BELGIUM AND M. BONAPARTE. [From the Examiner.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 767, 8 December 1852, Page 4

BELGIUM AND M. BONAPARTE. [From the Examiner.]

One would not have thought it an easy problem to deprive the press of its liberty yet leave its lij centiousness. M. Bonaparte has nevertheless accomplished this. The organs of every shade of opinion iv France have been suppressed or gagged. Even those devoted to the Elyse^ are not allowed free scope of discussion. Full swing for abuse, calumny, personal attack, base innendoes, but for these alone, is permitted there. The war carried on agaiust the character of all those generals and statesmen who have refused the oath to the new Constitution, has been renewed with increased bitterness. Rumours and surmises of all kiods concerning the past life and acts of such men as Changarnier, Mole, Bedeau, have been raked up ; and a confiscation of character and reputation is attempted where that of property or of freedom has been found impossible. The remonstrances and indignant refusals of the French exiles have come dated for the most part from different towns in Belgium. Belgium has become in consequence an object of insolent animadversion in Elysean prints. The freedom it enjoys is regarded as an eyesore as well as an I inconvenience to Parisian officials, since the French have been brought back to and wooden shoes. The' attacks upon Belgium and its Government have been made chiefly in the Gonstitutionnel, and signed by M. Granier de Cassagnac, whom the proprietor of that print now declares to have been the accredited agent of Louis Napoleon, and the exponent of his views in the journal. The accusations and menaces directed against Belgium by the official writer were apropos to its commercial policy, which has of late been tending to break in some degree from its old prohibitive connection with France. During the reign of Louis Philippe, the Belgian Government did certainly deem it the best policy to ally itself with France, and to establish on many commodities a joint tariff, excluding, for example, English twist from Belgium, except at the same high duties which were levied in France. If any country has had a right to complain of commercial exclusion from Belgium it certainly was England, yet England bore these little hostilities on the part of M. Guizot and King Leopold without murmur or remonstrance. The evil would soon cure itself, we said, and so it did. By drawing close to the French system of customs, Belgium became estranged from the Germans, and these turned to her rival, Holland, for the transit of English and colonial commodiiies, depriving Antwerp of its natural advantages. The Belgians have iv consequence gradually come round from their exclusively French commercial policy,' faulty, not because tt is French, but because it is narrow and prohibitive ; therefore those who enjoy the private society of the Elysee, and who are as far behind the age in their ideas of political economy as in their notions of political liberty, now proffer indignities, and threaten Belgium with fire and sword, for indulging in these approximations to free trade. Nor is it here mere wordy bluster od the part of M., Granier de Cassagnac,- who deals out the menaces. He declares in plain set terms

that be speaks the thoughts and .tbe language of tbe Prince "President, from whose mouth be had derived his knowledge ; and be begs tbe Belgian ambassador if be has any doubt on the subject, to go to the Elysee and enquire if be, Cassagnac, does represent tbe President's sentiments or not. Such monstrous impudence in tbe mouth of a hireling produced what must have been known to be inevitable. The President disavowed his tool. He could not avoid doing it unless prepared to march en army into Belgium. But Messrs. Veron and Cassagnac of tbe Constitutionnel are very sulky and indignant In consequence, -insisting ton the truth of all they uttered, and insisting to the last that the menaces against Belgium came from tbe very mouth of tbe Chief of the State. And no doubt they did. One is obliged for once to beliete even M. Veron and M. Cassignac. He who has had the meanness to confiscate tbe private property of King Leopold and his children in France would assuredly not scruple to deprive him of his kingdom, if the act of rapacity could be committed with prudence or impunity. M. de Girardin in the Presse points out with great force the selfish and unwarrantable greed which would impel French armies upon Belgium. The latter country is tbe freest in Continental Europe. It has realised the wildest hopes of liberty without in any way endangering or disturbing social order. The representative system exists there in the fullest development and authority. The press is free. The right of association is admitted. The clergy maintain their rights and influence legally, and the lay party opposed to ecclesiastical encroachments are yet able to resist with temper, with talent and success. There are few branches of industry not developed in Belgium, and though devoid of colonies, it still contrives to carry on a large export trade. Some of the most difficult- political experiments have been skilfully and successfully made by the Belgian Government. Its giving full freedom to the Catholic clergy, without allowing either pducation or the representative system to be encroached upon or unduly influenced by them, has been itself alone a very great and successful undertaking. A few years back the provinces of Flanders bad fallen "into tbe greatest misery. There was an overpopulation as in Ireland, reduced to live on the meanest kind of diet, capital having been driven fiom agriculture, and turbuleut indigence having taken its place. To add to this resemblance of Flanders to Ireland, its population was generally disaffected to the ex'stmg Government of Belgium, and openly regretted the Orange dynasty. Yet in the face of all these adverse circumstances, the Belgian Government and Chamber entered upon the Flemish question, instituted, first a searching inquiry into tbe causes of its distress, and then steadily applied what were considered the fitting remediea. These were neither so sweeping nor so searching as those that have been tried in Ireland, but they were attended with far more prompt and more effectual results. The province of Fianders has been restored to prosperity, and the bonds of attachment thus reknit between them and tbe present, liberal Government and Dynasty of Belgium. This, then, is the country which that consummate politician M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte would tai:e under his tutelage. But wou'd it not be a wiser and a fairer course to place France under Belgian tutelage ? Belgium, situate between France and Prussia, is evidently more than a century >n advance of either. It progresses tranquilly under a constitutional system which neither F»ance nor Prussia can establish or retain. There is actually not one single,department of public affairs, or one great political question, in which the two big countries might not with advantage take lessons of the little one. Yet such is the country to which France, dragged as it is at present at the very tail of European civilization, has the impudence to dictate and issue orders, to gratify the senseless spleen of an upstart. But for Belgium and Holland, indeed, one might at present despair of tbe constitutional system in Europe. Everywhere, else corruption, folly, and weakness have stifled it, or are about to do so. Yes, in those important commercial and densely peopled countries, where there are accumulated the greatest difficulties of modern societies, credit, indigence, conflicting religions, and a weak position between rival states, we find the constitutional flag still borne aloft, as the banner under which their complicated interests can be best secured and best develop themselves. The great sovereigns and courts of Europe have formed a kind of tacit league to protect Belgium from the rapacity of the present ruler of France. They have done so in order to maintain tbe treaties of 1815 intact, and to keep proscribed and disavowed tbe old Napoleonian principle of setting treaties at nought, and of remodelling Europe and its balance of power. Their object is the limited one of curbing the ambition and ascendency of France, though it is also no doubt a justifiable reason for a league of European defence. Yet a stronger reason might be found in tbe fact, that Belgium, as a more free, more tranquil, more settled, more prosperous, happy, and constitutional country deserves for her own sake that Europe should defend her against the barbarous military despotism of the lawless regime which prevails for the time in France.