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1222 &!) * QLtaitt* [Saturday ,
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LETTERS FROM PARIS. [From a Special Corr...
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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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^Mr Lord Palmekston Is No Longer Foreign...
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 the subject : we almost hope that they may not " adopt" it !
1222 &!) * Qltaitt* [Saturday ,
1222 &!) * QLtaitt * [ Saturday ,
Letters From Paris. [From A Special Corr...
LETTERS FROM PARIS . [ From a Special Correspondent . ] 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 spoken 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 . So 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 holiday ! Yet was there a kind of bewilderment as of terror , indignation , and impotent humiliation , on many luces as they curiously gazed and wondered and recounted the deeds and accidents of
M . Louis Bonaparte's * ' glorious days of December , " his day of Austei litz , his day of Coronation ! To see thin fair city and this noble people lying down under ho base a yoke of perjury and blood was a bitter and despairing sight . I had nearly returned to England on that Saturday night ; but a thought that to be here at this time , in this sudden and uwful silence of all freedom in the midst of this terror and violence , ( suspicion and proscription , wuh my message and duty , and perhaps might even be Home alight consolation to our friends , decided me to renu . in . I think 1 may
confidently Hay that not a moment ol my tune has been Jo . st . Not a moment but ban been fruitful in study , observation , and experience . I have never , having Juiovwn ^' rauce so loin ? and ho vuriounly , known her fluciui U ^ d political condition ho intimately as now , After theVp few days , in which it has been my privilege t talk , with delightful confidence and unreserve , to some of the most eminent hearts and intellectH ol' this country no exuberantly rich in intellectual gifts and illustrations ; to listen to some of the bc ; Ht and noblest , now condemned to silence , if not | o tlie solitude of prisons , by the usurping tLe ^ piidjitiin ; to hear them ( whoso names you know ho
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 know 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 workingclassestookit well , even gladly . The Assembly " Ces gueux la , avec leur vingt-cinq francs "—caused them no regrets . Then the
restorawell ) 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 sections 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 . .
tion 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 Mm were determined to h ave 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 de l ' Union , the most aristocratic club in Paris , of which our own ambassa dor is a member , a general massacre would have taken p lace 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 to 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 ; allepublican in * 18 ; a Socialist in ' 49- ' 5 O ; is now an out and out Bonapartist in ' 51 . Lamartine lias written to protest , ngainst and withdraw his name from La : Pays . E . de Girardin has entirely given up La Presse , which is now Bonapartist—and edited by Perodeaud , who is not a political man , and since ' 48 has not written in La Presse . Tim other former editors leave it also .
The Government papers ( and , as you see , 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 . g ., a chateau in thedeparternentdu Gard wnssaid to havo been pillaged and burned : a friend of mine has a letter from the proprietors , saying , not only that it if * not true , but that the Republican mayor of the adjoining town had offered a guard of men in case of disturbance . But , said the writer ( though their stories are not true about our department ) , they are about the otheru ! i . e ., what I know is not truewhat 1 hear of only , is true . So much for hearsay evidence .
In another cane , where the insurgents had possession of a town for sixty hours , they only stopped the Government rfcspati In s and besieged the Mairie for arms . The Mayor , a violent Bonapartiut , resisted and Shot a man in the crowd ; whereat , of course , they returned the compliment . But no further lives were lost . Yet here the Government spoke of the most frightful murders having occurred . From another department , a (' ur > writes to contradict the report of his having been treated with violence .
Whenever crimes have been committed , it has been ol course by villains who have no connection with any political sect or party , who hud no opinions , but who take advantage of times of trouble when an outlaw in the chief power in the state , to follow his example , to stalk forth from their hiding placoM , and
commit violence and rapine . Thev nr » fr . ^ * v , part liberated convicts , sometimesj ^ hlvl ll ^ peasants , who have had a dim noflo ^ t ^^ TS year of " restitution of all things , " but tm t IV ? connection at all . On all this ? he Govern ^ T traded , crying to all the winds , Rei JX " Property . ' Dr . Veron , the most & tiS } crapulous quack doctors , physically and morallv A de Cesena , who in 48 was a disciple of Proudho G . de Cassagnac , who was convicted of swindle some years since , and was the hired advocate f slavery ; De Morny , who lived with another man ? wife , & c . s
The working classes are so disenchanted with , volutions , that they have not budged this time ¦ th " accept of no leadership or alliance ; they hold bv $ Republic , and wait to see what Louis Napoleon r & do for them ; they say he is better than monarchies " and that he must do something for them . "VVh ' some of the leaders of the Mountain endeavoured r ^ rouse them in the Faubourgs , they would not cmen a door to receive them ; they remained at home Th secret societies did not move . Do you know what the new Constitution is to be ? A Senate of eighty members ; twenty named bv 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 described as " Universal Suffrage and no Elections . " It is sheer Absolutism ; and the People begin to ponder sullenly 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 ; tha t 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 , neal 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 classprosperity .
, lie 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 , lhen 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 llussian and Austrian Despotism abroad , and an exacting CL 11 \ A XXUGUIlUll ^ .-TK . Ct I- " - * t » kJ *»» » , « . # - , _ , difficulties and ambi
Democracy at home , financial - tious generals , and the chance of a shot ! Assassination , always detestable and vile , would , us 1 Jiavt . said , be here a fatal dfinouement . But it is to be expected and to be feared . He says he expects u himself . But he also says he has his mission to accomplish ; and he believes in his star . IM" ™ * ufixed idea . Ambition is his sole motive-wheUitr lie may do great or good things remains to he hcu . I cannot think to , nor do our friends here . J "" . ought to say that there are Liberals who say tnai n intentions are really honest , but he is buuiy hu
rounded . > - r I hear from those who know him that he is w . orKU £ very hard now in preparing his measures , wh " J to be a sort of Absolutist Socialism . I conf ens i u » you may describe the new phase of Government i opening in France , as a " military despotism , tempt- ^ by religion and debauchery . " We have heard < ^ despotism " tetnpin' par lea chansons , " and «»< , " tempered by epigrams . " Let m « tell you how I > J ° " and happy 1 am to find the attitude the best <> i - Press are taking . It is the consolation and I" J J of all men of heart and intelli gence—ol a "
love freedom hero-it is , they sny , their only < - « ' ^ ' lation now to read the English papers . 1 ««! . _ especially is nobly atoning for its former AuHtruJ "" ^ J It , m < loing mighty service towards an Anglo-l'io alliance when the Federation of the People n » arrive . . .. j I wind upas the post time is come— . by thlH ^ )( don ' t despair of the good cause , keep hheiiy - Socialism free from all taint of crime and violr '¦ ' 1 and remember that Peoples , aa 1 Haul before , « uiv coups d''ctat .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 27, 1851, page 2, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27121851/page/2/
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