THE EMPIRE. [From the Times, November 2.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 801, 6 April 1853, Page 4

THE EMPIRE. [From the Times, November 2.]

To the Editor of the Times. g IK) —The curtain is rising on a second "Empire." The decorations are prepared, the ma. cbinery constructed, the mise en scene arranged, and parts allotted, but np man, not even the hero of the piece, can forecast its termination. Tragedy or comedy, melodrame or pantomime, its action and denouement are unknown alike to France that must perform and Europe tbat must suffer it.

Oar curiosity is goaded by our interests, and we interrogate the post and watch the present, to divine, perhaps disarm, the future. The history of tyrants is not seldom that of early promise cruelly belied, of plausible professions scandalously violated, of a nation's confidence volunteered ip- smiles, and recalled in tears and blood. Tiberius, then ten years old, won tbe admiration of tbe Roman world by his filial piety ■nd funeral oration on his parent ; when he assumed the purple be aspired, he said, to no higher title than that of " Father of the Citizens." Nero declined the felicitations of the Senate, modestly begging the conscript sycophants to "reserve their praises until he had deserved them," and, when asked to sign the writ for tbe execution of some malefactors, "wished to Heaven that he could not write." Napoleon Bonaparte, to " save society," bayonetted in the name of " Liberty and Equality," the national representation, made himself First Consul to guarantee " stability," announced that tbe revolution was "concluded," and protested to the world that peace was the first necessity of nations, and their highest glory. The Empire and its hecatombs are the commentary upon " peace;" — Fontainebleau, Elba, St. Helena, the Restoration, the days of July, those of February and December, are the bitter gloss upon " liability." The imitations of the nephew are; of cduril, literal. He also has " saved society,' 1 guarantees " stability," struck the coup d' 4tat in the name of " the Republic," elected himself President for ten years, " to close the era of revolutions," within ten mouths command* the cry of " Vive VEmpereur /" and professes the mission of '* peace." The word of Louis Napoleon is too inviolable to admit of doubt, and, fortunately for the probabilities of peace, he has not yet sworn to abstain from war. But necessity and circumstance have both their logic, and neither endorses his professions nor our belief. The Imperial policy must not be sought in claptrap answers to adoring prefects or blaspheming mayors, but in the instincts of a nature, the antecedents of a life, the passions of a man, and the laws of his position. ! "I represent," he said to the Chamber of Peers, " a principle, a cause, and a defeat. The principle is the sovereignty of the people, the cause is the Empire, the defeat is Waterloo. That principle you have recognized, that cause you have served, and that defeat you would avenge. No difference exists between you and me." | The " sovereignty of the people," of the Bonapartist pattern, reigns ; the Empire is an accomplished fact ; Waterloo is yet to be avenged ; that vengeance was promised in the proclamation to the troops on tbe 2d «f December ; it is fiercely debated in the messroom and canteen ; hot-headed colonels remind the soldier that Marshals of Frtnce started from tbe hut ; doggrel rhymes on perfidious Albion circulate in the faubourgs and the barracks ; the Ulvramontanss curse the heresy of England, subscribe their sous to persecuted Ireland, and preach a holy war ; and the Constitutionnel, licensed by the Government, deprecates the calamities, insinuates the need, and demonstrates the facility of an invasion. Louis Napoleon is lavish of assurances. " I say, the Empire is peace, for I ranee desires it, and when France is satisfied tbe world istrsnfa»." - '„;' < >l Tbe Empire it peace 1 What are its credentials, where are its guarantees ? Are they to be j •ought in the coup d' &at, in a Prastorian camp, j in Algerian regiments, in a Roman garrison, in half a million soldiers ? Do we see them in the new fortifications of Toulon, in the busy dockyards, in the construction of the Napoleon, tbe Jean Bart, and the Ausfprlitz, in the prophecy of the Minister of Marine that vessels such as those \ will " decide tbe destiny of nations ;" in the declaration of Louis Napoleon tiiat " the Mediterranean should be s French lake ?" Or, is it in Belgium we shall find them ? In the war of tariffs, threatened by Cassagnac, repudiated by Louis Napoleon, and carried out by him — in the Bonaparlist propagandism within, the concentration of troops without ; in the placards of " Vive VEmpereur !" posted on the walls of Brussels, in the ultimatum of tbe Elysee against the freedom of its press ; in the treason of its Jesuits ; in their surreptitious petitions for annexatiou to