On this page

• Text (2)

  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.

  • 

    1222 Wb* VLeattet. [Saturday ,

  • 

    LETTERS FROM. PARIS. [Fkom a Special Co-...

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Lord Palme Rston Is No Longer Foreign Se...

    disturb the " settlement" of 1815 , and England not consulted ? Yet such may be the next news . The Anglo-American Alliance prospers . On landing in America , Kossuth had delivered some stirring sentences on the effect of the American banner in Europe ; and his words were calculated to have a powerful influence in extending the idea . He had , be it remembered , only just begun . On this side of the Atlantic , the Anglo-American Alliance is not only becoming a standing head in the Leading Journal , but is received with favour wherever it is mentioned . Ministers have as yet made no sign upon tie subject : we almost hope that they may not " adopt" it !

    1222 Wb* Vleattet. [Saturday ,

    1222 Wb * VLeattet . [ Saturday ,

    Letters From. Paris. [Fkom A Special Co-...

    LETTERS FROM . PARIS . [ Fkom a Special Co-respondent . ] Paris , Wednesday , December 17 , 1851 . My Dear Friend , —Since I last wrote you a few hurried lines , my time has been very fully occupied in visits and in conversations equally pleasant and profitable . For the first few days after my arrival here , it was impossible to think or to speak calmly of late events . How can ( I do not say a susceptible and impressionable being , but ) any man of commonest human , feeling , spin cold and well-balanced phrases , or draw patient conclusions , or well weigh the pros and cons ., the reasons and the apologies , the better and the worse , or accept irreparable facts , as if they established a right and a sanction in the place of fraud and cruelty , whilst the air was still heavy with

    the smoke of musketry , and the gutters of the streets still ran with blood of murdered citizens ?—murdered by drunken savages , disguised as soldiers , in the name of Order and Religion . You know how how I abhor and abjure civil war : how , even to weakness , I have ever refused to justify the appeal to force , even in the defence of freedom : how from , having seen I have learned to dread and detest this sudden rending asunder of a family of fellow citizens divided against itself in a deadly

    struggle . You have heard me speak of those frightful and unhappy days of June ' 48 , as an eyewitness of civic bloodshedding the most cruel ! You bear me witness that I have never Bpoken nor written one word but in execration and contempt of that revolutionary violence which is , in the very moment of its triumph , the beginning of the reaction ; which subverts but never sets up , which founds nothing lasting but disturbance , which leaves no fruits but misery and vindictiveness .

    Yet are there moments when peace is death and tranquillity servitude : when to resist is the first of duties , and to yield the last of degradations . £ o then , why should I be ashamed to confess that I was struck to the heart as if by the pang of a private and personal grief , when on my arrival I found Paris ¦ quiet : shops open , business resumed , circulation free , the Boulevards crowded with reckless and idle loungers , sight-seeing and making holiday in the streets where , but the day before , their brothers and friends had been butchered by the new Janissaries of M . Louis Napoleon Bonaparte , who to the ferocious habits of desultory war imported from African campaigns , added the stimulants of burning liquors and

    brutal and perfidious instigations ? Yes ; there , where innocent men , women and children , and inoffensive strangers , had been shot down like sheep at the doors of their houses , where poor working girls had been surprised by grape-shot in upper rooms , where all who escaped death have been outraged and insulted by an army of bandits and assassins—there were men and women laughing and sight-seeing and making holiduy ! Yet wus there a kind of bewilderment an of terror , indignation , and impotent humiliation , on many faces as they curiously gazed and wondered and recounted the deeds and accidents of M . Louis Bonaparte's " glorious days of December , " his day of Austorlitz , his day of Coronation !

    To nr . v . this i ' uir city and this noble people lying down under ho Imse a yoke of perjury and blood was a bitter mid despairing sight . 1 had nearly returned to England on that Saturday night ; but u thought that to be here at this time , in this sudden and uwful silence of all freedom in the midnt of this terror and violence , Huspicion and proscription , wus my message nnd duty , and perhupH might even be Home alight consolation to our iriendH ^ decided me to remain . 1 think 1 nmy confidently nay that not a moment of my time haw been

    lost . Not u moment but has been fruitful in utudy , observation , nnd experience . I haive never , having known France ho long and so variously , known her tsocial and political condition bo intimately ub now , ¦ after these few days , in which it has been my privilege to talk , with delightful confidence and unreserve , to Home of the inont eminent hearts and intellect h of this country ho exuberantly rich in intellectual gifts and illustrations ; to listen to some of the best and noblest , now condemned to silence , if not to the solitude of prisons , by the usurping despotium ; to hear them ( whoso names you know mo

