the " three estates " had struck root , England would have spurned the usurpation to which France has just submitted . It is now sixty-three years since the French nation arose , like one man , against a tyranny scarcely less insupportable than that of the Norman princes in England ; but in destroying the old political fabric , the French people left themselves without precedent or data to erect a new one . The ancient regime fell in welcome

    thunder to France , and at the first deep-drawn breath of French liberty , the system which had been for ages maintained by power , superstition , and priestcraft , crumbled into dust ; but the people , abandoning reflection and restraint in the first frenzy of their triumph over their oppressors , swept away every landmark and trace that might have served for their future guidance . Those wholesome checks to revolutionary excess—the reverence for antiquity and the power of habit and association—were lost to France . She had no political associations unbranded with slavery and disgrace . It has been otherwise in England . " Give us our ancient laws and the constitution of our Saxon forefathers /'

    said the barons at llunnymede . To the fervour and constancy with which this cry was maintained , we owe the Great Charta . The foundation thus laid , broad and deep , the political fabric arose slowly and securely through the lapse of ages ; nor , if we except the brief period of the Commonwealth , has the organic law of the three estates undergone any change during all the turbulence , civil war , and revolution through which the temple of English liberty has arisen . In reforming her Government , England has but imitated the careful husbandman— . Inutiles Falce raraos amputans , Feliciores inserit . These lines , which were quoted by the late Lord Grey in his speech on the Reform Bill , give us the key to all the changes in our political system since its foundation , which , whether they have been the slow growth of time , or the result of violence , have consisted of little else than the excision of decayed branches from the tree of constitutional liberty , and the substitution of fresh grafts , leaving the venerable and time-honoured trunk untouched by the revolutionary axe . I f resistance to the abuse of power bo the common right of humanity , restraint and forbearance are no less its duty in the exercise of its inalienable privilege . Ages of intolerable oppression , taught France the first of these principles : of the second she yet remains in the deepest ignorance . The history of the constitution of England—that singular page in the records of mankind—is furnished with striking illustrations of both principles , in our steady adherence , through the period of ( ive centuries , to that system of modified liberty , of which it is becoming more and more our enviable privilege to boast . It was thought that I ' ranee , at the revolution of 1830 , taught by the events of the previous forty years , and the example of England , had at length learnt wisdom and prudence in the use of political power . Ever since 1830 , England has furnished her neighbour with examples of that moderation and restraint with which her turbulent spirit of independence has always been tempered . While reform of the ; Chain her cost Louis Philippe his crown , and France her constitution , and ultimately her liberty , the tumour of borougb-mongerin <^ was cut , from ( he constitution of Fdigland with the skill and safety of a surgical experiment , which at once cures the diseased limb and restores the general health of the patient . Many lawyers have doubted the legality of the Anti-Corn Law League , which was so powerfully instrumental in obtaining Free-tr ; :. de for us . The League , however , having eilecled tho object for which it was formed , wan self-dissolved . In these violations of law ( if . such they lie ) we M e the triumph of its spirit , in that self-restraint , in the people for which laws and Constitutions themselves art ! but substitute . " ! . There can be little doubt thai , the incipient insurrection of the 10 th April , 1 H 1 K , was rendered abortive , by tho influence , in . lerrorciu , of the very same power ( that of the middle classes , now arrayed on the side of constituted authority ) which had successfully put an end to the usurpations oi' the horoughinongcrs and the landlords . Could I'Yauco have profited by the many examples of restraint in resisting ( he abuses of power with which England has funnelled her , nlw . s had not now lain fit the foot of an nutocraf ; and an usurper , to whom h 1 i » manifests a servility of submission which rivals the times of tho Bastille and tho tettrr-s do cachet .

