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Leader (1850-1860), 22nd March 1856, Edition 2 of 2, Page 11, . ¦ ut^M ^: i856:i

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    • I^iilitir Maim
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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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      ¦ f tt E L E A 61 S . 275 X __^_^__ ^ . _^— .

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      "Vs ^ T'S ^ fearJiS . 'wKSssj It V ° fh irii ? sfrtiott ieToften delayed , owtngto a press s ^ HSaa ^^ sre ^ flwt fiad room lor correspondence , even the briefest .

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      Saturday, March 22, 1856.

      SATURDAY , MARCH 22 , 1856 .

      I Tune, Or Even Hope, Played Before Thei...

      I tune , or even hope , played before their fane ? the prizes of the most vulgar lust , and , by means which it is not for us to recur to in detail , attained an unparalleled success . Suddenly , when that success appears complete , English journalism , which affects to hold sacred th « principles of legality , and still more saored the a * .- *** of " honour . " transfigures the

      usurpa-IFranee in the night , when the nation was enervated , and had lost for a time its senses and its dignity . Since the first Revolution we have not seen , in that country , an eclipse of eighteen years . Were the throne to become vacant to-morrow , the actual occupants of the Tuileries must vanish like * fantoccini , and the Infant of France would remain to be educated

      tion into a conquest , and speaks of the »* vast acquisitions" of Napoleon the Third , —acquisitions including the spoliation of the Orleans family , the results of stupendous jobbery at the Bourse , the seizure of the entire revenues of France . * After this , the people of France may well doubt whether they belong to themselves , or the Bonaparte family . Are they a nation , are they an " acquisition ? " And the peop uiiuiucu ui £

      as a Pretender , perhaps to originate , ac a future day , new conflicts and miseries among his countrymen . He is not born with brighter omens than that King of Rome who came into a world of purple , who was received by the people as though he had been the Dauphin of the Bourbons , who was saluted by cannon , bonfires , imperial panem et circenses , and whose birth exasperated the animosity of the royalists and strengthened the confederacy of tVip . rp . miblicans .

      THE " CHILD OF FRANCE . " We must all , as men , sympathise ' with the hopes and affections of a woman enduring the sufferings that make her a mother . But what felicitations can we offer to Eugenie , Empress of the French . ? Another Pretender is born to w- « _ j . 1 _ _ ¦ — TOTT ^ rt 1 tt «/ -iXT a nir \ f \ 4 " \ r % ^\* I ll ' O /* rtTVl ¦ LiEix ^¦^^ v ^ ™

      ot Jinglana may wren .. mcaa **> - * and wrong confused , and hesitate whether to esteem Washington as a patriot , or to despise him as " unsuccessful . " Had he " acquired " the United States of America , grasped the sceptre before it was offered to him , abolished the central and local legislatures , sent the chiefs of the War of Independence to pestilential colo' nies , ruled by decrees under the pretorian aegis , and given a " Child" to America , would Ms have been a household name in England , would lie have been our admiration , our example ? But he would have been a Sucwm and what more , or better , is Napoleon

      The offer of a political amnesty has been elicited by « ' the universal congratulation and joy " that is to say , the Empire implores the adhesion of those good citizens who defended the laws and institutions of France , and who , for their attachment to legality , were transported or immured . How many of the eighteen hundred survivors of Algeria and Cayenne does Napoleon expect to win by this act of conditional grace ? It is but one form of the official fanfaronade that now overwhelms the political existence of France . Surely it is cynicism or irony to review these

      * ^ . France ; anomet xv . a _ ru- , < j ., » uu » u « . .. The ritual of usurpation , ordained by the first Empire , is copied by the second . 1856 is the reflex of 1811 . From the Grand Chamberlain ' s programme of official joy , to the non-official report in the Moniteur of festivities and congratulations , Napoleon the Third borrows the forms , the illustrations , the words that were emp loyed to inaugurate tlie cradle-career of the Ro ^ nri Names and dates being changed ,

      the Thlrd ? Or , if Warren Hastings had constituted himself , by force , the heir of the Great Mogul , which the English Government could not easily have prevented , would not th ? purple of Delhi adorning the splendid crime have changed it into a virtue ? It is our calamity that , we no longer approve or blame by any standard of right ; we observe no distinction between good faith and-1 is d

      manifestations in the Momwur , anu w ymnounce them , " to all appearance , sincere . Let us be just to all men . As a governor , Napoleon the Third lias displayed intelligence and vigour ; but to speak of his sincerity , of his protestations , is to recall the oaths of the Presidentship , gratuitously repeated , and ratified by solemn appeals in the presence ot God and man .