    well ) unbosom their own noblest of sorrows , and lay bare the causes of their country ' s degradation , with all that convincing accuracy of thought and charming felicity of expression which you recognize in their writings . I have visited men of all parties , and eotions of parties , in order to form an unbiased and independent judgment , not on M . Bonaparte's crime ( for that it is a crime , and a most heinous crime , who can deny ?) , but on its causes and its consequences . I shall bring back with me to England a full store of the most valuable reflections , and a thorough practical insight into the tendencies of certain great movements which now divide Europe . I kno w the undercurrents

    of what was before to me but a confused and turbid stream . I think this stream will yet flow clear to all the world as it does to my hopes already . But I must be brief . The first day of the revolution , the bourgeoisie were not more in consternation than in anger , at the imprisonment of their favourite generals especially . The working classes took it well . even gladly . The Assembly " Ces gueux \ h , avec leur vingt-cinq francs "—caused them no regrets . Then the restoration of universal suffrage , and the Royalist plots destroyed . Then " he does it all for the Republic . "

    The second day , finding that the voting was to be open and registered ( as in 1804 ) they were suspicious and angry . Then the chance of a general insurrection was , for a moment , very menacing ; but L . Bonaparte , by a second decree , returned to the secret voting . This , though regarded as a concession and a weakness , appeased the people , who were quite indisposed to fight , and they stood still . In the night the barricades were raised , by the police . The real insurgents were entirely men of the easy classes of society , taking arms in a burst of indignation : men of enthusiasm and desperate resolution .

    The Elysee had been appalled by the calmness and sullen submission of Paris : M . Bonaparte and Ma were determined to have an insurrection , or at least to shed blood ; so on Thursday , as you know , the general massacre took place all along the Boulevards , in the best quarters of the town . Very few shots were fired from any windows , and they were by agents of the police . I have already described to you the rest , and you have seen , doubtless , many published and private letters . I can tell you that in the Cercle del'TJnion , the most aristocratic club in Paris , of which our own ambassador is a member , a general massacre would have taken place if it had not been for the accidental presence of a Bonapartist general . The soldiers said that shots had been fired from the

    windows : they fired a volley in return , and then burst into the rooms with their naked swords . But I might fill quires with similar instances . But I hasten to the actual situation . It will be for me , when I return fb England next week , to write calmly and leisurely a series of papers on the probable results of this military revolution . I now send you merely a precis , of which you will make what use you will . What I write is the result of many conversations with men of all parties and my own deductions .

    First : Don ' t believe one word of what the French papers say . No paper is allowed to publish an article that has not been submitted to , and approved of by the Ministry of the Interior . No paper at all independent contains any original matter . De la Gueronniere , who was a Legitimist in ' 47 ; a Republican in ' 48 ; a Socialist in ' 49- ' 5 O ; is now an out and out Bonapartist in ' 51 . Lamartine has written to protest against and withdraw his name from LePays . E . de Girardin has entirely given up La Presse , which is now Bonapartist—and edited by Perodeaud , who is not a politieal man , and since ' 48 has not written in La Presse . The other former editors leave it also .

    l'lie Government papers ( and , as you Bee , they are all Government papers , either active or passive , at this moment ) not only fabricate news from the provinces , of atrocities committed by Socialists— but . forbid all rectifications . These accounts are horribly exaggerated , e . ff . t a chateau in the departement du Gard was said to have been pillaged and burned : a friend of mine haw a letter from the proprietors , Haying , not only that it is not true , but that the Republican mayor of the adjoining town had offered a guard of men in cane of disturbance . But , miid the writer ( though their stories are not true about our department ) , they are about the others ! i . c , what I know is not true— - what 1 hear of only , is true . So much for hcaruuy evidence .

    In another case , where the insurgent ! * had possession of a town for ttixty bourn , they only ( stopped the Government despatches and besieged the Mairic for urniu . The Mayor , a violent ISonapartist , resisted ahd shot a man in the crowd ; whereat , of courwe , they returned the compliment . Jtut no further lives were lost . Yet here the Government npoke of the nioHt frightful murders having occurred . From another department , a t'urt ! writes to contradict the report of bin having been treated with violence .

