The Morning Chronicle.

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

The Morning Chronicle.

Whatever may be the result of the new French Revolution, it teaches an awful lesson, and comes fraught with a mighty moral to mankind. The nation which claims to stand nt the very head of European civilization, and whose proper place is certainly in the vanguard, has been suddenly prostrated by a well-directed blow, and lies bound, gagged, and bleeding at the feet of her Chief Magistral c. Not without symptoms of her own implied consent, or tacit connivance, her legisiatbe hall is desecrated — her supreme court of justice is profaned — her press is silenced or overawed — vM free utterance of opinion, whether by speaking, writing, or printing, is prohibited — and her capital is> at best in a condition of a town which has surrendered upon terms, and consented to leceive a garrison. i By whom has this fresh indignity been inflicted upon France? By the elect of six millions of her people. By whom has it been faqtiously pro ■ yoked ? By the most eminent of her cho&en representatives. Who have been its ready instruments ? An army in which the habit of military obedience has been curiously grafted (speaking generally) on extreme democratic opinions. Who have calmly or indifferently contemplated and tolerated its perpetration ? v A body of eighty or a hundred thousand citizen soldiers, nearly the whole of the upper classes, and the bulk of the work-people, in a city where street-fighting has been reduced to a science, and is regarded bythousands as a pastime, a pleasurable excitement, or a fete. Finally, has this extraordinary appeal to the law of the strongest 'destroyed public, credit or paralyzed commerce ? " 'Quite the contrary. Not only the French funds, but French railway shares — an 'extremely sensitive description of property — have actually risen" since the day preceding the coup d'etat. ' Under these circumstances, it strikes>us that -the people whom Louis' Napoleon is % accused of outi'aging niust and will judge this " great State criminal" by widely different rules from those which a severe British moralist would apply to him. .We may wish that they were capable of a more exalted tone of feeling. We may be sorry to see a community of thirty-three millions so torn by intestine dissension — so alarmed at the threatened disorganization of society — so demoralized (in a political sense) by a long course of revolutionary agitation and so ill-provided with trustworthy leaders — as to find their best chance of safety in a usurped dictatorship. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact ; and those of our countrymen who persist in reasoning on such mattei's exclusively from their own insular point of view, will assuredly go wrong both in their reflections on the past, and — what is of much more importance — in their anticipations of the future.

The Examiner. In the thing called an election in France there is no move of election than in the highwayman's alternative " your money or your life." Setting aside for a moment the consideration of the intimidation, the corruption, the foul influences in every shape which have heen exercised to extort the suffrage favourable to M. Bonaparte, we ask, who uninvested with authority, can have a right to prescribe the bounds within which the will of the nation, is to range, and to narrow it to the acceptance or rejection of one man out of thirty-five millions ? Who, in invoking a declaration of the national choice, can have the right to dictate the sole object upon which it is to be exercised \ Who can have the right to cut and embank the channel for the source of legitimate power, and to give to it the law thus far and no farther ? What is the sovereignty of the people appealed to," if its voice can be "stifled to a yes or no in the narrowest and most arbitrary alternative \ M. Bonaparte, in his appeal to the sovereignty of the people, has arrogated a sovereignty over the sovereignty of the people. It has been his act of sovereignty to prescribe and limit the terms of the choice, and this apt of supreme^ authority has proceeded from one divested of all legal authority whatever, and under the ban of the law. To resemble this to a forced marriage after rape would be to mitigate the peculiar enormity of the conduct. Nothing legitimate can come of such violation of Jaw, nothing constitutional from such an outrage against the first constitutional principles. The taint of the usurpation runs throughout — the usurpation having been the moving power to fix the method of sanctioning and establishing itself, and nothing but itself, "yes or no. The possession of power has in this flagrant case been certainly more than the proverbial nine-tenths of the law : we look in vain for any fraction of law, or semblance of constitutional principle. The election, arbitrarily nan owed as it is, involves a denial of the right of election. It amounts to no more than a self-nomination, with a permission of ratification to be dispensed with if not given. It is a conge, d'clire, in which the paramount right of appointment is asserted in the permission to choose. If a free choice were allowed it Avould be with the monstrous inconsistency — a contradiction in terms — of a free choice arbitrarily limited, a free choice with marvellously small choice — a free choice confined in the closest alternative, and forbidden to range beyond the one question of one man, yes or no. And who so bounds the choice ; who so arbitrarily restricts the range I The man himself, overruling and circumscribing, clipping and coining the sovereign authority to which he pretends to make appeal. The appellant in this cause defines the jurisdiction, and selects the point upon 'Which the issue is to be had. These considerations have doubtle&s determined many of the opponents of the usurper to take no part in the mockery of the election, and this course would be judicious and effective if any honesty in the conduct of the election,, and this course would be judicious and effective if any honesty in the conduct of the election could be expected ; but as that is utterly out of the question, it matters little whether the suffrage be silent or adverse, for forgeiy will deal with the one, and suppression with the other. We may be sure indeed, that M. Bonaparte's scruples will not begin at the election, and that he will not treat the suffrage with more respect than the Press which is either suppressed or falsified, that is, forged opinions inserted in the place of cancelled passages. The Siecle, the journal of the bourgeoisie, has been suppressed merely for having recommended its readers to look to the electoral lists; and is it to be imagined that the tyrant would be more forbearant towards adverse suffrages than to a guide that simply points to the bureaux of registration ? From his treatment of the organs of the opinions of the people we may unerringly infer what will be his treatment of the opinions of the people in the gross ; and he will make up ball cartridge with the balloting papers inscribed with the Non. The election is as much an instrument in the hands of the usurper as the Bourse, and it is as easy to grt up a false return as to screw up the funds to 102, a rise of 12 per cent, in the tranquility of terror. Everywhere fraud is at work for M. Bonaparte. There Ins been nothing open since the 2nd of December but slaughter, nothing frank but force, nothing undisguised but tyranny. The rise in the public securities — tha very word conveys asatire — is easily to be explained ; there is a limited number of agents of change appointed by Government and whose books are open to the inspection of the Government. To have transacted a sale would have marked an agent out for vengeance, a prson forthwith, and peth ips a thrust oi a bayonet by the way, in a pretended rescue, or a chance bullet. Let us not be told that the Government is incapable of crime so black ,* our answer is, that the massacre of the 4th — a massacre which, a p tur thepattern of St. Bartholomew, should b jar for ever the name of the massacre of St. Bonaparte, for a fcaint he is of the ultramontane Catholic Church — wa3 a planned and "got up thing," to use the appropriate language ot the lelonry.