THE PRESS.
PUNISHMENT OF THE LATE ATINISTERS OF FRANCE.
STANDARD—The Ch?mber of Deputies is engaged with the prelimi. nary proceedings of an impeachment of the late French Ministers. These men deserve punishment, but we think that France will best consult her own honour and happiness by inflicting it with moderation. From the spirit of some of the denunciations pronounced against the delin- quents, it seems that it is wished in some quarters to take their lives. We hope that the majority of the French people entertain more prudent as well as more humane views. We confess that we always suspect something more than the abstract love of justice—something of the thirst of blood too predominant in man's unconverted nature, when we hear the necessity of sanguinary laws and exemplary executions, clamoured for, and the same whether the miserable victim marked for destruction be a statesman or a maker of forged bank notes. This, it ought not to be concealed, is a passion in ordinary times too easily raised ; and in times of great excitement there is much danger that (if it be indulged) it will become the master passion. A populace in action is like some of the domestic animals which, naturally mild and harmless, and formidable only by their strength and bulk, are said to become savage, malignant, and even furiously mad by the taste of blood. Paris has had bitter experience of the crimes to which a rabble once fleshed in vindictive slaughter can be driven ; and it behoves those who now ex- ercise authority in that city, to beware how they will set an example that may be followed up by a repetition of the dreadful scenes of 1793. We say nothing of the effect which a sanguinary course pursued towards the miserable misadvisers of Charles X. would have among foreigners— it is more respectful to leave this view of the matter to suggest itself to the French than for a stranger to present it ; but we would seriously submit the consideration—what will be gained by quenching the wretched lives of half a dozen ruined men, to compensate the stain which the un- necessary shedding of one drop of blood must always affix ? The ne- cessity of example can scarcely be pleaded ; the case for the influence of such examples will not arise for a century, and if it should arise, the force of such influence must be very doubtful. Men who will not be deterred from imitating the conduct of the Polignac administration by the probability of failure, of disgrace, and of utter ruin, will not be de- terred though the danger of death be added. The French people have shown that such failure, such disgrace, and such ruin must await him who makes any attempt upon their liberties ; and having done this, they have provided a check upon future ministers, which may well permit them to dispense with guillotine and gibbets. But how then are these men to be punished ?—We think the occasion suggests the mode. Let their property be confiscated, and applied, as it ought to be, to the relief of those who have been wounded, and to the support of the families of those who have fallen in resisting their atrocious attempt upon the liberties of their fellow-subjects. We would not, were we Frenchmen, even exile them from France : their presence in poverty, in obscurity, and disgrace, would afford an admonitory example to public men worth more than the recollection of a thousand executions.
EXPENSE OF ELECTIONS.
GLOBE--Why have the expenses of elections hitherto been enormous ? Only because the electors are so little sensible of what is due to their own character, as to make an election an occasion for revelling at the expense of the candidates—or, to take the mildest form of the abuse, have always thrown on the candidates the expense which they them- selves ought to bear. The man who, under such circumstances, is their best representative, is he who can best defray the prodigal expense which their degradation requires of him. This degradation is occasioned, we shall be told, by the system. But so is every other phenomenon we witness in the administration of the government and the state of the people. If we admit " the system" to be an excuse for the degrada- tion of electors, it is equally true that the degradation of the electors, while it continues, renders the amendment of the system impossible. Row is our political system to be improved but through the efforts of thosewho live under it ? Exhortations to the electors are the more useful at this moment because symptoms of reform are already visible among
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them in many counties. The people of Devonshire are said to have 'behaved in a very honourable manner in the conduct of the recent elec- tion. But those who have shown the first examples of decency and honour are deprived of their due praise if we do not speak in plain terms of the beastly indifference of those to whom the expense of elections in other counties is mainly owing. Mob-sycophancy, as Mr. Coleridge calls it, is very agreeable to the flatterers and the flattered. It is very pleasant to the people to talk to them of their rights ; but it would be, generally, quite as useful to talk to them of their duties. We sometimes hear It asserted, when it is proposed to check the Government by the Intervention of Parliament, that the Ministry is less corrupt than the House of Commons. It might be said, with as much truth, that the, Rouse of Commons is less corrupt, or less indifferent to the public in- terests, than those who elect it. Until the mass of electors throughout England, in those places, at least, where the right of voting is lodged in considerable bodies of men, shall follow or outrun the examples which have been set to them—until they shall deem it disgraceful to put can- didates to any expense, and shall, in consequence, choose their Repre- sentatives, and not be chosen or bought by them, we shall not see any reform in the constitution of Parliament, and any improvement in the administration of the public affairs must be derived, not from the sense or'virtue of the people, but from that of the Government-itself.
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