    The Revolution of 1830 was regarded in England emphatically , that of the middle classes . The C & *' had now taken the character of a national trust ' ^ it was believed that the property and intelligence ^ e France would henceforth become the predominating ' fluence in the State . It would be fruitless nJ ; ?" inquire what was the moving spring of the Revolution of the three days ; but it is inconceivable that twent years after such a struggle for liberty and rep ' resenta tive Government , the country could have submitted t " a yoke fifty times more galling than that meditated bv the discarded monarch . If ages—centuries , be necessar to bring constitutions to a full and healthy maturity what could be hoped from a country but half a century arisen from a tyranny as inhuman , long-continued , and degrading as ever disgraced the annals of mankind ?

    It has been said , that had Louis-Philippe reformed the Chambers by extending the elective franchise , he would only have retarded , without preventing his fall . If 80 a better proof could not have been given of the comp letely unsettled state—the nonage—of political principle in France . The Republic perished from a want of harmony between the executive and the legislative power but this was a defect for which there was no remedy '

    for it is deal * , that could the executive have appealed to the nation by dissolving the Assembly , to do so would but again have let loose the * revolutionary element , perhaps in a more violent form . In England where the struggles of party are confined within the ' limits of the Constitution , the provision for restoring unity to the Government by a temporary disso lution of the legislative body , has ever been considered one of

    the bulwarks of law and liberty . Here the political waves burst harmlessly around the rock of the Constitution , which , like a well-built lighthouse , while it causes the uproar of the breakers , offers the most effectual resistance to their power . The liberties of no country could be safe with such a military establishment as that of France . Even in England , where the Constitution is clearly defined , and universally acknowledged , liberty could never be

    considered secure with such an army . Strange , that the doctrine of Divine right should find apologists in the middle of the nineteenth century ; but if the imputed divinity of kings kept the people in subjection , at least it kept the army in the same state . The ancient monarchs of France might , by virtue of their divine claim , have disbanded their armies without danger of their revolt ; but a decree to this effect from the National Assembly of 1848 would have been but issuing its own death-warrant . The world is strangely altered

    since the time when armed legions could be formed or dispersed at the nod of the sovereign , by v irtue of his heavenward claim . Such was not the period when street insurrections could first change a dynasty , and then destroy a throne , with half a million of men hehind it . The Revolution of 1830 effaced the stain of foreign invasion , and , it was hoped , had united the Throne and nation in a compact , ailbrding some security against the further usurpations of the army ; but the work of wisdom and moderation thus so ably begun , was utterly destroyed by the rash experiment of 1848 ; and if the future annals of France should exhibit any likeness to the

    worst ages of the Roman empire , when Emperors were enthroned and tumbled headlong into the dust at the mad whim and frenzy of the soldiers , the French peop le will have to thank the Republic of 1848 , when they suffered the sanctuary of the laws to be invaded by a rout of the populace , and France listened unmoved to the frantic shout that laid her dear-bought liberties at the foot of a prolligute and ambitious soldiery , l ' the horse- in the fable , who was unable to rid his buck of the man who had aided him to conquer his enemy , Franco has fallen into subjection to the power winch

    had helped her to pull down the Crown , which was her best , safeguard against the insidious friend whom nho had invoked to destroy it . Had the country nhown but common firmness and consistency i » main taining the settlement of 18 : 50 , the army might have been I " " in allegiance to its ancient line of monarchy change * , as in Knghmd , so far only as to establish the prinripl ' * of free government ; but the golden harvest of freedom and prosperity to France promised by the Involut ion of July has been totally blighted by that , of February , IIlS

    with its sad mockery of liberty and equality . '"^ affords few examples of an army of nearly hal million of men , master of its own will / ami »<< imu 1 ' ^ by the remembrance of former g lories and < llHllsl f ^^ nimuinmg long nt pencqp with its neighbourn . ^ French people are now on a precipice , with the l ' 'jJi ( f of bloody internal discord on the one hand , and on _ ^ other , tile chances of a war , which , it , is no idle '' . YP ' to prophecy , may onri in depriving France of the p « 'J -j at ; least , of further disturbing Kurope with it « «« ' » ¦ dominion , if not of tho privilege of choosing iw dynasty unTl form of Government . ^

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 13, 1852, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_13111852/page/16/