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Leader (1850-1860), 27th December 1851, Edition Town of 2, Page 1225, NapolGon Chaix et Cie., r. BergSre, 20.

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

      T > vo traYelling Englishmen ( that fatal species !) requested Lord Normanby to present them last Monday at the Elysee . The desire to be introduced to the President was , on the part of the one at least , mere vain curiosity ; the other ( and elder of the two ) is , I believe , one of those old fools who fancy they belong by right of birth , to the " Great Party of Order . " The younger of the two is a Legitimist in sympathy , and detests Louis Napoleon . Well ! presented they were . Louis , " the impenetrable , " received them *« with effusion , " and said he was glad to find the English did not listen to the reports of their journals !

      Now , here you see the injury done to our national character by two vain flunkeys : the Elysee believes that England supports him ; and the visit of the two gentlemen is exploite as a proof thereof ! This is a fact . Poor Lamartine is a prisoner to his bed at Macon , and a frightful sufferer from acute rheumatism of the joints . He has dictated a letter repudiating all connection with Le Pays since the 2 nd of December . The Government are publishing what they call proofs of a Parliamentary plot , seized at the house of the Questors of the Assembly . Now , what was this plot ? Simply to carry out effectually the right of the President of the Assembly to require as many troops

      for the defence of the Representatives as he might deem neceBsary , and to dispose of them as he might think fit . I am not at all sorry , nor ( so far as I can learn ) are any of the Republican Opposition , that the proposition of the Questors was rejected . I still think it was no better policy of the Opposition to reject it , as it could only have hastened the President ' s coup d'etat , and as the first dispersion would in the eyes of many have been just that shadow of quasi moral sanction and justification to it which now it is entirely destitute of . As it is , the whole aggression and the whole crime is the President's ; and remember , that under the Constitution ( a very bad and foolish one , I allow , but still the Constitution

      sworn to by him ) , the President was not the supreme , but the second , power of the state . The whole accusation of a plot on the part of the President ( even if it existed ) , is a monstrous assumption . At our Embassy , it seems , they " certainly expected a coup d ' etat soon or late , but not so sudden and violent ; nor so comprehensive and complete " ! What sort of a coup d ' etat then , did they expect ? " Of course we can ' t approve of it ; but now we had better accept of it as afact , and be conciliatory" ! This is fact A young man presented himself in a drawing-room on the Thursday night of the massacre , having almost miraculously escaped , from death . It seems he found himself in the midst of a crowd of inoffensive persons , when the soldiers deliberately fired down the

      street upon them . Finding himself not killed , he thoug ht the best thing he could do would be to hrow himself flat upon the ground , as if killed , among the killed , to escape another volley . Presently , however , the soldiers , mad with brandy , with the thirst of blood , and the fumes of powder , ran up to iini 6 h" { pour aohever ) as they called it , the the wounded , an operation consisting of firing into the bodies on the ground , at random ; and wherever a ring or a jewel appeared , hacking off a finger or two to get it , and emptying the pockets of any cash . This young man had two shots fired through the heels of his boots , and one through his cloak , and came off quite unhurt , and presented himself in . a drawing-room jubt in the tattered state in which he lay in the street . A fact .

      Another person was coming over one of the bridges , when he was rudely arrested by soldiers and searched . Finding a pistol in one of his pockets ( which he had taken with him in self-defence ) , they tired four shots at him , and missed him ; they then knocked him down with , the butt ends of their muskets , and actually tried to throw him over into the Seine . Fortunately others came up and rescued him from a certain and barbarous death . He was taken to the Prefecture de Police and released , half dead . A fact

      Only tliis week the police paid a domiciliary visit to the apartments of an Italian lady resident here , -whose house Home of the Republican members of the Assembly had been accustomed to frequent . They penetrated into her bedroom , made her get out of bed , and when her delicacy resisted such a brutal insult , they tore her out with violence , and made ; her open all lier boxi'B , which they ransacked . This is the Stute of Siege in Paris under the «• Deliverer of France from pillage and violence . " It in afact .

      An English gentleman , whom I aukod whether the troops were drunk , niiid lie Haw with his own eyes a lancer fall off his horse like u Bhot , when the horse wuh trotting gently along , and neither pranced nor htumbled . The man shook himself as if he wuk drunk , and then clumsily mounted ugain and rode on . „ Adieu .