      Paris has lived over again , exactly the week of ceremonial lustre that marked the birth of the King of Rome . Napoleon , fourth of the name , is given to the French as their Emperor , and is proclaimed " The Child of France . " Whereupon , the response of the leading journal in . England is , that the child of the Coup d'JStat has a better right to the throne of France than any other Frenchman ? What j right ? The right to a Crown is acquired by hereditary descent , or by election . If Napoleon the Third reigns , as the elect of France , «^ T T * T T X K \ 1 A * u

      perjury , usurpation and justice . ms a nar saying , which must be said ; but it is not said by us from any desire to turn the late event in Paris into an occasion for raillery or personal rancour . Our readers know as well as we that things have come to this result . We ] have seen a political robbery in France , and I we hear it called an " acquisition ; " we see the hereditary and the elective principle ignored by a government of bayonets , and we are told that the usurper transmits a rig ht superior to that of all other Frenchmen . If we could believe * i „ r * AJ ^ f iXiiatino . + r » Itr t . Ti p . vfirmlator of LliJUAV rvw »

      ^ ^^ France lias not elected jus oaoy . xne ua , u . uu that gives may take away j it cannot confiscate its own sovereignty ; still less can this generation renounce the rights of posterity . But , if the new Napoleon is to inherit the Empire , under the principle of hereditary succession , ' there exists a line of princes with claims prior to his , paramount to his , and these are the branches of the Boukbon monarchy . Unless

      , l / ll < 3 VJT ^ JV-t . * JL V ^ v ^ w — — q human , success , there would indeed be a chaos , and all moral and Christian laws would be figments when weighed against the results I of a midnight fusillade . V < s Victis . No other I maxim would be safe . It must be satisfactory to the self-respect of all intelligent Frenchmen to know that beyond the blind excitement of the populace , and the __ i : „ , ! n ^ ,,-., ; i ;* -cr , \ -F + li « n f . l-ijimtaf-vrs . much of \ —

      respectable conservatism in lingiana nas oeeu seized with a revolutionary infection , it must be blind indeed to write against the very princip le of hereditary government , against all vested titles , all prerogative and prescription . ] The sycophants of the French empire do not know on what grounds to congratulate France , or to flatter the new child of the Tuileries . They would be frank if they oonfessed that , Napoleon the ThiiuV being Emperor , powerful , triumphant , irresistible , they flatter him , as they would flatter Washington , if a Washingcould it is nis

      Sc * JUtiH 3 LL QUA VAJHwV V / A uaaj -w ** wv »** ww-. ~ . this adulation is not current in France . Nor is it wholly inexcusable in England . Through I the humiliating rhapsodies of the press , and the haze of public opinion , rurw the radical fallacy of the Alliance . Napoleon is France--in th « o sight of the English people . But in the sight of history , Napoleon is not France , for if a country be represented by any men , or set of men , it is by its wisest and best , and the best and wisest of France are in eternal and ineradicable hostility to the regime of the I s ~ i J ) 17 * s ~ ji

      TON , be in that position , nor , character they regard , but his success . They I would salute , with the same praises , a worse or a bettor man . Louis Na-P 0 L 150 N , grasping the sceptre , was the I avatar of the pavrty of Desperation . Himself a bankrupt , when by leave of the Republic , whose lawa he outraged , he set foot on the epil of Franco , ho gathered to his cause a band of adventurers , without position , character , fqr- ,

      \ JOUjlf I * JJjLUb , But , with eighteen years between us nnd I the possible accession to the French throne of a fourth Napoleon , it would be absurd to exaggerate the importance of the birth that happened last Sunday at the Tuileries . legitimacy was absent , the elective princip le w * is ] absent , the principle of power was only present in the person of the Emperok , who , again , is only powerful because he came upon

      I^Iilitir Maim

      I ^ iilitir Maim

      There Is Notidng So Revolutionary Becaus...

      There is notidng so revolutionary because there is Nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress . —Da . Abnoij > .

      The Latest American Diplomatic Papers. T...

      THE LATEST AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC PAPERS . The correspondence between the Governments of the United States and Great Britain on the recruitment question , which , has been officially published in America , is in our hands . The correspondence on the subject of Central America has also been received , and we are in a position to judge of the actual state of the relations of the two countries . Thanks to the share which the public has now been enabled to take in these questions , the relations grow late in

      more favourable . It is quite too the day to render it necessary for us to resume the whole of these papers ; the less since they I do not come up to the present elate , and we are not necessarily limited 1 o the space of time which they < $ over . We shall , therefore , deal entirely with the main results . The recruitment question itself may now be considered completely obsolete . It has

      de-| scended entirely to a personality ; ana we think that the relative position of per * ons can be distinctly assigned . The Americans complain that we had , by our agents , broken the express statute law of the United States . Lord Clarendon rep lies by arguments latended to show that , although in old countries \« civitas career esP— that is , the citizen ia bound to the town by the customs and obligations of citizenship , as if the town were a prison-yet in free countries " cimtas career non est " - —the oitiy . cn is free , and may enlist vex bo

      the armies of Great Britain , it it pieiwemuu For there is no demagogue will go so tar as your Biitish peer when he is on Yankee land , and is in opposition to the administration for . the time being . No barn-burner can outrun Lord Clarendon in his argument against centralised authority . The argument , however , matters little . The British Government ha 3 given up the legal point , und the question baa

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), March 22, 1856, page 11, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_22031856/page/11/