OUR PARIS LETTER.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3828, 5 April 1881, Page 2

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(FaOM OTJE OWN COBBESPONDENT.) Pabis, January 27. The recent municipal elections having laid alike, communists and reactionaries, the Republic still again re-fortified by that new and significant dip in universal suffrage, is at last able to complete, or work off several salutary reforms, held m suspense by the apprehensions and noise of home detractors and abstractors. Thus the law of liberty of the press is at last being discussed. The new bill has this formal merit, that it abolishes all the complex and autocratic edicts existing and remakes a special code for the press ; the

drawback is, that the measure consists of 70 clauses^ or about three dozen too many. So far as the debase proceeded, there will be no impediment to found a journal, no preliminary authorization, no stamps, no custom money, no permission for caricatures in advance will be required. Foreign newspapers, &c, will be free to enter, so long as they contain nothing obscene: Dick, Tom, or 'Arry will be free to sell them, without complying with as many formalities as if they were setting up for a deputyship. Belgians, Italians, • and even Prussians will. be.as free to turn an honest penny vending the latest intelligence, as they are for the public duty of scavenger. The discussion has naturally provoked the reiteration of all the advantages and inconveniences of the press. Now the latter resembles what JBsop said of the tongue—'there is nothing so excellent or detestable; it is the usage of it which decides. There is a personage, it has been observed, who has more wit than Voltaire, and that is Monsieur Everybody. The press cannot lead the public by the nose against its declared will, aod journalism is powerful exactly in proportion to the soundness of the cause it advocates. If opinion errs, it will not be for long, and twenty-four hours will bring it round to a just appreciation of facts. The dynasties a߀k N ministries in France, which have been armed with the most Draconian powers against the press, have not been able to maintain their positions a single minute beyond the hour fixed by the fatality of their faults for execution. On the contrary, freedom of the press. has aided those who, havins^nothing to conceal orjtofear, relied on it. Since the three months France';has had unbouuded, almost absolute, liberty of the press. A. crop of journals sprung up, having for aim to defame G-ambetta; and the consequence ? Gambetta has been made more powerful than ever, and the calumniators hare returned to their natural insignificance. Good will ever predominate over evil in the long run; so will a healthy over a diseased journalism. Indeed, the new press bill only requires that those who commit wilful' wrong or studied injury shall be held responsible, simply as they would be for the commission of any other offeuce. No scape goats; pull up and^ punish the sinner.

The moment is to heavy frosts and— notorious conversions.- In May, 1870, some six aud a-half millions of rotes ratified their confidence that the Empire was peace, and the Napoleon dynasty a fixture for ever. Two months later the peace profession was found to be not a screaming but a sanguinary farce, and in the September following the dynasty was relegated to that of the Shepherd Kings of Egypt. The six and a half millions of voters have rallied to the form of Government—the Republic— which permits them to guard themselves, the issues of peace and war, while enthroning themselves as sovereigns. But the chiefs of the Bonapartist party held more or less loosely together, even when they had no more a rank or file. The debris even of the chiefs is disappearing more quickly than the snow. Thus M. de la Fauconnerie has read his recantation of Bonapartism, admitting that as the nation has unequivocally pronounced for the present constitution, further opposition to the [Republic is childish. Having been elected by a Bonapartist consti* tuency, M. de la Fauconnerie returns to his electors the trust they confided to him: if they approve of his evolution, they can re-elect him. There are some fossil royalists that would lend 25fr., to be repaid at the entry of the Comte de Ohambord as Henri V. in Paris, but not an individual could be found with the faith of a grain of mustard seed, that would loan one franc on the prospect of a Bonapartist ever again ascending the throne of France. That dynasty will not certainly return by universal suffrage, and only lunatics will count upon another 2nd December, 1851. The era even of coups d' etat is closed. The emiaent conversion in question is the public and official act of decease of Bonapartism, and nothing would be more interesting than for some mameluke of the departed cause— Paul de Cassagnac himself might take the jump into the gulf—to be pitted against M. de la Fauconnene, and thus test the opinions of the constituents. Other mighty men are strapping their baggage for a new departure.

The Greeks continue to cry very loud, and march—happily not outside their borders, like peripatetic philosophers ; no one will fight for them, and henqe, the strong belief that they will not do so themselves. Public opinion has made up its mind, in Prance at least, that whether Greece be right or Turkey wrong, whether the Congress of Berlin had or had not the power to slice them off a portion of the Ottoman Empire, they shall not be the cause of a general European war. If they attack Turkey they must expect hard knocks in return.

Meteorologically, the season at least is favourable to dining. While the Legitimists assemble in the Ohapelle Expiatoire to pray for Louis XVI., and to broke the return of the state of society which he embodied, the Revolutionists met and feasted the execution of that monarch as the symbol of a past irrevocably destrofed. Not more than 200 of the. Purists sat down to dinner—proof that these kind of assemblies are less interesting than the singing saloons. One oration was rg* markable. It attacked Kochefort a? being not a whit better than his mortal enemy Gambetta Rochefort is making superhuman efforts to keep himself still, the idol of the XJommunists, but he already totters on ms pedestal. He organised an olla potfrida representation a few days a^o in favour of an amnestied extheatrical manager., Only think that the tricolor was displayed and songs executed in honor of Gambetta's programme. There were orations also, one speaker winding up by declaring the clergymen the ruin of the country, because they taught religion.

There is another light on the* Wane—• Mile. Louise Michel. She seems to be retiring frpm active communism. Having been solicited by a reporter to be interviewed* and to honor him with a few of her stanzas, she agreed to do battle for 6Qfr.; the money was paid, and the journal states the result is not value for the expense. She denies the soft impeachment of having compared Gambetta to " a fat hog that ought to be killed;" -this change is suspicious, since the cartoons married the Joan of Arc of the Commune to her arch fiend, who secured her her amnesty—M. Gambetta.

A waiter boy in an hotel at Niagara lately wrote to his mother, "!The hotel season is all over here, but the falls are goin' on just the same as ever."