      Dec. 27, 1851.] Ffl&4> &**»* ?+ 1225

      Dec . 27 , 1851 . ] ffl & 4 > &**»* ? + 1225

      L'Arih, Monday, I)I!«;»;Inl>«I- '"£, Lmf...

      l'ariH , Monday , I ) i !«;»; inl >« i- '" £ , lMf > I . My ukak Fuiknd , —The " nincero and free expression of th « People ' s will " on M . Bonaparte ' s " plebiHciluin , " began on ftnUinluy morning , and wan closed hiHt evening at six i-. m . <> n ihe Hint , day the votes of the " easy " and lettered cIuhsck were taken ; yqpterduy enublod the working classes to register

      monosyllabic suicide . " Ruere in servitium" would have been a fitting motto for these bulletins . I went down with a friend , of ours to his " Section , " in order that I might judge with my own eyes of the nature of the operation to which the French People were solemnly invited , under cover of bayonets . My friend had very deliberately written his emphatic Non on the bulletin , which he was about to drop into the box , before we left his house ; for whatever the Minister of the Interior may order to be written in his journals to the contrary , with the mixture of cynicism and hypocrisy which has presided over every act of this banditti government , it is certain

      that at the gates of every Mairie and of every sec ~ tion were men placed , offering freely to all who entered , and to all passers by , bulletins printed " OUI , " but not a ghost of & printed " NON " was to be seen in the neighbourhood . I inclose two of the Oui tickets , which were put into my own hands with all the supple dexterity that you may have seen practised in the streets of London by the agents of a thousand quacks . But does it for a moment even bear supposition that the actual government of brute force would allow any printing press to issue hostile tickets , or that any printer , even after the ostentatious liberality of M . de Morny ' s permission , would

      be so bold as to forfeit , by such an act , the loss of his licence at some not distant day ? You know how absolutely the existence of a printer depends on the Government in France , and you know what an inclined plane is the regime of arbitrary compression . The present is but a foretaste of the coming depotism . Neither M . Bonaparte himself nor any of his adherents and advisers , have any other idea of government than compression , which is every fool ' s weapon . "The vote and the sabre" means , in other words , the vote with the sabre at your breast . The vote of suicide , or the sabre of extermination—such is the era of the Caesars iust inaugurated in this country .

      How should such men as compose the present ministry of the Elysee , isolated from all the intelligence and honesty of the nation—men bankrupt in purse , reputation , honour—one a ruined spendthrift , another a blackleg , a third a used-up debauchee , a fourth a «• Mercadet" of the Bourse—all more or less undesirable acquaintances for any honest man—how should they have any other idea of government than force and brigandage . Talk to them of a wise liberty , of social reform , indeed ! The very desperate game they are playing , and the sense of its desperateness , is to them a kind of new sensation—an intoxication . Well , in the court of the Mairie there was a

      company of infantry with piled arms , a few gendarmes , and a few people—some bourgeois , others in blouses , —passing in and out . The actual deposit of the ticket was a minute ' s work . Three employes behind a table with the ballot-box thereon . Enter voter ; he hands in his carte electorate ( or register ticket ) to an employe , vvho compares it with the register , and certifies ; then voter drops his folded ticket into the box . I did not hear any remarks in the yard ; but a friend of mine , who voted on Saturday , told me that there was a group of blouses standing in the court of his Mairie with fixed , set looks of concentrated indignation , indicative of anything but " Ouis ; " and that he heard one workman , who was asked by another as he passed out of the gate whether he had voted , reply in a form of language the

      peculiar vivacity of which I cannot exactly translate , that "he had just been treating him to a Non , and no mistake . " I have this morning heard of a bourgeois , who had the temerity to say audibly , " Est ce qui vous allez voter pour ce cochon la ,, " beinj * instantly arrested . At this hour most of the sections are known ; the total result is to be proclaimed at the Hotel de Ville , at six r . M . I shall be there to see . If you hear of " cheers and acclamations , " don ' t bo surprised . I happen to know that the best of the working chiHses intend to keep away . It will be nothing more than the six thousand coquins who formed the society of the 10 th of December of infamous memory , and the 61 ite of whom , by the way , are , if report be true , to be formed into a Praetorian guard for this new Caligula .

      It is quite likely that he will have two thirds of the votes , oven , at Paris ; he would have all , if that wore not a little too good to be true . For why should a man who has been ho little scrupulous us M . Louis Bonaparte , hesitate to arrange the numbers of Oui nnd Non according to hi « good pleasure i The universal belief of the elite of the workmen in that the real bulletins were burned in the course of last night , nnd that the boxes which were opened , and the votes which were counted this morning , were carefully prepared beforehand . Now , really this is not at all a

      wild or unfair Nuspioion ; at any rate , it is quite « s probable an that lie would in any case allow the numbers to go against him , especially in Pnris where a moral sanction is most important . All I can Hay in , that the vote has been surrounded with no guaranteoH , even outward and visible , of sincerity . In former elections since the Revolution the votes have been given and counted , aH it were , before tin ; public scrutiny . TIuh time it has been with closed doors before a coterie of police , flanked b y gendarmes . The Legitimists , it in now known , either vote JMou or abstain ; tho beat of tho Orleuniats ditto ; many of