France ; in the dislocation of its Ministry — in the distractions of its counsels ? We are told of strategy and of intrenched lines. But no strategy is proof against suborned disloyalty, and scarp and ravelin, parapet and fosse, are powerless to exclude domestic treachery. Tbe works ofVauban htve been mined by Loyola. " The Empire, " tays Louis Napoleon, "is peace, for Louis XV. and Louis XVI. inherited uot the wars, but glory of tbe Grand Monarque" His glory ! Louis XV's was the Petit Trianon and the Pare aux Cerfs — Louis XVl's, a revolution and the scaffold. Which shall it be? These parallels are false. Tbe present cannot ■übsist upon the past. Governments, like individuals, have their proper life. What is born of violence must live by force. However Bonapartiim may gasconade, the Republic is not dead, nor Henry V., nor the Count of Paris. Principles and claims, though prostrate, breathe. They wait only, circumstance and opportunity to renew the combat md unfurl their flag. Can Imperialism conciliate rights that it denies, or satisfy factions that it tramples on ? Can it crush liberty and disarm too ? The dupes, the organs, and accomplices of Bo* napartism are, or affect to be, in transports. Peace is assured, and Europe may disband, for Louis Napoleon his declared it. Germany, they write, mast regret her levies ; England must repent of her militia. After the conspiracy ot Strasburgh Louis Philippe trusted the plighted honour of a. Bonaparte, and was repaid by the expedition of Boulogne and by the spoliation of his children. France confided in a Princely word, and she is now enslaved. The Legislative Assembly credited his oaths, and it met with a malefactor's fate. Word, honour, oath, are only counters in the game, shifted with the chances of the card*. Tbe professions jump with the occasion. To the army they are all eagles and glory, " common" misfortunes, and revenge ; to the merchants of Bordeaux the conquests ale merely of marshes and morality, Christianity and comfort ; to the Chamber of Peers he protested that bis uncle bad " preferred abdication to acceptance of restricted frontiers," and that " he' had never for one instant breathed in iorgetfulueas of that great lesson." The peace which Louis Napoleon proclaims is Napolcouian. It is of the same stamp as that

" sovereignty of the people " be his now restored. The "first" Emperor proclaimed it too, and always most londly before each fresh spoliation. The herald of the "third" explains it. " The wars of the Empire were always provoked and always defensive. Even the Russian cam* paign was forced upon him !" It is a calnmny to charge him with last of conquest or ambition : "he was only too good, too great, and too magnanimous !" The peace of the uncle fertilized with blood the battle-fields of Europe — that of the nephew has hitherto manured the Boulevard only, and the Champ de Mars. The world retains too fresh a memory of the goodness, magnanimity, and greatness of the one not to feel a wise affright at their imitation by the other. France is satisfied ! Louis Napoleon, the Moniteur, the salaried press, the Jesuits, the functionaries, and the police affirm it. France is more than satisfied, she is delirious with delight at the massacre of Paris, the proscription of her "illustrations," the deportation of her citizens, the destruction of her liberties, at the gag upon her lips and slraitwaistcoat on her limbs, at tbe spy by her side and the Gendarme at ber heels, at the vote a sham and the sabre a fact, the police, the ponton, and the prison. What is true of the whole is true of the part, and, if France is satisfied, the press and the opinions that it represents are so. More than half a hundred of its members are no more. Some were strangled on the 2nd of December — the rest have been choked by the " avertissements " of the police. Of the survivors, tbe once independent few are terrified to silence,or, what is worse, to hypocritical subsetviency. The eye of the Government is fastened on their page, its hand upon their property, suspicion tracks them, suipeusion wails them, and their future seems only the desperate choice of a lingering atrophy or public execution. Not only does a sacred inviolability hedge the whole personnel of power, from Louis Napoleon. to the Leadle, but the writers in its pay may neither be criticised nor laughed at. The Presse has received an avertissement for daring to discuss a question with the Pays, and the Charivari a reprimand for want of respect to Lagueroniere. 