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Dec. 13, 1851.] &!* * %t&iltt. U75
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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 Bonapartist Involution. "K0c1kty Is ...
. re all identified in this supreme interest . They pillage , assassinate , and hum , while invoking Vengeance , Hatred , and D espair , those infernal gods of demagogueism . Let us defend and preserve ourselves , invoking Law and Justice those gods of a democracy which desires to keep from stains , and of a people who would not perish . ' * - The Constitutionnel says the Basses Alpes is in the nower of the " Socialists "—but this is police news , and the nickname is a police nickname adopted by the English organs of the French Police .
NATURE OITHE CONFLICT . " I cannot now give you much account of the awful scenes that happened here yesterday . I narrowly escaped being shot in the street , as many were ; and having entered my hotel on the B oulevards , which were filled with thousands of troops , a sudden discharge of musketry took place along the whole line—volley after volley ; not a house , scarcely a window , was spared , whether containing combatants or not . Before I could rush from , my room musket balls entered by the window , from which I had retreated but a step or two . In another room was a Russian family ; the brother , a
fine young man , and his sister were both struck by balls while hastening from the room with their mother . The lady had her hand shattered , the brother was shot in the chest . I have seldom felt a more intense pleasure in my profession than in being able to give immediate assistance to these poor persons , for which otherwise they must have waited many hours . They displayed a beautiful and generous devotion , each begging me to attend first to the other . There is a house opposite ours that is breached by cannon shot fired into it at a few feet distance . The loss of life , which will never be
published , must have been awful . With characteristic peculiarity , after the troops had performed their unworthy task , the military surgeons , at night , went from house to house to see after the wounded . One of them told me he had just seen sixty dead and eighty wounded in our immediate neighbourhood . The greater part of the injured are non-combatants , suddenly surprised in the streets or struck down , unsuspecting danger , in their own homes . Such scenes—fit enough perhaps for the storming of an Arab town—with an indiscriminate attack on unresisting houses , were never before known , even in Paris . "
The following is an extract from a private letter , dated Paris , December 8 , 1851 : — " One of our female servants is married to a noncommissioned officer in one of the regiments of civic troops which are employed more especially in the arrests and executions now going on . We learn from her that her husband was engaged with his company the entire day yesterday in making arrests . He does not know how many hundred were lodged by his ordered
company in the prisons . He says they are out to the Champs de Mars to-day to shoot a number reported to be 156—of those condemned by the court-martial . Trom the language used by the wife we infer that the soldiers , at least of that regiment , notwithstanding their enormous extra pay , are thoroughly disgusted with their work . All the usual vocabulary of abusive epithets is showered on the President , such as brigand , sce'le'rat , & c . last
" After I despatched my packet evening a friend called who ought t o be well informed , and assured me that a list of suspected persons has been made which includes all the English in Paris who are supposed to have any engagement in connection with the press , and especially with the newspapers , and that a person who saw that list affirmed that my name is on it . It is said to be decided to order any one to quit Franco who is suspected of writing articles or letters hostile to the Government . An-. ¦• <• - i .... !!„ , ! ! .. « # mHminir Wlir > 1 fl t . ll (! C 1 UCI other friend called last eveningwho is the chief
, judKe of one of the high tribunals , and also a member of the soi-disant ' Consultative Council , to whom 1 mentioned what I heard about the suspected list , but did not allude to my own name being on it . lie replied that he had not any knowledge ot such a list , but that in the present state of things it was very probable , and that he conceived such a measure to be dictated by motives of wise precaution and prudtnee ; that it gives France trouble enough to manage her own afruirs without boing embarrassed by the
meddling of foreign journals . . "Ah I think there is danger even in sending lottem through the bureau of your correspondent , and as letters addressed to the Times ( not proceeding from the usual correspondent ]> woul < ( as . am assured ) be opened at the Post-ofhce , I think it best to inclose this to a friend , who will forward it . . " We arc now literally living under the reign oi terror . Not one word that appears in the French journals can be relied < m . Indeed , it may be in general taken to be false . We the above on tho authority of tho limes No words of ours can add force to these . In ... mlirmiitioii of thin rumour , wo had the
following Hentence in a proclamation fu ' gne . i J ) u Mnupas :--" All the caiiHt * of agitation must bo suppressed by prnntiHing on a large scale a system ot search and urreHts . " Suchctd'Albufcrft found liia nnw in the Hat of tl > o
Consultative Commission . Like Leon Faucher , he was enraged , and wrote to M . Bonaparte a stinging letter to this effect : — " Sir , —Your uncle gave me an honourable name ; what right have you to tarnish it by placing it on your Consultative Commission ?" Afterwards he went to M . de Morny , for the purpose of protesting . On his expressing his indignation , M . de Morny , the new Minister of the Interior , plainly told him " they wanted his name to make use of in his department . " M . Suchet d'Albufera then said that he would announce in the
newspapers that he had not accepted the nomination ; upon which M . de Morny said that none of the newspapers would publish it . " Then , " said M . d'Albufera , " I shall write fifty letters to my constituents in the department . " " You may save yourself the trouble , " retorted M . de Morny ; " for not one of them will reach them . " This is but one of several similar cases . The members protest , but the Government insists on keeping in the names , in order that the departments may be deceiued .
