THE PRESS on the FRENCH QUESTION.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 625, 10 April 1852, Page 3

THE PRESS on the FRENCH QUESTION.

The Times. One obvious remark is suggested by the accounts of violence and oppression which continue !to reach us day by day from France. If the Government which. Louis Napoleon is attempting to found is to bo based on the will of the people aud the assent of public opinion, how comes it that everything which can represent or express that opinion with any sort of independence or freedom is stifled and annihilated ! That such a Government will prevail, partly by the fears excited by its own terrorism and partly by the counterfears excited by one class of its bitterest adversaries, is probable. But, fear is the very opposite of a deliberate acceptance, of willing allegiance, or of enthusiastic confidence. If the people were really disposed spontaneously to place unlimited power in the hands of Louia Napoleon Bonaparte, would it bp ' necessary to drive a#d cudgel thorn like beast^ to >hV slaughter-house ! If the *voic<r i of the nation waa only waiting an opportunity to hail, with acclamation the accession of another ! Consul or Emperor, how comes it that every ' organ, of public opinion is prohibited from the ex-

pression of political sentiments, and that, except the hired scribes of the Elyse'e, not a man in France has yet put his name to an article in support of the President and his claims I Would a man seize like a ravisher what he could hope to obtain by more honourable means ? And are not the extravagant measures of restraint enforced against men of every class and of the highest character a demonstrative proof that the Government, unable to command their support, is at least resolved to overpower their resistance I In another part of our impression will be found a striking and authentic account of the proceedings which accompanied the suppression of the Assembly on the 2nd instant, from the pen of one to whose position the present perilous state of every man of honour and eminence in France forbids us altogether to allude, f The reference is to the " Narration by a Member of the French National Assembly" which appeared in the last New Zealander, as copied from the Evening Mail, — the evening addition of the Times. J But, our correspondent is in error if he and others have been led to imagine, by garbled piiblications in Paris, that the press or the public opinion of England are indifferent to the establishment of a tyi'anny so strange and unexampled in our age that 'we can find no parallel to it save among the military dictatorships of the South American republics. Yet this narrative, which describes with the grave moderation of history the opening scene of this disastrous conflict between force and law, leaves untold tlxe "ever-increasing acts of violence that we learn from the official proclamations of the Government. In one of these documents the army is tolu,,t-hat the massacre of its fellowcitizens, many of whom were.Avholly Unarmed and incapable of resistance, or who were living in the sanctuary of their homes, is to be reckoned among the glorious days ,of its military existence, and it is announced that this period of savage warfare in the heart of Paris is to be reckoned to the troops as a campaign against a foreign enemy? The introduction and abuse of force has-been literally universal, except when the dread of force served as well. Admitting even the necessity of a coup d'etat for the sake of argument, and that to prevent worse evils it was expedient to place a certain number of political personages under temporary arrest, would even this concession palliate wholesale measures extending to -the whole country, including the indiscriminate seizure of men in every class of society, and the proscription of all that hesitates to bow down to the new Government \ Men of excellent character and station, usually unconnected with politics, are spirited away by the police for a mere intimation of their dissent from these proceedings. The Chamber of Commerce at Havre has been threatened with military dissolution because it does not, apparently, participate in the alleged enthusiasm of the nation. Suspicion denounces and seizes its victims, for, in a word, some of the worst men in the French nation are masters, not only of the best, but of the whole. We know the fate of the press ; we know the amount of personal freedom enjoyed by French citizens ; but, to complete the picture, justice itself is superseded, and even the criminal law of the country modified by Presidential decrees. The Court of Cassation, as our correspondent relates, fell gloriously in a last effort to maintain the dignity of the bench, and the authority of the law. But the time is long since past when, as in 1834, the military tribunals bent before that power. On the contrary, they are now supreme ; and, indeed what other tribunals are fit to administer laws that make attendance on a public meeting an offence of high treason I The French criminal code recognizes what is termed the surveillance of the police as a kind of corollary or appendage to the higher grades of secondary punishment, and in some cases the domicile of liberated offenders was fixed by the police, and a departure from that domicile made punishable by imprisonment. A decree, dated the 9th of Dec, provides that any individual so situated may be transported to Algeria or Cayenne for a peried of not less than five years or more than ten for a breach of this police regulation, and that the same measure is applicable to all persons found guilty of having belonged (not merely of belonging)'to a secret society. So that liberated offenders, who may now be living under surveillance after the expiration of their punishment, are actually subjected ex post facto to a material' aggravation of their original sentence, and in their company any man who has belonged to a secret society, or may be held to have belonged to one, is to be despatched for a period of from five to ten years to the swamps of Sinnamary or the sands of Africa, and this by virtue of no law at all, but solely by the will of Louis Napoleon, executed by his courts-martial. Whatever others may think of these measures, which will assign to the names of M. de Monry and General St. Arnaud an unenviable proximity to the Fouches and Savarys of Imperial history, few have dared to express any adverse opinion. We notice, therefore, with the more satisfaction one creditable exception in the form of a letter of remonstrance addressed to his nephew by old Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Westphalia, and now Governor of the Invalides. The purport of this letter, written during the bloody conflict of the 4th of December, was to conjure Louis Napoleon not to abandon constitutional government altogether, and to invoke another Constituent Assembly from the nation, instead of relying solely on his personal will, supported by hosts of armed men. Had this advice been followed even then, it would have considerably modified^ the strong opinion we entertain on this transaction ; but it was scornfully rejected, and, far from adopting any mitigation since the success of his measures, the President continues to add one arbitrary step to another, as if it were impossible to recede in the direction of humanity and justice. It is impossible to recede, for powers founded upon force can only subsist by force. We cannot foresee when these severe measures will be relaxed, for some of them are of a permanent character, and the people, exhausted as it is, might still turn against the iron that brands it. They will therefore, be maintained until either the machine explodes from excessive pressure, or the nation has acquiesced in a government which shows that in the words of its own proclamations, " It will recoil from no measures" necessary to the establishment of its authority.

The Morning Post. The Times stands alone in his pestilent endeavours to prevent, if he can, the establishment of order in France, and to shake, by anticipation, all confidence in a Government now in process of formation by the people whom it is to rule. No language is deemed too base to stigmatise the efforts which the President of the Republic is making to ascertain the decision of the French people on the Constitution which he has submitted to their approval. Without Louis Napoleon, it is not denied that Frauce must have anarchy — but with him our contemporary is -resolved she shall have nothing but despotism. _ No symptom of this is shown in any part of his conduct. A Lower House elected by universal suffrage — a Senate— a Council of State— a Ministry named by the Chief Magistrate, and for that very reason held in check by the two Chambers, and, through them, by public opinion. A President whose tenure of office is limited to ten y«i;irs — all this system of checks and counter-checks between the Executive and the Legislature — is, in the eye of the Times, pure despotism. He may think so if j [she will. The obtuseness of his intelligence may ; be his misfortune rather than his fault. lie will find it difficult to find a sensible man who will agree with bis conclusion, founded, as that couclusion is, on the monstrous and unjustifiable supposition that all and sundry concerned in the framing of the Constitution In question are so dißhoneht as to mean the reverse oi what they say, and 1 so stupid withal a& to devise the very system which would render their false and tyrannical schemes absolutely impracticable.