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Leader (1850-1860), 27th December 1851, Edition Country of 2, Page 4, Paris, Fridav, December 19,1851. My Dear...

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      Letters From Paris. [From A Special Corr...

      Talking of " family , " I ask you "whether such brutal beasts as Veron and Delamarre have the better right to talk of family , or such a man as Manin , the President of the Venetian Republic , who of course is called a " rouge . " This noble man has been in Paris since the capitulation of "Vienna , after its heroic resistance of eighteen months . He left Vienna with his wife and one daughter , who is subject to epileptic fits , obliged to be constantly watched , and nev er left alone . On arriving at Marseilles during the cholera , his

      his wife died in the lazaretto ! He came with only daughter to Paris to gain his honourable bread . So chivalrous is his delicacy , that he w ill not accept of a farthing in the shape of pension or support . He gives lessons in Italian , but with what difficulty ! being ever exposed to the suspicions of an inquisitorial police ; and so he devotes his life to alleviate the sufferings of his poor child—the only daughter of her he has lost . Is not this " la famille " or is it better exemplified at the Elyse ' e ? But I could tell you a hundred instances of unrecorded devotion among the " rouges . "

      [ ~ 1224 Ct> * Juafrtft* Saturday,

      [ ~ 1224 Ct > * JUafrtft * Saturday ,

      Paris, Fridav, December 19,1851. My Dear...

      Paris , Fridav , December 19 , 1851 . My Dear Friend , —M . Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's adherents and satellites are not content with his shameless parody of a great epoch , they are now setting to work to rewrite history , " done to order , " from the point of view most agreeable to the intrigues and usurpations of the masters of to-day . In the face ( I do not say of French history , but ) of all the impartial writers of all countries , and of the contemporary records and documents which have come down to us , we are to accept , soberly and seriously , with our eyes open and our memories awake , an article in the Constitutionnel on the coup d ' etat of the

      2 nd of December , 1851 , four mortal columns long , as an undeniable rectification of the " romances" ( as they are called , forsooth !) of all the great European historians who have gravely and profoundly described the causes of the Great Revolution of ' 89 , and calmly and seriously weighed its effects and consequences . The extravagant balderdash and enormous impudence of this pretended reply to the English Press would not merit a word of rejoinder from any respectable London journal if the name of the writer were alone to be considered ; for even in the lowest sinks of English corruption there is not , I rejoice to know and to state with certainty , the equal of A . Granier

      de Cassagnac in disgrace and disrepute . I say this most advisedly , for I now 7 aioio the antecedents of this man , step by step , exactly ; and I denounce him ( with whose reckless and insolent paradoxes and brutal declamations many of our journals are too ready to stain their columns ) as a foul blot upon the honourable profession of journalism . A . Granier de Cassagnac is , not figuratively , but most strictly and literally , a hired bully and bravo , the bare recital of whose past career strikes upon the ear of any honest man like a personal insult . In ordinary times , I admit , no personality should enter even into the hottest polemics ; to none more than to myself would

      it be repugnant to assail the personal character of a political adversary ; but in these unhappy days of ours , when the vilest of men are holding up to public horror and to public execration the purest and best , when men sullied with every vice that can debase , start up as the privileged champions of the holiest and most sacred of ties and institutions ; it is not simply our right , but our duty , during the enforced Bilence of our brothers of the French Press , to cry aloud to all the winds of publicity who and what manner of men are the professed champions of Law , Society , and Religion , in . whoso mouths no insult is too base , no calumny too cruel , against the imprisoned und oppressed survivors of a successful

      inasuacre . I therefore engage , as soon as I return to England , to -write and ( if you will ) to sign a biography ( for which I am getting the fullest and most authentic materials ) of this M . A . Granier dcJCassaguac , and of this M . le Docteur Veron , wjioao powers of invective and audacities of invention would indeed be formidable , if any credit could be thought worthy to be attached to their lucubrations . It is they and theirs who have proclaimed a war a l ' outrance : let us accept it . We only demand a preference for virtue and for honesty .

      ror the present moment I content myself with calling your notice to an article in to-day ' s (' onstitutiounel ( the chief organ of the coup d ' etat ) . It , begins by assuring us that the opinions of ( lie Times and other English journals upon " the ^ rund act recently accomplished , ' ' proceed " evidently , necessarily from a complete ignorance of th «; state of France , of the plant * and the worth of its parties , of the nature and tendency of its objects . " It then proceeds to assert that the dominant fact in the history of France , for the last sixty years , is that the French people , really and unrepresented by their own Government , have been constantly subjected to a scries of minorities which have got at the head of affairs by different ways , and directed them according to their views , their passions , uu < l their interests . That---whatever ronvtntic histories may nay to the contrary—it in now an incoutuatiblc fact that JLouiH