      the bourgeoisie ditto ; the shopkeepers , perhaps mostly Oui , though they feel the degradation of the vote . As for the workmen in the Faubourgs , I know from personal observation that the elite have given a determined Non ; but what M . Bonaparte ' s offer of two francs a head may have effected among the poorest and most ignorant classes , is another question . Two francs a head was freely offered for a Oui . I cannot describe to you how deep the indignation , the sense of degradation , the detestation of the man are felt by the elite of the \ vorking _ classes , I mean by such men as represented FranxSeat our Exposition—men as well educated as polished in manners , and I need not say far more able and cultivated than many statesmen ! But after all , as an" eminent writer ( perhaps the most eminent political writer ) said so me this morning , what do a few thousands of votes more or less signify ? Let him have two thirds of his votes , or all , if he will . Let him shout his triump h to all the winds ! What matters it ? No one will believe in its sincerity a bit the more . No one will believe in the duration of his infamous power the more . By all means let him have his fling—il' susera ; il ira son train . Let him have his full swing of compression . The explosion will be sooner and more terrible ! Unfortunately , if he were to fall now , by an accident , it would be a real misfortune to the country , for nothing but civil war and violence is yet ready to succeed ; but if he have even more votes than in December ' 48 , his fall is as certain as Lucifer ' s . He will only attain a greater height" Unde altior esset Casus et impulsae pra ? ceps immane ruinse . " Five or six millions of votes will not give him ideas of Government , and without them or with a turbulent soldiery , and hungry , ambitious hangers-on , what Government can be durable . " Le Chat Huant .

      Copy Of The Btjllktin Given Away By The ...

      COPY OF THE BTJLLKTIN GIVEN AWAY BY THE AGENTS AT THE MAIRIES .

      Oui * .

      OUI * .

      Ar00505

      Napolgon Chaix Et Cie., R. Bergsre, 20.

      NapolGon Chaix et Cie ., r . BergSre , 20 .

      Trospects Of Altaian Ce And Avar. The Co...

      TROSPECTS OF ALTAIAN CE AND AVAR . The correspondent of a contemporary ( who , it should be added , is a Bonapartist and a member of the Church of Rome ) says : — " A congress of all the powers who signed the treaties of Vienna of 1815 will be called for , with a view to their revision upon the basis of giving France what is called her old and natural boundaries . It is whispered that Prussia would be offered Hanover as a compensation for her llhenish provinces , and Piedmont made to exchange Savoy for slices of Italian duchies . There is talk , too , of a kingdom of Italy for the Duke of Leuchtenberg , See . If the Constitutionnel speaks truth , these would be only projects in the air , but that they arc entertained in some heads may be believed . " " I am unable to affirm that Louis Napoleon was assisted by the counsels of Austria before the late catastrophe , " says the Vienna correspondent of the Times , " but I know that M . de Hiibner was i \ persona grata at the Elysee . It is universally believed in diplomatic circles here that the President ' ^ confidential , it not his ostensible counsellor , was M . de Kinseleff , the Russian Minister at Paris . As long as things were in suspense in France , the Northern Powers were unable to carry out their plaius for bringing the continental nations as completely under the yoke as they were before the Revolution of 1848 ; but now that the President has succeeded in establishing a military government , and all resistance appearn impossible , the long-cherished plan will soon be brought to light : it is entirely to abolish so-called constitutional government on the continent . " The following extract from a short article in the Lloyd of to-day will give you a foretaste of what England him to expect : — " Notes , complaining of the dangerous support given to political fugitives in England , were presented by the rcprcaentativcH of Run . sia , Austria , Prussia , and the Uerman Confederation , at the British l'Weign OfHce on the 12 th . A similar note was also handed by tho Bund to Lord Cowley at Erniikfort . Austria will not hesitate to adopt meusureB which will make it inconvenient or diflicult for Englishmen to travel in the Austrian States , as long as the just complaints of the Imperial ( Government art ; not attended to in London , and an organised communication between the Revolutionary jmrty in England and all the continental States i . s carried on , under the protection of the law . The English will have the ; \ vhh oiiuhc to complain , uh the duration of the measure will depend on thcniH «; lves . " Tho Times of Monday contained u very dull , ambiguouH , Hhifty , hut important article on the rclaLioim of foreign ( JovernmeiitH to Erunce . The former part tJixowu duet in the eyen of the vulgar and uninitiated ;

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 27, 1851, page 1225, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/ldr_27121851/page/5/