The Courts-martial in Paris have commenced their sittings. They are
conducted with a decent show of publicity : the reporters of the newspapers receive ample accommodation, and twenty-one persons are admitted as audience. The forms of the Courts are pretty nearly the same as those of our own. The only peculiarity is, their admitting as members non-commissioned officers, which in our more aristocratic system is never done—though it would doubtless be an improvement in many cases. Of course, from among the military at Paris it would be easy to constitute nume- rous tribunals, for it requires at most nine officers for each : hitherto, however, only two Courts have sat. The accused seem to be very fairly treated ; and it is supposed, that, from a secret disinclination to the ordinance, the chances of acquittal from the suppression of evidence is even greater before these courts than they would have been before the ordinary tribunals.
The first trial, which took place- on Saturday, issued in an ac- quittal. The accused was a certain M. PEPI N, a-grocer by trade, and a captain of the National Guard of the Eighth Municipal
District. Captain Pb:':N 9p!,nr t,) La a ye:v formidable subject-, althoug:: 61 1+1,, 13nt a man eict ;;, !i!'e ibze. a set of irresponsible judges, may be exeii:ed 1)1- Avcaring the same face. It was proved that arms were nund in PEPIN'S house, in the Rue Fauxbourg St. Antoine : when token out of it, his hands were blackened with gunpowder, and a number of shots were fired from the house; but, on these two points, the evidence was not uniform. There was a barricade befom PEPIN'S house, but the shots, it ap- peared, Might have come from the one next to it. The house stood at the corner of the Rue de In Roquette ; and some of the wit- nesses said, the shots came from that street, others that they came from the Rue St. Antoine. As for the blackening of the hands, it was explained to have arisen from his attempts to ward off the blows aimed at him when seized. A curious fact was mentioned by a sub-officer of the National Guard— There was a great exasperation against the prisoner in the neighbourhood. It Was witness who tore offprisoner's epaulets and escorted him to the Place delis Bastille; where the National Guard of the Banlieue wanted to shoot him ; but witness interfered, and saved the prisoner, and brought him to the Municipit:qty, where there was no military post. He was then proceeding with him to the Prefecture ; but finding him much exhausted, and fearing he might be ill- treated by the people, he bit hint on parole at his mother-in-law's.
PEPIN declared his devotedness to the Government of the Bar- ricades, and his readiness to fight in its defence, as in July he had fought for its establishment. Six of the Court declared for his ac- quittal, and one only for his condemnation.
The second trial took place on Sunday. The criminal in this case was a private in the National Guard, named Vac HEZ, a baker. He protested against the competency of the Court, but said he was ready to submit to a force which he could not withstand. The charge against VAcnEz was as follows— In the evening of the 5th instant, being dressed in his uniform of a National Guard, he sallied out from his home, ordered a barricade to be raised in front of his door, introduced a number of persons into his house, armed them, and, when M. Gournay d'Arnonville, a Commissary of Police, was advancing at the head • of the troops to restore order, fired upon him from a window of the first-floor of his house and killed him. Another shot, it appeared, hadbeeu fired at the same time, by a man dressed in a blouse, from a coach-door. One of the witnesses who was. in Vachees louse, stated that an unknown man had forced his way in at the ap- proach of the troops, had gone up stairs, and might have fired the shot that_ killed the Commissary. Another, a wine-merchant, of the Rue Montmartre, stated in a first interrogatory, that Vachez, on coming to drink a glass of Wine in his shop, had said, "1 thought I had taken better aim at that — of a Commissary; but it would seem that I missed him." In another interrogatory,. the same witness said, that meeting Vachez the next morning, he had accosted, him, and said, " Every body in this quarter attributes to you the honour having killed the Commissary." " Ta, ta, ta," replied the baker, "it is worth talking of."
VAcuzz made a plain and apparently convincing defence--
On returning from Lamarque's funeral, he found several persons collected sound his house, who had already forced several other houses to obtain instru- iments for making barricades. They took an iron bar froin his shop. Whilst the barricade was making, he was in his shop with his wife, and .several un- &Limn persons, who had taken shelter in it at the approach of the troops. It *would have been inhuman in him to close his doors against the people, who were eying before the troops. He prevented a man from tiring, and no shot was fired from his house. His wife was very ill ; if he had had a notion to go out, she Isvould have hindered him.
There was the same doubt about the house from which the shot was fired in this case as in the other. The baker was unani- xnously acquitted.
These two trials took place before the first court. Before the second court, on Monday, a man named GEOFFROY, a painter, was arraigned.
M. Genet deposed, that about six o'clock on the Cth, the prisoner came out of the Passage Saumon with a red flag affixed to a staff; and that on the day be was arrested as the man who had distributed cartridges and powder to the popu- lace for the purpose of tiring upon the National Guards, the witness distinctly xecognized him. The Fisoner did not display the flag unfitrled, but carried it rolled up before him. Grenier deposed, that between tivo and four o'clock ion the 6th, he saw Geoffroy pass under his window. Ile had something red tound his body, but what it contained he could not perceive. lie saw hint de- liver something to some men who were in a court opposite, and who Mune- sliately afterwards tired, pal ticularly to a stout man who was in his shirt-sleeves, and bad a inusket with a cartridge-box, but no sword. Several other witnesses c ompletely corroborated the above te.-; imony, gave precisely the same descrip- tion of the dress and appearance of the prisoner, and spoke particularly as to the red girdle. They all stated that he wore mustaches, which Geoffroy admitted le had cut off since his capture.