    Whenever crimes have been committed , it has been of course by villains who have no connection with ny political sect or party , who hud no opinions , but who lake advantage of times of trouble when an outlaw is the chief power in the state , to follow bin example , to stalk forth from their hiding places , and

    commit violence and rapine . Thev ar *> fn 7 a ' part liberated convicts , sometimes , perhan « , ° peasants , who have had a dim notion of isw *^ year of " restitution of all things , " but no , nniir ? connection at all . On all this the Golem £ tT traded , crying to all the ; winds , Religion , Ja 5 ? Property . Dr Veron , the most disgusting crapulous quack doctors , physically and morallv A de Cesena . who in ' 48 was a disciple of Proudhon ' & . de Cassagnac , who was convicted of swindlin ' some years since , and was the hired advocate . $ slavery ; De Morny , who lived with another man ? wife , & c . u s

    The working classes are so disenchanted with rP volutions , that they have not budged this time that " accept of no leadership or alliance ; they hold b ' v thl Republic , and wait to see what Louis Napoleon can do for them ; they say he is better than monarchies and that he must do something for them . Wh ' some of the leaders of the Mountain endeavoured * rouse them in the Faubourgs , they would not open a door to receive them ; they remained at home . The secret societies did not move .

    Do you know what the new Constitution is to be ? A Senate of eighty members ; twenty named by Louis Napoleon ; twenty more by the first twenty the other forty by the first forty . ' An Assembly of 300 members ; one for each of 300 electoral districts ; each district naming three , and the Executive choosing one of the three ! Did you ever hear of such a monstrous farce ? So I have heard the new institutions descri bed as " Universal Suffrage and no Elections . " It is sheer Absolutism ; and the People begin to ponder s ullenly thereon ; they are allowed to vote their own suicide voila tout ! The opinion of the most farsighted of the Republican party is , that he should be allowed

    to have his fling , to use himself up ; that he must originate democratic measures to stop where he is ; and that he cannot do so , even if capable or disposed , without raising a storm of opposition ; that he cannot go to war for fear of a successful general ; and that nothing is so revolutionary as a long peace ; that it would be a serious calamity to France if he were to be shot , as nothing but violence and anarchy could succeed him as yet ; whereas , during this interval of silence and compression , the Republican and Liberal party will organize itself , will study social questions , heal their own divisions , and prepare a programme for the future ; that it is the last agony of Bonapartism ; and that when Bonapartism is used up , nothing remains but the pure Democracy .

    The Parti pretre rally to him , for he sells education to them ; the Legitimists pure abstain from voting ; the pure Orleanists ditto ; but the mass of the bourgeoisie , who voted for Caussidiere with enthusiasm in ' 48—and would accept the Cossacks to-morrow for peace and quietness—will vote for him , in order to have tranquillity and a gay season , and order and prosperity , as they , poor short-sighted dupes , imagine ! As if we , too , did not desire order and prosperity ; but an order based on liberty—and a national , not a class , prosperity .

    He will be elected ; perhaps not with so many votes as in ' 48 , but with an overwhelming majority over the noes—for there is no other candidate . Then his difficulties begin— when he has asserted his rights and they are exchanged for duties . What ! with a system of compression which never has succeeded in 1789 or in 1814 , under the Empire , Restoration , or Louis Philippe ; and with his solidarity with Russian and Austrian Despotism abroad , and an exacting Democracy at home , financial difficulties and ambiof shot ! Assassina

    tious generals , and the chance a - tion , always detestable and vile , would , as 1 have said , be here a fatal denouement . But it is to be expected and to be feared . He fmys he expects it himself . Hut he also says he has his mission to accomplish ; and he believes in his star , Uns is nm fixed idea . Ambition is his sole motive—whether he may do great or good things remains to be seen . I cannot think ko , nor do our friends here . JJut i ought to say that there are Liberals who say that his intentions are really honest , but he is badly

    surrounded . , . I hear from those who know him that he is w _ orkii >{ , very hard now in preparing his measures , whu'h » ' < - ' to be a sort of Absolutist Socialism . 1 eonfesH 1 tlniiK you may describe the new phti . se of Government novr opening in France , a . s a " military despotism , tevipcm by religion and debauchery . " " We have heard ol u despotism " temptri 2 > ar lt : ! > chansons , " and anoUic " tempered by epu / rams . " J . et me tell you how prou " and happy 1 am ' to find the attitude the bent ot oi » Prenn are taking . It ia the consolation " »« tlu' J" " of all men of heart and intelligence—oi "' "

    love freedom here—it is , they say , their only coi > h < ' lation now to read the English papers , lne- *' especially is nobly atoning for i * H former AiiHtniimHiiMS It is doing mighty service ! towardu an Anglo- r (' . alliance when the Federation of the Peoples » na arrive ; . . . 1 wind up as the post time in come—by thiH won don ' t despair of the good cause . Keep liberty i » Socialism free from nil tuint of crime and ^ oUl ^ ' and remember that Peoples , as 1 said before , wurviv coups d ' etat .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 27, 1851, page 1222, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/ldr_27121851/page/2/