FRANCE.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 744, 18 September 1852, Page 3

FRANCE.

Paris, Tuesday Evening. — The following spirited letter has been addressed by General Changarnier to the President of the Republic in answer to the demand made upon him to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Napoleon :— To the President of the French Republic, #c. Malines, May 10, 1852, ten o'clock, a.m. M. Le Ministre, — During tbirty-six years I have served France with a devotion which might be equalled, but which could not be surpassed. Under the Restoration I held a grade in the army proportional to the then obscurity of the services 1 had rendered. Under the government of July the chances of war raised me rapidly to ihe station of lieutenantgeneral. Twelve days after the proclamation of the Republic, when M. the Due d'Aumale, whom I had reconducied on board the Solon, honouring him with a salute from the artillery of the Place de la Marine, as if the King Louis Philippe still inhabited the Tuileries, had left me the government of Algeria ad interim. I wrote to the Minister of the Interior that I had not wished for the proclamation of the Republic, but that it did not appear to me to change my duties towards my country, the Provisional Government did not break ray sword, and on the 16tb April, it had no cause to /egret being able to make use of it. A short time after that day I was appointed governor-general of Africa. I soon left that high position, where everything was easy for me to effect, to respond to the confidence of the electors of Paris, who called me to the Constituent Assembly. General Cavaignac, charged with the Executive Government, after the days of June, 1848, at which time I was absent, named me on the 30th June commander-in-chief of the National Guards of the Seine. On the 14th "of December, of the same year, General Cavaignac having desired me to call at the hotel he occupied, Rue de Varennes, told me, in the presence of all the Ministers, that the police believed in a Bonapartist movement, prepared to profit by the ceremony of the anniversary of the sranslation of the remains of the Emperor to the

Invalides,-in-order to excite the popular enthusiasm to conduct Napoleon Bonaparte to the Tuileries, and to proclaim him Enjiieror. General Cavaignac finished ' by asking mjj opiniou on the measures to Le taken ; I gave him it, and finished by sayins, " My deaf general, t "have given my hand to Louis Napoleon to make him a President — not an Emperor ; in a few days he will be President of the Republic ; butjou may depend upou it that it is not to-morrow that be will enter the Tuileries, where you • have established my quarters — general." These words expressed briefly, hut exactly, my unsbakeable determination to remain — what all my life I have been — a man of order and of the law. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte has several times attempted to make me deviate., .from the right line which I had traced to myself, in^ order to serve his ambition. He has often offered me, and made other persons offer me, not ouly the dignity of Marshal, which France would have soon conferred upon. me without, considering itself fallen, but another military dignity which, since the fall of the Empire, has ceased to./, dominate our hierarchy, _ He wished to attach to that dignity enojrmocs'pecuniary advantages, which, thanks tojhe^jm|Jiciiy.of my habits, 1 bad.no merit in disdaining. Having perceived, when very, late,, thai personal interest had no influence, on Tny induct, he endeavoured to gain me oveVby pre- 1 tending that he was resolved to- prepare forth* triumph of the- cause of tfie monarchy, to which he supposed that I was devoted by my predilections. All these kinds of seductions were powerless. 1 never ceased to be, when in the command of the array of Paris and iv the Assembly, ready, as I once stated during a sitting of the committee of permanence, after the reviews at Satoiy, to defend with energy the legal powers of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and to give every opposition to the illegal prolongation of those powers. It is not to you that it is neGessary to tell how those powers have been established under, a new form, and what iniquitous and-violent acts have accompanied his installation. Persecution has not cooled my patriotism. The exile which I have undergone in solitude and silence, which now you force me to break, has not changed in my eyes my duties to France. Were it to be attacked, I would solicit with ardour the honour of fighting in its defence. Tne only French journal which I here see, has just informed me of the decree which determines the mode of taking the oath — which is to be demanded from all military authorities. A paragraph, evidently drawn np in order to be applied to the proscribed generals, gives them a delay of four months. I have no need of deliberating so long upon a question of duty and honour. This oath — exacted by the perjured man, who has failed to corrupt me — this oath I refuse. Changarnier.