It was also proved that he had a parcel of flints and of percussion caps in his pocket when arrested; and be was unable to account for his time from two o'clock to four o'clock. He was charged with carrying a red flag on horseback at the Pont d'Austerlitz ; but this was not proved. He said the other fiag was given to him to lake care of by some of the Polytechnic scholars. He protested, by Es counsel, against the jurisdiction of the Court. The Court, after a deliberation of three quarters of an hour, found him guilty, by a 3najority of six to one. Sentence of death was pasted on him, with leave to appeal to the Court of Revision, and afterwards to the Court of Cassation.
Another trial took place on Tuesday. The party was convicted a firing, and sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment.
These are the small deer, but the royal hunter has sprung noble as well as ignoble game. On Saturday,the celebrated CHATEAU- BRIAND, HYDE DE NEUVILLE, and the Duke DE FITZJAMES, were arrested, on the charge of being implicated in certain plots, con- trived by M. BERRYER, one of the Chamber of Deputies, who had been previously arrested at Nantes, and who still remains au secret in that town. The old "poet, orator, and statesman," seems to lave lake i advantage of the arrest to make one of those exhibi- tions in which no man more delights. He was informed, on Fri- day, that a warrant had been issued for his detention; but he went to bed nevertheless; and when the officers came early in the morn- ing, he made a thousand apologies fur making them wait for a few minutes, "he slept SO sound." CHATEAUBRIAND and HYDE DE NEUVILLE were examined on Saturday, and again on Sunday ; and it is said they will be conveyed to Nantes, to be confronted with M. BERRYER. There seems little doubt of their being soon set at liberty. They are treated with marked respect, and lodged at the Prefecture. Towards FITZJAMES no such courtesy is ob- served; nor is it called for. It was his insolence that was one of the exciting causes of the disturbance; and he is let cheaply off for some inconvenience and a little salutary terror.
The Viscount CHATEAUBRIAND has addressed to his old friend the Editor of the Journal des Debats, a letter in which he declares his innocence. It is a curious specimen of verbal quibbling: we lave no doubt the writer thought it infinitely fine. Mark the distinction drawn between "social" and " political."
" I stated in my late writings, that I recognized the social order existing in Trance,—that I was bound to pay taxes' &c. ; whence it is clear, that if I were accused of a social crime (murder, robbery, an assault upon persons of property, Sm.), it would he my duty to answer, and acknowledge the competency of the tribunals in social cases. But I am accused of a political crime; and on this I have nothing to reply. I admit, however, that in case the Government Should suspect mc -to be culpable in its eyes of a political offence, its own defence would induce it to proceed against me, and to prove, if possible' m guilt. But 1, who only acknowledge the Government as a Government de 'y facto, have a right at my risk and peril to refuse to answer."
Most people would be ready to admit, that, at "his own risk and peril," a man may do any thing he likes, whether his acts be social or political. After some arguments on the validity of Louis PHILIP'S title, he adds-
" Though they may draw me before their exceptional tribunals for twenty years, they shall not even force me to say that my name is Francois Auguste de IChateaubriand. If they transfer me to Nantes, to confront me (for such is the phrase they use) with M. Berryer, I will, as the interests of a third person are involved, say all I know of him ; and he will conic out of the inquiry as pure as the unsullied snow. As to my person, I gave it up without a word; and to ray present silence, they may add, if they please, the silence of eternity."
What a fine thin it is to be a genius! So, a man is not to use -the means which God and Nature gave him, to save his life from an unjust tribunal, whose authority he does not acknowledge ; but, having quietly allowed himself to be manacled, he is to re- serve all his heroism for a refusal to declare, what every hackney- coachman in Paris can declare as readily as he—his name ! The Duke DE FITZJAMES has gone to work like a man of bu- siness, by transmitting to the Prefect of Police a regular and well- argued document, in which he denies the authority under which he has been arrested. The paper has been drawn up by M. HEN- /at:PIN, who managed the case of the ROHANS against the Ba-
roness DE FEUCHERES. GEOFFROY is to be defended, in his appeal to the Court of Cassation, by °DILLON BARROT. The Court has the power of recognizing the Courts-martial, or declaring them null; and on its decision their whole authority must finally rest. In La Vendee, the troubles seem to be at an end. There is not, strange as it may appear, the least intelligence of the Duchess DE BERRI. It was rumoured that she had perished in the ruins of a chiteau- of one of her friends, which was taken by assault some time ago, and accidentally burnt to the ground. Many individuals are admitted to have perished in it, but there is no reason to be- lieve that the Duchess was one of them. The report of her death appears to have been spread for the same reason as the report of CHARLES EDWARD'S was after the battle of Cuiloden—to slacken the efforts of her pursuers i The only arrest of note lately made in La Vendi:e, was of one of the assassins of Marshal BRUNE—a man named GUINDEN. This fellow appears to have been a Royalist partisan. It is curious to observe by what irresistible attraction like natures are drawn towards each other. : A considerable time ago, it was announced that an important alteration a as made, or about to be made, in the tonnage-duties imposed on British- vessels in French ports. It was stated to be reduced from 44, francs to 1.1- francs. This reduction, which is of great importance to all vessels carrying passengers whose voyages are necessarily very frequent, has just been confirmed by an ordinance of the King, bearing date the 18th instant.
There is no present prospect of raising the siege of Paris.