The coolness of M . de Morny is astounding . Indeed nothing daunts the Elysee in the way of moral resistance . There are Englishmen and Englishwomen who frequent the Saloons of the usurper . On Monday night , when the blood in the streets had not dried up , and the echoes of the musketry in the Champ de Mars hardly died away , the first public reception took place at the Palace of the Elysee , since the coup d ' etat . It was crowded to excess , and it was found necessary to throw open additional rooms for the reception of the company . As may be conceived , there was an extraordinary '• number of officers of all ranks . The members
of the corps diplomatique were also in great numbers , and there were many present who , only three days ago , were among the loudest in condemning the coup d ' etat . There was a considerable number of ladies , and among them a good many of our countrywomen ! " ORDER . " Thiers has been set at liberty , and escorted out of the country . The generals are still detained at Ham . Arrests have followed each other in rapid succession during the past week ; and on Tuesday the Moniteur contained a decree signed by M . Bonaparte , and countersigned by the supple De Morny . It is quite sufficient of itself to stamp the characters of master and man with infamy .
" The President of the Republic , on the proposition of the Minister of the Interior—considering that France has need of order , labour , and security ; that for too many years society has been profoundly disquieted and troubled by the machinations of anarchy , and by the insurrectional attempts of the members of secret societies , and liberated convicts , always ready to become instruments of disorder ; considering that , by their constant habits of revolt against all laws , this class of men not only compromise tranquillity , labour , and public order , but authorise unjust attacks and deplorable calumnies on the sound part of the working population of Paris and Lyons ; considering that existing laws are insufficient , and that it is necessary to make modifications in them , whilst conciliating the duties of humanity with the interest of general security , decrees : —
" Art . 1 . Any individual placed under the surveillance of the police who shall be proved guilty of the- offence of ruptur e de ban may be transported , as a measure of general safety , to a penitentiary colony at Cayenne , or in Algeria . The duration of the transportation shall be five years at least , and not exceed ten . " Art- 2 . The same measure shall be applicable to individuals proved to have formed part of a . secret society . " Art . 3 . The fact of being-placed under the surveillance of the police shall , for the future , tfive the Government the right of determining the place in which the condemned must reside after undergoing his punishment . The Administration shall determine tho formalities for proving the continued presence of the condemned in the place of his residence . " Art . 4 . Residence at Paris and in the banlieue is interdicted to all individuals placed under the surveillance
of the police . " Art . 6 . The individuals designated by the preceding articlo shall be obliged to quit Paris and its banlieue within ten days from the promulgation of the present decree , unless they shall have obtained permission to remain , from the administration . There shall be delivered to those who may demand it a feuillt ; da route et dc secoicrs , which shall fix their route to their place of birth , or that which they may have designated . " Art . (> . In case of violation of tho measures proscribed by Articles 4 and b of the present decree , offenders may be ; transported , uh a measure of general safety , to a penitentiary colony at Cayenne , or in Algeria .
" Art . 7- Persons transported in virtue of the present decree ahull be subjected to labour in the penitentiary establishment ; they shall be deprived of their civil and political rights ; they shall bo subjected to military jurisdiction ; the military laws shall be applicable to them . However , in case of evasion from the establishment , the transported shall be condemned to imprisonment , which ciuuiot exceed tho time during which they may then have to remain in transportation . They shall be tmhjected to military discipline and subordination towards their chiefs ami keepers , whether civil or military , during the period of imprisonment .
" Art . H . Regulations of the Kxecutive Government Hhall nettle tho organization of them ) penitentiary colonieu .
