The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. In the cause of Truth and Justice we strive. SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1871.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 811, 13 May 1871, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. In the cause of Truth and Justice we strive. SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1871.

The uews received by the previous mail had not prepared us for the horrors of internecine strife which have followed so quickly upon the German evacuation of Paris. It is easy to appreciate the intensity of shame, agony and fury with which the Parisians must have witnessed the Prussian entry into a city that has been the scene of all the great events in French history. Paris his established and annulled governments at will; all the glorious triumphs of the nation are associated with its streets, its edifices and the memory of its people ; and it has been equally prominent in all that embellishes civilization; in its supremacy in all the arts, and all the luxuries and gaieties that charm mankind. The very barreuuess of the occupatiju increases the degradation.

Her best armies led into captivity, her fortresses dismantled and in foreign occupation, her fairest provinces devastated, and her capital at the mercy of the foe, were bitter truths as well know in Paris as in Berlin. From Germany went forth the demand that the occupation of the capital should be the crowning insult inflicted upon France. The cession of Belfort was the only alternative offered, and M. Thiers declined to avert the occupation of Paris for a few days, by relinquishing a fortress of such magnitude and importance. Tet, the occupation was peacefully effected. There was no angry collision between the populace and the German soldiery, at least nit of importance, and the departure of the last troops excited a hope that the crisis was safely tided over, and the national mind weuld be at once diverted to the work of reconstruction and the retrieval of unparallelled disasters. But the wild spirit of destruction only slumbered, to burst forth upon the departure of the German armies. The sanguinary traditions of the First llevolution bear token to the tact, that Paris contains the most excitable and ruthless of mobs, which the voice of Revolution may speedily call into active life. And circumstances were never more favourable to an outburst. These men burning for vengeance and, in their despair, eayer to try the most desperate conclusions had been trained to the use of weapons of precision during the long continued siege. A lengthened term of idleness and ease influenced such as were not actuated by more sinister motives, and the desire to wreak its fury upon all constituted authority, which they regarded as the cause of the national calamities, awakened in all the old instinct of destruction. To render the danger more appalling the capital was comparatively divested of the means of maintaining order. The citizens, to the number of nearly two hundred thousand, fled, and the city was given up to the fierce, relentless, diabolical will of an army of savages. Anarchy and disorder cast a deeper gloom upon the sacrifices which France is called upon to undergo. If there were any prospect of the insurgents freeing the country from the grievousness of her disasters, there would be some palliation of their acts, but there is no such immediate prospect and blindly attacking a Government which is not responsible for the policy that has brought France to her present plight, can only heighten the present troubles. The only terms upon which peace was offered to France she was bound to accept. She was in the position of a man forced to attach his signature to a bond under threats of annihilation if he refuse to affix it; and, however hateful the arrangement, compliance was compulsory. The mere fact that delay in ratifykg the Treaty would expose the capital and the invaded territory to untold misery and suffering should be an unanswerable argument against any attempts to interfere with the present endorsement of this hideous compact. However ungrateful and humiliating the task, they best served France, who at such a supreme crisis of her fate accepted a peaceful settlement, however bitter the terms. In her present exhausted condition to prolong the contest successfully was impossible, and the good sense of the people should teach them to distinguish between the men who would save France and those who would imperil her national existence by mad professions of ability to continue the struggle.