      XVI . proposed to establish in 1788 , all the good and serious liberal institutions of modern France ! but that the parlemens , the noblesse , the clergy , and the bourgeoisie (?) , whom all these reforms stripped of their privileges ( qy . what were the privileges of the bourgeoisie in 1788 ?) , conspired to thwart him , and compelled him to convoke the States General . That the magistracy , the bar , the noblemen , the prelates , and the bourgeoisie , hoped to occupy the seats of this great Assembly , and so , after rejecting the reforms of Louis XVI ., to substitute their direction and influence for the decision and influence of the Court . That the 1200 deputies of the States General had no

      sooner begun to sit at Versailles , than they forgot their mandate ( which was to preserve the monarchy and the national institutions ) ; and after stirring up a revolt of the populace against the throne , finished by constructing on a pedestal of declamations and sophistries , an ideal insensate constitution , which lasted thirteen months . These 1200 deputies were " an imperceptible minority of ambitious soi-disant philosophes , who launched the country , in opposition to its express will , into an unknown regime , having no root in the national habits , no precedent in the national history , no authority over the national mind . "

      That the Convention which followed the Constituent after the 10 th of August , ' 92 , was of all Assemblies the most alien to the country ; both the electors and the representatives being nominated by a scandalous minority from the clubs . That on the dissolution of the Convention , the Constitution ( of the third year of the Republic ) , which lasted four years , was utterly foreign to the will of France ; and that , in short , during eleven years ( i : e . from

      1789 to 1800 ) France was handed over to the domination of four successive minorities—Constituents , Girondins , the Mountain , the Thermidorians—to each of whom in turn it owed terror , ruin of commerce and agriculture , without ever having been consulted by those who assumed the Government . In all elaborate perversions of this kind there is ever a grain of truth ; and it cannot be denied that there is a grain of truth in all this statement ; but only so much as to render the falsehood more glaring .

      Then ( it says ) , after fifteen years of a Government even less praiseworthy for having been regulary accepted ( as Louis Napoleon ' s Plebiscite , will be regularly accepted !) than for having delivered the country from the bloody struggle of factions ( mark how appropriate to the Nephew !) the Empire fell , and the Restoration , " patched in the brains of princes and nobles , reared in the school of the philosophy of the eighteenth century , " resumed the traditions of the Constituent , and introduced English Parliamentary institutions . This Government rested on the shoulders of about 80 , 000 , chiefly aristocratic families ; the rest of the country quite indifferent to its rise or fall .

      Then the regime of 1830 was nothing but the restoration continued , plus increased power of the Chambers and diminished power of the throne , i . e ., " with another element of decadence , ruin , and dissolution introduced . " This regime was confided to about 200 , 000 families , mostly bourgeois ; the masses quite indifferent , treating it , like strangers , with mere deference , and letting it perish . Then the Republic of ' 48 was " less popular and less national than the two Monarchies it replaced . It was decreed by a gang of Clubbists and Conspirators who imposed it in the country , and divided the spoils and profits , in the shape of an extraordinary tax upon the proprietors and peasants , of 190 , 000 , 000 of francs . " Sic .

      ( Mind , this tax was to save the country from itnmtnent bankruptcy at the risk of unpopularity . ) About 700 or 800 political convicts and conspirators took charge of this government ; "but" ( mark this avowal I ) " ( 5 , 000 , 000 of peasants" ( i . e . of brutal ignorant peasants , who believed that the Emperor was come back ) struck it ( i . e . the Republic ) a mortal blow on the 10 th of December , in giving it for chief , for ruler , and for master a man , in two regards , the enemy of the demagogy—both as Prince and as Bonaparte . " ( It will be well that the Republic should treasure up this avowal . ) " So that ( continues the article ) we see that France has , for sixty yearn , with the exception of the . interval of the . Consulate and the , Empire , been dominated and posuesHed by minorities . "

      bo that we are to believe that France was not dominated by a minority when , trick with war and exhauHted by conscriptions , she welcomed the allied irmies as deliverers , and Bonaparte hud to escape for his life ! So France is not dominated by an insolent and brutal minority mno , at this moment . Then the article proceeds to attack what it ( sails " tin ; political classes , " " the most turbulent , the

      most ambitious , the most capricious of the citizens ;" and these are the " lettered clauses" and the "liberal professions . " To their" domination a counterpoise is wanting , and that , is to be found in the " agricultural population" ( i . e . the (> , ()() 0 , 000 of brutish poa-Hants ) . It then says that the Legitimists , OrleanistN , and Republicans wore all powerful in the hist Au-Heinbly ; but what were they in the country ? The result of tlio coup d ' tilat proven—Nothing .