1 The Bonapanist organs comprise deserters, from every flag, renegades from every faith. They resemble those mediaeval mercenaries who fought for " any God or man." These condottieri of the pen, like those of the sword, have brought into the camp the license, insubordination, disloyalty, and scandal of Free Companies. They strike for booty, they desert defeat. T,hey were yesterday for the Republic, to-day they ate for Bonaparte, they would charge for St. Denis and Henri Cinq to-morrow. As all love but one object, that may, perhaps, explain tbeir mutual hatred. It is remarkable. I The Pays at the same time reduced its price I and augmented its dimensions, in order to ruin the Constitutionnel. The Constitutionnel has lowered its price, in order to destroy tbe Pays. Tbe Patrie wages a life and death struggle with both ; and the Moniteur has been, greatly cheapened, to annihilate them all. Sure as the dissolution of journalism is, it would seem to be too slow for Louis Napoleon, and rumour has bruited more than ouce a fresh coup d' dtat against jriut prejpju. Napoleon I. abolished all journal* bnt^m Moniteur, and - Napoleon 111. may do £he same. The " ideologues" that both have affected to despise, and, in reality ,have feared, would fall with greater dignity by tbe stroke of a decree than beneath tbe ma- < rasraus of enforced iuanity or baseness. The France of the functionaries and the church is sitisfied. In conjunction with tbe " ilite of tbe natioD," they find themselves the Corinthian pillars of that " society" which has been "saved." The wages of the Prefects have been liberally raised, independence cbased, and obsequiousness or unscrupulous audacity promoted. New powers, perquisites, and privileges have been accorded to them; crosses and circulars have rained upon them ; end tbe Prefecture has swelled into a pasbalic. But tbe tenure of the office is discreet obedience ; and, while a blunder is a crime; hesiu tation is disgrace. More than one prefectorial razzia has taught this salutary lesson. The Jesuits and the Ultramontanes are drunk with exultation. The sacerdotal heel is on the neck of France — the garotte prepared for Europe. The Holy Romtm Apostolic Church dreams once more of universal empire. Before or behind its ecstatic obscurantism six centuries' vanish, and the 19th, which we falsely believed this to be, is only really the lath. The Univers laments that Luther was not burnt* and sanctifies the Inquisition ; Donoso Cortez denounces reason as a damnable impertinence ; abbes and bishops aroynt the classics, anathematize Cicero and Virgil, and prescribe for the edncation of youth the study of the " Fathers," the bieviary and paternoster ; Fiere L6otade and the Curt Gothland- are on the road to canonization, and the land teems with miracles. Winking Madonnas, sweating stints, bleeding altarpieces, and inspired cowboys ; the Gendarme who deposed to the pious He, and the sub-perfect who endoiset it ; episcopal charges, archjepiacopal pastorals, and Papal rescripts, all testily alike that the favour of Heaven has fallen on tbe Jesuits, that Louis Napoleon is the "chosen of the Lord," and that "society ia saved/ When Nearly Christians were .smeared wittt' pitch and burnt for torches, flayed,crucified, with their heads downwards, and caat to the honi of the amphitheatre, " To make a Roman holyday. they were butchered as "the enemies of human kiud," in the name and behalf of " society" menaced, civilization outraged, and the gods avenged. , , .... When Simon de Montfort led against the Albigenses the "holy commission" of Innocent 111., and the Inquisition sprang like a scorpion from the fire, the Reformers wsre » holocaust on the altar of " society." For Us eternal iuterets, they were bunted like *ild be«ats,aud destroyed like vermin, speared, disembowelled, chopped in pieces, crushed by millstones, sawed winder, massacred with thost obsctnt atrocities which fiends alone would setm tblt to conceive, and tbe " defenders of society " to compass. The ma- j turity of the Holy-office kept tut promise of its birth, and the tortures of its duogtons and flamea of its auto-da-f<?s still racked the joints and scorched tbe bodies of its victims, to the priestly Ca ira of the glory of God and present aud future salvation of man. This is the institution which the Univers laments, and tLe Jesuist would assuredly restore. Prefect aod priest vie in blasphemons servility. Louis Napoleon had long ranked as the official

" Providence." The sacrilegious title bad become stale. The Prefect of Perigneox displayed in a transparency the likeness of his master, with the inscription beneath it, — " Dieu fit Nupolion et se reposa !" The Bishop of Chalons informs tbe faithful that Louis Napoleon is "The man of God." Mayors and prelates salute " The messenger of hetfen." The flood of profane flattery mounts higher as it goes : — " 'A present Deity,' they shout around, A «F^ s . e ? t Deit , y '' the roofi rebound. " With ravished ears " The monarch hears, " Assumes the God, " Affects to nod, " And seems to shake the spheres." The Lord's Prayer is parodied, the creed travestied, Genesis burlesqued ; and bishops listen without a blush while France is made to supplicate this " Father" for its daily bread, and stutter its belief in his divinity. Tbe episcopacy cannot reproach its conscience