"Mbe iropectator," Onptember 13tb,1851
ALL foreigners intending to reside permanently in Paris, or exercise any calling there, must henceforth present themselves personally to the authorities, and obtain permission to remain. This new and stringent police-regulation is, it is said, to be extended to every department of France. Such fear of foreigners contrasts strangely not only with the unsuspicious welcome which they receive in America and England, but which they were wont to receive in much earlier times in Holland, when Dutch freedom was in advance of that of the rest of Europe. More than any previous measure of the French Government, this Chinese churlishness towards foreigners would seem to imply a consciousness that its senti- ments and objects are not those of the nation. If harmony existed between the rulers and the body of the citizens, any attempt on the part of aliens to excite disturbances would be too contemptible to be met by such jealous vigilance.
The plea advanced in extenuation of a police-regulation worthy of the days of Louis the Fourteenth, the Bastille, and lettres de cachet, is the alleged plot of European Revolu- tionists, which led to the Parisian arrests of last week. It may be conceded, that since its beginning in 1789, the French Revolution has not been, like the revolutions of the Low Countries, England, and America, a purely national revolu- tion. The Revolutionary party has been not merely French, but European. English Radicals are as jealous of foreign inter- ference as Conservatives: not so the Red Republicans and Socialists of Paris.
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