THE POSITION IN FRANCE.

[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]

SINCE my last letter the arrests have continued. At this mo- ment the number of persons who have been taken up amounts to no less than 100 or 150. Most of these are students. But the youths of the schools are not alone concerned. The editor-in-chief of the Courrier du Dimanche, M. Ganesco, expelled from France last year by M. Persigny, in consequence of an article conceived in a spirit of keen opposition, was subsequently recalled and reinstated in his func- tions. He was lately arrested at his office. Several ancient Members of Parliament, who sat in the (so-called) Mountain (a la Montagne) in our republican assemblies—M. Greppo, for instance, and M. Idiot —have been likewise thrown into prison. In the departments other arrests have taken place. Thus M. Scherer, the brother-in-law of Colonel Charras, is mentioned. It is said he was accused of having spread the song of the "Lion du Quartier Latin," of which your last number contained a translation. M. Scherer belongs to one of the wealthiest and most influential among the industrial families of Alsatia. This imprisonment has given rise to very painful anxiety in those parts of the province where he resides, and especially at Thann and Mulhouse. The cause of these numerous arrests remains unknown, as well as the nature of the treasonable proceedings (mesas coupables), which the Mon iteur is content to mention in very vague terms. It would seem as if the Government strove to connect them with the existence of agreat democratic conspiracy, of which the

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agitators in the schools s represented as a mere byplay. According to this view, the students, no less than the other personsjarrested, would be treated as dabblers in secret societies which in terms of the Law of General Safety may involve transportation to Cayenne, as a simple matter of administration.

We are convinced that no accusation could be more unfounded, so far as the Quartier Latin is concerned. The movement of the students was entirely spontaneous, purely special, and neither directly nor remotely traceable to the action of the secret societies. We have, besides, the strongest doubts that the operation of these socie- ties bears any very serious character at the present moment, and we are more and more inclined to believe, as we pointed out in our last letter, that this reapparition of Socialism is nothing else than a phan- tasmagoria contrived by the Government to reawaken in the Con- servative masses the cowardly panics which provoked or speeded the Absolutist reactions of 1852. If the public mind could be persuaded of the existence of such a plot, the anxieties caused by the pretended discovery would infallibly tend to benefit the Government and to damage the Liberal Opposition.

We readily admit the power of the democratic passions in the masses of our country. We may even allow that the concert (l'en- soak) which has frequently marked the action of the democratic party, bears witness to the persistency of a strong organization within its bosom. But, to our apprehension, there is nothing in the present state of things to indicate any actual combination or deep- laid scheme. The dissatisfaction is general, but it hinges upon manifold causes. The merchants and the manufacturers, the mass of the well-to-do classes (bourgeoisie), are more touched, as we have already said, with the bad state of the finances and the languishing state of material interests, than smitten with a disinterested love of liberty. The young men of the schools are little amenable to ex- ternal inspirations. The law or medical students, who go to hoot M. About for his political apostasies, and the students of the Poly- technic, who club their contributions to pay M. Pelletan's fine in- curred by a courageons article, have nothing in common with the associates of the Marianne. The working classes are deeply disaffected; but those masses themselves, among whom iocialism has often re- cruited its ranks, act in this movement less in obedience V the rally- ing word of the secret societies than to the suggestions of hunger. The present state of the workmen in our great industrial centres cannot be painted under colours too gloomy. Even in Paris, where the aspect of that misery is something less cruel than, for instance, at Lyons or at Saint-Etienne, nothing is doing in very. many of the public works (corps d'itat), and the dearness of lodging, coupled with the rise in the price of provisions, places the working men in a condition beyond all remedy. No doubt many non-political causes have con- tributed to this result. But when a Government has proffered material prosperity as the condition of its existence, and the certain consequence of its enthronement, when by its engagement to guarantee the country against the perils of liberty, it has at the same time dried up the inexhaustible resources of individual enterprise (initiative), is not the popular instinct in a certain degree warranted, which holds that Government answerable for ills which it has neither prevented nor cured?