      You see , after eliminating thesethreeT ^ wjir 7 iT ~ only remains the BonapartiZts , and the MOolooTf brutish peasants to represent the " wfflofSv ° f The tirade , after inveighing at length aSTtV supremacy of the lettered classes ^ a 3 WJ ?? institutions , " and against Parliamentary instiht ?^ from which « France is now lwpptty d ? W ? T » the bold initiative of Louis Napoleon BonZtL ^ perorates as follows : — F «« e , " Louis Napoleon Bonaparte , guided by the sub lime genius of the Emperor , is building with t £ l purified materials of his age the . durable edifice in which , after him and like him , all the serious nower ? called by whatever name , may find a shelter wW ther republic or monarchy ; for the name may chaneT but the conditions of a government ' s existence remain the same . a " Providence alone has the secrets of the future- but if ever the Count de Chambord , or the Count de Paris should come to reign in France , it is to the coup d ' etat of the 10 th of December that they would both owe their crowns . "

      Now really , after reading and rereading this ar tide , I know not whether to admire most its insolence or its maladresse ; for it must offend ( though the last words are a bait to the most corrupt and least noble of the Royalist parties ) both the Legitimists and Orleanists ; it must once more and for ever undeceive the Republican party as to the intentions of " the coup d ' etat ; and , lastly , it must very deeply offend as a personal insult that very large and very important class in France—the " lettered class "—the political class—the liberal professions .

      But I have omitted one sentence of the article in which this bravo , whose whole public life has been a foul blot on journalism , thus speaks of journalists in classing them with the other liberal professions ; he calls them ( en passant ) " pen-menders , inkstandholders , and paper-scratchers . " There is powerful writing for you ! So much for the Constitutionnel of this morning . La Patrie of this evening , a sort of Government

      hurdy-gurdy ( for it cannot be called an organ ) , has an article intended to catch the republicans . It says—" Louis Napoleon is come to resume the unfinished and interrupted work of the organization of democratic France , and not to try to galvanize the corpse of a part which cannot again revive . " It then proceeds to dilate on the frightful consequences of a Parliamentary coup d ' etat , and on the impossibility of a legitimist restoration .

      Such are the tunes the Government instruments are playing ; and they have it all their own way , for all opposition is mute , and under these conditions the will of France is to vote its mon suicide ! A nice little bit of Jesuitry is going on in the Parti Pretre Section of the Legitimists , headed by De Falloux and Montalembert . The latter , in his letter to the Univers , recommended adhesion and support pro tanto to the President , as having done much for the Church , and as being next best to the right thing .

      The Government papers reported that he was authorized b y M . de Falloux , in the name of a Legitimist Committee , to publish the assurance that M . Falloux and his friends recommended an affirmative vote in favour of Louis Napolebn . M . de Montalembert now writes to correct this impression , and to stale the exact words of M . dd Falloux , viz ., " That he and his friends most authorized to give counsel , would recommend to their party not to deposit any negative vote in the ballot of the 20 th of December . This , you will see , is very different from advising an aflirmative vote , as no vote at all is so much ol moral force subtracted from the numerical majority . The Parti Pretre will , however , in fact v oto for Louis Napoleon Bonaparte . will ab

      The proudest and best of the Legitimists - stain altogether . The Government papers are making a great fuss about the improved aspect of commercial activity , the state of the Funds , & c . Every evening criers are sent over Paris , selling papers with the last quotations of the Bourse . So nets of different kinds are thrown out to catcli all parties . To foreign capitalists ( especially to the city of London ) the bait is concession of the trunk lines of railway , and no jealousy of their profits . — ( Vide M . de Morny's speech to the deputation- ) Large public works are already begun . The completion of the Louvre , the extension of the Kueltivoh , the cincture line of railway round Paris ( a really important and valuable work ) , & c .

      The latest scheme is the amelioration of the navigable rivers , and especially of the mouth ot the Rhone . Another department ( the Jura ) hurt now l > t- placed under a state of siege . Nearly the half of France will bo under martial law at the moment when the " free and sincere expression of the People ' s will , ho ardently desired by Louis Napoleon , is to be declared in the votes ! Doyou observe ; , that at Vienna a newspaper Iuih been suspended , for nn article offensive to tin ; person of the 1 [' resident of the French JCopublic f I am sorry to havo to record an iiiHtance of that strong native iluukeyism which reigna iu tho linglifl '* breast : —

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 27, 1851, page 4, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27121851/page/4/