Our Contributors.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 496, 15 April 1881, Page 2

Our Contributors.

OUR PARIS LETTER,

Pahis, January 27

Tlig recent municipal elections having -laid alike Comiinmists and reactionaries, the Republic still again ret'ortiiiod by that new and significant dip in unhersal suffrage, is at last able to complete or work oft several salutary reforms, held in suspense by the apprehension and noise of home detractors and di.stractorp. Thus the law on liberty of tho prosy is at last being" discussed. The new bill lias this formal merit, that it abolishes all the complex and rr.-AvcraX'o edicts existing and remakes a special code for the press ; the drawback is, that the measure consists of 70 clauses, or about three dozen too many. So far as the debate ha.s proceeded, there will be no impediment to found a journal, no preliminary authorisation, no stamps, no caution money, no permission for. caricatures in advance, will be required. Foreign newspapers, eto., will bo free to enter, so long as they contain nothing ohsuuno. Dick, Tom-, or' Any wi 1 be free to sell them, without complying with as many formalities as if they were setting ■il> for a deputyship. Belgians, Italians, and even Prussians will henceforth be as free to turn an honest penny vending the latest intelligence, as they are for the public duty of scavenger. The discussion has naturally provoked the reiteration of

nil the advantages and inconveniences of the press. Now the latter resembles what iEsop said of the tongue —there is nothing so excellent or detestable ; it is the usage of it which decides. There is a personage, it has heen observed, who lias more wit than Voltaire, and that is Monsieur Everybody. J The press cannot lead the public by the nose against its declared will, and journalism is powerful exactly in proportion to the soundness of the cause it advocates. If opinion errs, it will not be for long, and twenty-four hours will bring i round to a just appreciation of facts. The dynasties and Ministers in France, which have been armed with the most Draconian powers against the press, have not been able to maintain their positions a single minute beyond the hour fixed by the fatality of their faults for execution. On I the contrary, freedom of the press has aided those who, having nothing to conceal or to fear, relied on it. Since three months, France has had unbounded, almost absolute liberty of the press ; a crop of journals sprung up, having for aim to defame Gambetta. And the consequence? Gambetta has been made more powerful than ever, and the calumniators have returned to their natural insignificance. Good will ever predominate over evil, in the long run; so will a healthy over a diseased journalism. Indeed, the new press bill only requires that those who commit wilful wrong or studied in•jury shall beheld responsible, simply a s they would be for commission of any other offence ; no scape goats ; pull up and punish the sinner.

The movement is to heavy frosts and— notorious conversions. In May, 1870. G£ millions of voters ratified their confidence that the empire was peace, and the Nnp^lcon'dynasty a fixture for ever. Two months later, the peace profession was found to be not a screaming, but a sanguinary farce, and in the September following, the dynasty was relegated to that of the Shepherd Kings of Egypt. The 6$ millions of voters have rallied to the form of Government—the Kepublic— which permits them to guard themselves the issues of peace and Avar, while enthroning themselves as sovereigns. But the chiefs of the Bonapartist party hold more or less loosely together, even when they had no more a rank or file. The (hbr'ui even of the chiefs is disappearing more quickly than the snow. Thus M. de la FaiK.'onrierie line read his recantation of Bonapartism, admitting that, as the nation has unequivocally pronounced for the present constitution, further opposition to the Republic is chi dlike, Having been elected by a Bonaparti.st constituency, M. de la Fauconnerie returns to his electors the trust they confided to him ; if they approve of his evolution they can re-elect him. There are some fossil royalists that would lend 25t'r. to be repaid at the entry of the Comto de Chainhord. as Henri V. in Paris, but not an individual could be found, with the faith of a grain of mustard seed, that would loan one franc on the prospect of a Bonapartist ever again ascending the throne of Fiance. That dynasty will not certainly return by universal suffrage, and only lunancs will count upon another 2nd December, 1.851. The era even of coups d'etat is closed. The eminent conversion in question is the public and official act of decease of Bonapartism, and nothing would be more interesting than for some mameluke of the departed cause—Paid de Cassagnao himself might take the jump into the gulf—to be pitted against M. de la Fauconnerie and thus test the opinions of the con-' stituents. Other mighty men are strapping their baggage for a new departure. The Greeks continue to cry very loud, and march—happily not outside their borders—like peripatetic philosopher. No one will fight for them, and hence the strong belief that they will not do so themselves. Public opinion has made up its mind in France at last, that whether Greece be right or Turkey wrong, whether the Congress of Berlin had or had not the power to slice them off a portion of the Ottoman Empire, they shall not be the cause of a general European war. If they attack Turkey they must expect hard knocks in return.

Meteorologically, the season at leAst is favorable to dining. While tho Legitimists assemble in the Chapelle Expiatoire to pray for Louis XVI., and to invoke the return of the state of society which he embodied, the revolutionists met and fuuoted the execution of that monarch, as the symbol of a past irrevocably destroyed. Not more than 200 of the purists sac down to dinner —proof that these kind of assemblies are less interesting than the singing saloons. One oration was remarkable ; it attacked Rochefort as being not a whit better than his mortal enemy Gainbetta. liochefort ia making superhuman efforts to keep himself still the idol of the Communists, but ho already totters on his pedestal. Ho organised an olla potlrida representation a few days ago in favor of an amnestied ex theatrical manager; only think that the tricolor was displayed and songs executed in honor of Gambetta's programme. Theie were orations also ; one speaker winding up by declaring the clergy were the ruin of the country, because they taught religion.

There is another light on the wane— Mile. Louise Michel ; she seems to be retiring from active Communism. Having been solicited by a reporter to be interviewed, and to honor him with a few of her stanzas, sbe agreed to do both for

GOfr. ; the money was paid, and the jonrnal states the result is not value for the expenses. She denies the soft impeachment of having compared Garnbetta to "a fat hog that ought to be killed." This change is suspicious since the cartoons married the Joan of Arc of the Commune, to the arch fiend who secured her her amnesty—M. Garnbetta.