Be this as it may, if a revolutionary agitation should actually arise among the masses, either under the impulse of misery, or as the consequence of culpable provocations on the part of the Government, we do not hesitate to say that it would be an in- calculable disaster to the cause of liberty. So long as the Im- perial Government may rely on the army (and at the present mo- ment it has absolute command over it), an attempt at insurrection can only end in the most bloody and merciless repression, a barren and purposeless agitation can only sow fresh alarm in the Conservative ranks, and arrest, perhaps for a very long period, the slow but unde- niable movement which is now bringing back the middle classes to

the idea of a government tempered and controlled. Another con- sequence it might have, in our opinion more baneful still, in deluding the democratic leaders themselves as to the strength of their party. If they should think themselves strong enough to contend single- handed against the Empire, if they are ever brought thus to isolate themselves and to act the part of exclusive sectaries of the Repub- lican cause, instead of uniting their efforts to those of the independent men of other parties to revive the sense of liberty and thus prepare its triumph in the country, it is easy to predict that they will only end ultimately by strengthening the Empire and prolonging its dura- tion. The old motto of the Italian patriots, "Italia fora da se," worked little good to their cause. To take it up vain as the pro- gramme of the advanced democracy would certainly be the part neither of enlightened politicians nor of good citizens.

The members of the Republican party who sit in the Legislative

Body have better understood their mission. The discussion on the Address has allowed them to embody, under colour of an amendment, a programme of internal liberty which the Liberals of all shades can accept without reserve. Individual liberty, liberty of the press, trial by jury of journalistic offences, purity of elections, the re-establish- ment of municipal liberties, the cancelling of exceptional laws (lois d'exception), order and economy in the finances—this is what is de- manded by MM. Jules Favre, Picard, Emile 011ivier, and their friends, and what Liberal France claims in common with them MM. Picard and Jules Favre have unfolded this programme in two eloquent and courageous speeches, which have left upon the present system an indelible stigma.

No man of intelligence or good faith can dispute the truth of the

picture which they have drawn of Imperial France. Arbitrary arrests, an organized army of spies, the departments put under the heel of the prefects, civil impunity freely granted to subordinate agents in return for their political fidelity, universal suffrage impu- dently manipulated by functionaries of every rank, and degraded into what M. Favre energetically termed "the trickery of the electoral law" (la duperie de la loi electorate), the sword of the avertissement ever suspended over the head of journalists bold enough to disturb the unanimous symphony of adulation which the Government offers up to itself in the venal journals in its pay—such is the epitome of the state of things depicted and branded by the orators of the Oppo- sition—enough, unquestionably, to justify the reproach which they addressed to the Imperial Government, amidst the interested mur- murs of a servile majority, of having deeply humiliated the France of 1789.

We will particularly call the attention of English readers to that

part of the speeches of M. Picard relating to the press. It will reveal to them in its nakedness a state of things which their ideas and habits of liberty can scarcely permit them to realize. According to the existing law, no journal can appear without the previous authorization of the Government. The Minister of the Interior and the Prefects have the right of warning the journals, and, after two warnings, of suppressing them, which is tantamount to the con- fiscation of a private property. The death of a conductor or of one of the proprietors involves the necessity for a new authorization, and thus places the existence itself of the journal again in question. The warning is a condemnation without appeal, pronounced without hearing the journalist condemned in his own defence. Nor are the Minister and the Prefects to whom is entrusted this monstrous power in any way bound to make known the motives of their de- cision. We do not think we are maligning such a legislation when we say that it gives the Government an absolute right of life and death over the press.

The Government has devoted itself above all to prevent the crea-

tion of new independent journals. One of the principal representa- tives of the system allowed the feeling of the Government to leak out in an unguarded moment. A respectable writer, M. Leymarie, having asked permission two years ago to found a journal which was to be the exponent of a moderate and constitutional opposition, M. Billault, then Minister of the Interior, refused that authorization, and gave, in a conversation with M. Leymarie, the motives of his refusal: "The more constitutional your journal showed itself," he said, "the more careful not to transgress the law, in a word, the more moderate it was, the more troublesome it would be."

A FRENCHMAN.