" Art . 9 " . The Ministers of the Interior and of "War are charged , each in what concerns him , with the execution of the present decree . " Done at Paris , at the Elysee National , the Council of Ministers being heard , the 8 th of December . " Louis Napoleon Bonaparte . " A . De Morny , Minister of the Interior . " And now , reader , that you have read that document , you will be in a proper frame of mind to appreciate the fact that elaborate arrangements have been made for taking the vote on the 20 th instant : positively elaborate arrangements to secure the integrity of the ballot-box and protect the right of voting . And this has been done while the Bonapartist faction are in possession of all civil and military power in France . Immense farce with a horrible tragedy beneath it ! The portrait of this regime of the sabre and the bullet is well described by the
Morning Chronicle of Thursday . " We have a wholesale incarceration of nearly 200 national representatives , snatched from the midst of Europe ' s politest capital , without the shadow of a crime alleged , further than that of an obstructive policy in the Legislative Assembly of the nation—we say without an accusation ; for , if the alleged plot against the President and the asserted tampering with the army are true , why are not the victims brought to trial , and why is M . Thiers already released ? Every independent newspaper is stopped or intimidated—every possibility of telling or learning the truth is most successfully blocked up against the inquiries of eager millions . The mails , the frontiers , the army , the executive—all are secured , manipulated , machine
and directed with the blind energy of a . Opinion and consent are asked at the sword ' s point—appeal is answered by the tnitraille—remonstrance acknowledged by monster mortars—and resistance , or even repining , confronted by some five hundred thousand bayonets . And , as though the present regime were desirous to reproduce every historical detail of past despotisms , it is plainly intimated that Cayenne , as in the days of Robespierre , and Algeria , with [ its novelty of horrors , await those who shall combine for the secret utterance of thoughts and hopes which can no longer be openly avowed . So it is—at this very moment Louis Napoleon rules , and has secured submission by the identical acts or menaces which history has selected as the foulest blots of the Greek democracies , of the Roman Republic in
the worst days of its civic furies , of the sanguinary Italian States—nay of France itself , in the successive tyrannies of Louis XIV ., of the Convention , and of the Empire . It has been reserved for France to see combined all these invasions of human , rights in the policy of a single week . " But the Constitutionnel impudently dogmatises as follows , " France a ? a civilized nation has just raised herself in the eyes of Europe . The troops of France are now as vigorous as they are disciplined . The public feeling has just devoted itself to the defence of family ties , and property and the protection of order and of labour . France has just done justice on the coalitions against public prosperity and personal ambitions . "
Among ; minor acts following the reestablishment of order , is the sop to the Legitimists and priest party—the restoration of the Pantheon to lloman Catholic purposes in accordance with the wishes of " the pious founder , " said pious founder being none other than mephitie Louis XV . of " scarlet duBarry " memory . The Times said all the English journals had denounced the coup d'etat with " one base exception . " During the week there have been four i'lnglisli journals contending for the honour of being the allies of the Cossacks I
T 11 K " TIMES ON I-Oirirt NAl'OLKON' . On tho 13 th of November , 1 S 60 , Louis Napoleon declared in tiis Message to the National Assembly of France that " he considered as great criminals those who by personal ambition compromised the small amount of stability secured by the Constitution ; that such was his profound conviction , which had never been shaken ; that the invariable rule of his politieal life would bo , under all circumstances , to do his duty , and nothing but hin duty ; that every one , except himself , was at liberty to seek to hasten the revision of the fundamental law ; that if the Constitution contained defects mid dangers , the Assembly was competent to expose them to the eyes of the country ; but that he alone , bound by his oath ,
restrained himself within the strict , limits traced by tli . tt ; act ; that whatever the future solution of attain * was to bo , it was essential to provide against , it , ho that passion , surprise , mid violence should never decide the fate of ;» . great nation ; that the first duty of authorities was to inspire the people with veneration for the law , by never deviating from it themselves ; and that bin anxiety wan not , he astiured the Assembly , to know who would govern France in lttf > 2 , but to employ the time in bin disposal so that tho transition , whatever it might foe , should be effected without agitation or disturbance ; " for , said he , " the noblest object , and Unit most , worthy of an exalted mind , is not . to seek , when in power , how to perpetuate it , but . to labour incessantly to fortify , for the benefit of all , those principles of authority and morality which defy the paHsioiiK of mankind and the instability of laws . "
We mill remember the joy and confidence with whie . H these words were received by tho Assembly and the French nation—these words which must now strike their Helteonvic . ted author in the midst of his sanguinary triumph nud leave a Htigmn on bin truth and honour which , the Crown of an Kmpire cannot hide or efface . Never waa " tho fate of u great nation" more ciiuctuuUy
Dec. 13, 1851.] &!* * %T&Iltt. U75
Dec . , 1851 . ] &!* * % t & iltt . U 75
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 13, 1851, page 3, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_13121851/page/3/
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