ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE FROM FRANCE.
Paris, November 9.
On Saturday last, a very rainy and stormy day, Paris was suddenly startled with the sound of cannon. Now, the very first idea of Parisians when they hear cannon and smell powder is to think of a battle, and a battle in their streets. It has become an ordinary thing, a customary business of every-day life, panem quotidianum. You might have seen all people running down and rushing oat; and women weeping, and children crying, and men inquiring, "What's the matter? is it a new revolution—a new insurrection? " The matter, however, was soon explained; it was only a new constitution! Formerly, it was usual to fire cannon for the birth of a prince or a princess; now, the Republic does the same for its own offspring. Of course, it is all right, but they ought to have given notice. Paris has lost the sense of rejoicing: it is not so long since it has heard cannon fired for more serious purposes, and for something else than show; and it may hear it again, perhaps sooner than is generally believed.
Then, God save the new Constitution! May it live long, if it can. But the fate of its elders is no good augury. It is about the twentieth we have had within the last twenty years. Will that child of tears and sorrow, born alternately in agony and fits, meet, like its brothers, with an untimely death; or will it outlive the present generation? dod alone knows. I cannot but think that the very principle of a constitution is unsuited to our times. A constitution is in itself something immutable: how, then, can you reconcile it with that ever-moving power the direct sovereignty of the peo- ple? When once you have admitted universal suffrage and the absolute sovereignty of the people, you have altogether admitted the necessity of re- vising constitutions. As our forefathers had no right to legislate eternally for us, we have no more right to tie the forthcoming generations to un- changeable laws. Sovereign power is always equal to itself. There is between an ordinary law and what is called a fundamental law this difference; that to mend the first when it has become obsolete you only want the vote of a legislative assembly—to change something in the second, you require a revolution. And the reason, perhaps, why we have had so many revolutions, is that we have had so many consti- tutions. The immutableness of laws is in direct antagonism with uni- versal suffrage: how can we deny to others the right we have assumed for ourselves? A French writer has well said—" How can you ask more for a constitution than for a law? In what sense is a constitution some- thing more than a law? Has it any other source? " I should like indeed to get out of that dilemma, but I cannot.
So much, then, for the new Constitution: it is one more added to the number; one more inscribed on the catalogue already so rich. The Re- public, when it abolished all oaths as useless and as being only an occasion for perjury, had a right intelligence of the times; but it might as well have dispensed with a constitution.
The most important business, perhaps, of the Constituent Assembly, still remains to be done; I mean the organic laws, which are to settle the real practical working of the speculative constitution. The real substantial questions—those relating to education, to municipal rights, to the press— were all postponed: Hamlet has been performed without Hamlet. That poor constitution, although it made much noise on its birthday, seems to have secured nothing but very general indifference. The Presidency question has much more hold upon popular feeling: there the people is called to exercise directly and individually its sovereign right. The position of par- ties has not much changed since last week, except that there is a still more growing spirit of uneasiness and alarm, and a heavy fall of the Funds. I told you in my last letter that the plan of the late Constitutional party was to leave the door wide open to Bonaparte. As you have seen, the leaders of the party, and first of all M. Thiers, openly avowed that they would not start any candidate, because it would divide the votes, and virtually invest the Assembly itself with the choice of the President. Now, the Assembly would be sure to select General Cavaignac; and as M. Thiers says positively that the Moderate party, which is opposed to General Cavaignac, includes nine-tenths of the country, that amounts to saying that nine-tenths of the country are opposed to the Assembly—that same Assembly which has made the Constitution ad ,sternum, and which has still to make organic laws. A very pretty quarrel as it stands. Funds may well indeed fall: these are no pleasing prospects for next month. Already a fresh struggle is looked at as inevitable, and spoken of aloud. As it is universally admitted that the election of Bonaparte has but a mere negative meaning,—that it is, in fact, simply a reaction against the Republic,—it cannot be supposed that the Republican party will allow themselves to be crushed without a last struggle. At the same time, as Bonapartism is generally considered only as a transitory state, the country can expect no repose by it; it will be merely a new phasis in our never- ending revolution. These experiments cost dear: it is a sad. thing when a great country becomes anima vitis for empiricism.
I do not believe, however, that any outbreak will take place before the election. As to Bonaparte, he has nothing better to do than to wait: the result of the election, if favourable to him, can but legitimate his claims; and as for the Republicans, they must have at least a pretext, and they have none at present. Of the Moderate party, many will stand as lookers- on, and leave the battle to be fought between the two other parties. A strong body of the Assembly is to remain in Paris, ready for all emer- gencies. Certain it is, that if in June last the Assembly had not been sit- ting, Paris and the whole country would have been turned upside down; and perhaps it may be called again to the same exertions.
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