Among other inconveniences that attend any abandonment of principle, is
this, that parties guilty of it are readily believed to be capable of conduct much worse than they have been guilty of. The proceedings of the French Ministers against the press have been so flagrantly opposed to the principles upon which a free go- vernment ought to be conducted, that almost any imputation against them gains credence. This is the only way in which we can account for the disposition that has been shown to receive as true the monstrous story of their intention to impeach the mem- bers of the Mountain who have subscribed to the Mazzini loan. -Yet it must be confessed that the story is told with such minute- ness of detail as predisposes to a suspicion that there may be some- thing in it, and might almost justify a contradiction from the French Government,—a step not to be taken lightly in matters of scandalous political gossip. It is said that the Government law- yers recommend the impeachment on the ground that the Italian loan will be spent upon acts of rebellion against the Pope ; that the French army will be employed to defend and reinstate his Holi- ness ; and that therefore the Representatives who have contributed to the loan will have been subscribing for the purchase of arms and payment of men to fight against the army of France ! If the tribunals of Europe could be induced to hold such an argument sound in law, the Europe of Rothschild and other great dealers in national loans would be driven to become members of the Peace Society in self-defence ; for the breaking out of any war whatever would be sure to expose one or other of them to an impeachment. If the French Government can bring itself to act upon such rea- sons, and persuade its courts of law to pronounce them valid, we must seek for a parallel to the political condition of France, not in any of the most despotic European states, but in those Oriental despotisms where the ruler's whim for the moment is law—where laws and institutions are but an organized anarchy. Louis Napo- leon, in the Abd-el-Rader correspondence, wrote to the Marquis of Londonderry—" les honneurs sont impuissant a paralyser les nobles dispositions de mon eme " : he will be unable to repeat the boast if he sanction the impeachment of the Representatives who have subscribed to the Mazzini loan.
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