with so much' blasphemy for nothing. Louis Napoleon had tbe* piety and policy to raise tbe salaries of these holy men. Oh ! mitred hypocrisy, does tby impious cynicism defy alike the chastisement of Heaven and the scorn of earth f Jesuitism plays tbe desperate game of double* or quits with reason. After the revolution of | February Catholic priests blessed tbe trees of ! liberty. After the coup cTfiat they chanted aTe Deum on its massacre. They sanctified legitimacy until it fell ; ' they consecrate perjury when it has triumphed. Ministers of Christ, they i burlesque Christianity ; teachers of morality, they defy crime. They have learnt and forgotten nothing. For them Hildebrand may still r thunder in tbe Vatican ; the Inquisition is an incomplete experiment ; the Reformation is a heresy, and not a lesson, and the war on civilization must be recommenced. Their black conspiracy against intelligence envelopes Europe, its .staff in Rome, its file everywhere. In Italy its banner is ' tbe Pope ;" in France, " Society!" in Ireland, " Religious Equality !" The equality I which triumphant Jesuitism would dispense is that of persecution and damnation. • France is satisfied ! She utters but a single | cry, and that is " Vive l'En\pereur !" That steretyped " enthusiasm" which' has greeted every power,and ravished every Moniteur ,is as "indescrib»ble"as ever. Tbe venal writersand fanatic acolytes Bonapartism t xhauit the forms of adulation. Their idol is at once " the New Alexander" and the " Napoleon of Peace ;" " a political genius which administers like Colbert, executes likes Richelieu, writes like Pascal, and reigns like Bonaparte!" The language of European flattery is unworthy such an ear, and it is worshin^^ ped in a strain of fustian-and-hmciluii^JPl^^^ mi 1 A-U i - are improved, and 2,000 pairs of the best of lungs have reverberated in the provinces. The whip and the spur urged tbe recalcitrant or sluggish- deputations were marshalled by tuck of drum — the penalties of " contravention" menaced the omission of flags and lanterns — prominent citizens were hsld responsible for the demonstrations of the rest— no shutters might he closed upon the line of the cortfye — arrests preceded and followed it — intimidation marched with it. The will of the police is law, and and personal liberty t myth. 1 Bonapartism brandishes tbe lath in one hand, and holds the purse in the other, Toulon is promised millions for its forts, Nimes for an aqueduct, Marseilles for a cathedral. Tbe Imperial liberality is as boundless as the gratitude of a nation bribed with its own coin. That gratitude is most conspicuous amongst a peasantry officially denounced as communists and brigands. The " enthusiasm" of tbe towns is only in the Moniteur, The power which sets itself above the law invites revenge beyond the law. Fanaticism listens to no conscience but Us own. The tyrannicide, deaf to God and man, sees only crime, heeds only vengeance; is Brutus when he strikes, a martyr when he falls. Amid Praetorian cohorts and " indescribable enthusiasm" Loai* Napoleon encounter's this murderous logic. Marseilles and tbe police prepared a pasteboard copy of! the infernal machine of the Rue Nicaise — Toulon contributed a shot *t a review — Moulins an apothecary, who substituted suicide for homicide. The uncle furnishes, a deadly argument to t those -who would despatch tbe nephew. Napoleon left a legacy, of IO.OOOf. to Cantillon, who attempted the life of Wellington, ana boldly justified the murder of bis rival I France is satisfied, but its entbutitsm doe» not reach to its electors. Universal suffrage has retired, for the time, to its Aventine Mount. In vain prefects threaten and appeal; nearly three-fourths of the voters sbnn the electoral urn. The scrutiny is frequently invalidated by th© lack of votes; the Gtverument candidates rarely obtain a third of thost inscribed ; occasionally tbe Opposition makes a stand ; if it carries its list, the Prefect quashes, it. Absten- - lion is the only possible protest against such"illimitable liberty." fe world is tranquil I Its' tranquillity is that oaded mine, of a shell with the fusee burning. Such peace is nothing hut a pause and an armistice. Its guarantee is nejther the word nor the oath of Louis Napoleon, -bat the vigilance md armament of Europe. But if, no master why, tbe Empire is peace, Etogland will loyally accept iv la ( itwar? F« victis I It will be thaf strife of principles which began in the last century, and whose shifting tide has bathed every camp in Wood. Our flag is freedom. It has made us great, and it will keep us so. Let those who will hug despotism. , We detest, but do not war on it. Our propagandisra is our prosperity and our example. If its suicidal frenzy hurls its legions against a*, they affront a people strong in its faith, its traditons, and its right, which has shattered one liberticide Empire, and will face another. AN ENGLISHMAN.