COUNT MONTALEMBERT.
ME prosecution of Count Montalembert is another link in the chain of events, of which the French Government is availing it- self to take up a position towards this country, that cannot long be suffered. By one method or another, by cajolery or bluster, or the decoying of the Queen of England into a false position, by violence offered to ancient allies, by breaches made in the fabric of treaties, whereby we thought to have destroyed the slave-trade, finally by the prosecution of one of the most eminent of French orators for a panegyric upon our institutions and ourselves, by all these various methods, compounded of subtlety and audacity in equal portions, the Emperor of the French is pursuing this strange new policy. It is impossible not to see that the prosecu- tion of the Count is a side-blow to England, far more than a vin- dication of the title of the Empire. Because, in the first place, the direct object of the article is the discussion of English affairs and English tendencies, and because such reflections as tell against the present regime in France are but indirectly aimed at it, and constitute but a small part of the remarkable production. And, in the second plaoe, because all that is risked by the prose- cution, of popular effervescence, it is evidently calculated may be turned by the Government into the safe channel of dislike for the people and institutions of this free community, and that, whether the prosecution be carried through or abandoned, the Emperor's Government see a fine opportunity of aiming a blow at the inde- pendence of discussion, and implying, in the dark latent fashion, so exquisitely appropriate to the genius of Louis Napoleon, its sentiments for England. The man must be the blindest slave of a phrase who can go on. repeating the words " French alliance" in the face of all the accumulated facts of the last ten months, nay, we might rather say of the last two years ; as though our relations were those of steady reliable friendship. It is, indeed, high time that every intelligent mind in the country should direct its closest attention. to the proceedings of the French Go- vernment, as compared with our own actions and the doings of our own administrations. The attentive study of all the facts will lead people to some serious conclusions. We desire to express the main conclusion to which that study has led ourselves in the plainest and most unmistakeable manner. It is simply this, that the Emperor of the French is employing all the address and boldness, which form his most distinguishing characteristics, in the business of lowering and degrading this country in the eyes of surrounding nations, by exhibiting her as the dumb satellite of his power, and that our statesmen, Liberal and Conservative alike, have either actively or passively abetted him in that monstrous attempt. The House of Commons and the country determined this last point with tolerable unanimity as regards Lord Palmerston's Government, by the vote on the Con- spiracy Bill at the beginning of this year. And, incredible as it may seem that a Government which, like that of Lord Derby, came into power in consequence of that vote, should, in its first recess, fall into precisely the same error, it seems but too likely that, in the early part of next session, the present Administration may be ejected from power for exactly the same reason as that which was fatal to its predecessor. For, indeed, the negative evidence, of which we are already in possession, which goes to prove our Government really guilty of the abandonment, thinly disguised by some diplomatic veil, of Portugal in the late ques- tion, is too strong to be resisted. And perhaps the question which may be mooted early in the next session of Parliament, may be that question so glorious for the front benches on the right and left of the Speaker's chair, whether the Government of Lord Derby has or has not surpassed that of Lord Palmerston in the depth of the humiliation which it has submitted to from France. We view with pain and indignation the prospect of such a question forming the turning pint of a debate in the Parlia- ment of England.
If our statesmen, one and all, labour under an insensibility, a callous insensibility to what is due to the honour and dignity of the great nation, which we devoutly hope they do but mislead and misrepresent, it is all the more necessary that journalists should do all in their power to quicken the public appreciation of the grave facts, which the French Government is offering to our me- ditation. The incident of the prosecution of the article of Count Montalembert following so close upon the affairs of the Charles- et-Georges, the two mutually illustrate one another. It must be borne in mind that as the newspaper Le Correspondant in which the Count's article appeared is one of extremely limited circulation, the actual injury done to the French Government by the publica- tion of the article must be of the most trifling description, elo- quent as it is; nor, indeed, did the article contain a word of direct attack upon the title of the Emperor. Its staple, becauseits a. jest, was panegyric of England, and of those great institutions which even the Emperor himself has averred are one day t crown the edifice of the government which he has created. under all these circumstances, the French Government, seeing that it
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had just been engaged in a proceeding of most questionable port as regards. Portugal, which could not but wear the look, as it was permitted in certain newspapers to be alleged to have the hi- tent, of an outrage against England, might well have paused be- fore arraigning the author of an article such as the one we de- scribe. Had there been the slightest desire to evince the sym_ pathy even of an expiring friendship, nay, had there not existed the lurking desire to express in some manner, a covert malignity, the more intense, because covert, the French Government would not precisely at this juncture, have prosecuted Count Montaleak. bert. But the opportunity has been seized with an avidity which there is no mistaking. And though the persons who hold the reins of English Government either cannot, or will not see, the facts that are before them, and try to assume that attitude of stem self-respect, which would arrest the French Government in this most dangerous path, we do fervently hope that the people of England will not share this more than Judicial infatuation. Were this so, we should be all but forced to believe that in this aberra- tion of the national mind and national heart, following, and justifying the moral degeneracy, of her rulers, we read the fire signs of the adverse decree of God against this nation and people. For with statesmen and people alike so demented, so dull to the voice of honour, so unmindful of prudence, so oblivious to the reputations of glorious fathers, who could fail to see the working of that old law, Quoit Deus volt perdere priers dementat? We would urge upon every man conspicuous in the public life of Eng- land who has kept his intelligence free from the blundering, and his heart pure from the vulgar fatuity under which late adminis- trations have perished, to consider closely, and with a full sense of his responsibility, what may be the course of events of next session. If justice is to be done upon those who shall be convicted of a betrayal of the dearest honour and interests of England, it can only be by those purer spirits preparing them- selves for the introduction of an untainted element, in a suffi- ciently strong degree, into the government of this country, to make a new and better state of things possible. There is no way in which such men can do more serious injury to their country, at a most critical moment of its existence, than by shrinking, whether from cowardice, or a humility little different from cow- ardice, from the exercise of the right, which is equally the duty, of bidding those who occupy the first posts of government to make way for wiser and truer-hearted men. There has been enough of mere Parliamentary insurrection. Next time, the in- surgents must find a leader and form a Government; or the country, not knowing whether it is a greater calamity to keep or destroy a bad government, will subside into the apathy of that sort of despair, which brings in its train weakness, and perhaps decline.