TOPICS OF THE D.Y.
THE FRENCH MONITEUR AND THE ENGLISH PRESS.
Tns " warning " given to the English nation in the Moniteur of Friday,. October 24, is generally, regarded as . a blunder and an impertinence. People are astonished that so sagacious a man as Louis Napoleon has proved himself to be should thus " a.fficher " the irritable soreness of himself or his Ministers on certain points of their proceedings in public and private life ; and still more as- tonished that he should strike at an adversary whom he cannot nit, and provoke a repetition of the original offence in a more damaging, a more emphatic, a more unanswerable form. The admirable article in the Times newspaper of last Monday was just the rebound that a man knowing England as well as Louis Na- poleon does must have anticipated, if he had reflected for a mo- ment. In the perplexity-occasioned by the difficulty of assigning the Moniteur paragraph to Louis Napoleon's ordinary prudence and wisdom, some persons have imagined that Count Walewski has ventured upon the audacious step of using the Imperial style without Imperial authority. The matter is far too important to allow of that hypothesis: Walewski knows that his place would be the forfeit of such an outrageous liberty; and though Poland may be a very pleasant country to possess an estate in—especially
one gets it for little or nothing—we can scarcely imagine that the Count's love of his maternal soil is sufficiently ardent to tempt him from Paris and the sweets of power to become a Polish grand seigneur and a humble servant of the Emperor Alexander.
There can be no reason for doubting that the Moniteur speaks the mind of the Emperor of the French—that is, says what he wished and intended it to say. And as he is not given to use words with- out a purpose, and as his purpose can scarcely be to indulge im- pertinence, it may be as well if we English would for a moment look at the paragraph in the French official journal from the French-Imperial and not from the English-Citizen point of view. Louis Napoleon has been accustomed to address himself personally to the nation he governs, whenever he has thought it necessary to give particular emphasis to his sentiments ; he has shown him- self on many occasions little regardful of forms when they stood in the way of effective action ; he has the habit of going straight at the core of a difficulty, when directness will serve his purpose. Suppose for a moment his purpose to be in this case to rid him- self of an annoyance--of a system of attack directed against himself and his entourage, which in his opinion is not only a personal annoyance but a cause of political weakness : he refuses to go through the farce of appealing to the English Government against the English Press, knowing beforehand that the Govern- ment has no power, no responsibility, and no means of giving him redress or relief. He knows, too, that the editors of English news- papers are responsible to the public opinion, inasmuch as the suc- cess of their papers depends on public opinion. He knows that the French alliance is an object highly valued. by the English nation, and that any wanton attempts on the part of newspaper-writers tO dissolve the alliance, to exasperate the old animosities between the two nations, or to excite new cause of jealousy and dislike, would at once draw down upon the newspapers that took this line public in- dignation and a loss of support. He sees that the readers of the newspapers are the real arbiters in the case, and with the sense of reality that seems instinctive to him and so alien to our politi- cal forms, he addresses himself to those who can remedy the evil he complains of. It is as if he had said in so many words to the English people—" Your Government is not really the nation in any such sense as that I can hold it responsible for what the na- tion does ; there are many other organs through which your na- tional action operates ; your newspapers are one, and if I am in- jured by your newspapers, it is not to your Government that I can look for redress. You have it in your power to remedy the evil yourselves ; and if you value my alliance, I appeal to you to stop this systematic hostility of your newspapers, which insults my dignity, outrages my feelings, and weakens my authority." The French Emperor tells us, newspaper-writers and newspaper-read- ers, that freedom of the press brings with it duties and responsi- bilities towards foreign sovereigns which we cannot evade by all pretext that newspapers are not official documents. Be will not hear of our being his allies in an official sense, while as individuals we give our newspapers licence and encourage- ment to attack him systematically ; he will not guarantee the permanence of the alliance, unless the English nation at large demonstrate that thlney are his friends by discouraging the publication in their • fluential newspapers .of calumnious charges and insinuations against him and his Ministers. The Times newspaper misinterprets one phrase in the .Moniteur : the French writer, in appealing " to the common sense and good faith of the English people, to warn them against the dangers of a sys- tem which "—does not mean the system of the freedom of the press, but the system of abusing that freedom " to spread ca- lumnies respecting the French Government." We thus see no impertinence in the mere fact that Louis Na- poleon should address the English nation through the Moniteur on a subject of complaint over which their Government has no control. To remind Englishmen that they cannot in their indi- vidual capacity shelter themselves from any of the responsi- bilities that belong to men whose action is not controlled by a Central government—that they cannot take refuge behind a fiction of national unity while they refuse to sacrifice their licence of in- dividual speech to the Government which represents the national um —is simply to utter a salutary truth, and can only be re- girded as an impertinence when the common sense and good. faith " of the nation as individuals act as effectively as Govern- ment control would act. It is here that we are at a loss to appre- hend the motives of Louis Napoleon. We do not recognize in the facts any adequate groundlor the warning of the Moniteur—we know of no systematic *tempt to spread calumnies resoting the French Government' by influential organs of the English press. Unfortunately, the Moniteur leaves us completely in the dark as to what the calumnies are of which it complains, or in what journals they appeared, and treats the whole subject with a vague generality which implies little more than that some of- fence has been taken. Perhaps the Times article of Monday last may elicit someresponse a little less oracular. Meanwhile, the pub- lic, thus warned is led to suppose that the Emperor of the French wishes to throw ins Imperial mantle over the scandalous stock- jobbing of certain of his Ministers, and that the English press is to be gagged and prevented from alluding to any proceedings, however nefarious and base, by which the adventurers of the Im- perial Court have risen rapidly from squalid poverty to princely wealth and splendour. Such is the natural result of amb*u- ous and obscure intimations ; they are sure to be interpreted in their most offensive sense. It would become the wisdom of the French Emperor, if he intends his warning to be regarded by the honest and reflecting portion of the nation he addressed in so un- precedented a manner, to be explicit as to the grounds of his offence. We should then be able to judge for ourselves whether the price asked for his affiance was one that would be an infringe- ment of our rights, our dignity, or our interest, to pay. We admit .his right to set his own price upon his friendship and cooperation ; we assert our right to judge for ourselves whether we will pay the -price. If his meaning is one which when put into plain French or English would at once excite the disgust and indignation of every honest Englishman of every political party, the sooner we understand one another the better. If he means to say—" You English must support me at home if I am to act with you abroad ; you must be my allies at Cayenne and on the Bourse as well as at Sebastopol ; you must help De Moray and Walewski to make their fortunes as they please and can, if you expect me to help you to keep the peace of Europe,"—if this is the meaning of the Moni- teur, the sooner it is expressed intelligibly, the better for all par- ties. No wonder, when we are just embarking in alliance and concert with France on a system of interference the end and de- velopment of which no one can foresee, that our Government should. be reported at once to have demanded explanations as to the bearing of the Moniteur warning. England will wait those explanations with something like the feeling of a gentleman to whom a proposal has been made that admits of a dishonourable in- terpretation ; hoping, indeed, that the words meant nothing but what was right, but prepared, the instant he perceives he is mis- taken in that hope, to assert his dignity by repudiating all con- nexion with his tempter. In any case, whatever be the meaning of the Moniteur, so far as we are acquainted with the facts, the French Government has committed a rash and stupid act, and has betrayed a morbid sen- sitiveness which will weaken it more than all the attacks made upon Louis Napoleon and his connexions by the Englishjournals since the coup d'etat. If that Government really wished. to ren- der the English alliance impossible, it could take no better means than to make Englishmen suspicious that it was irreconoileable with English liberties as they have been handed down to us from our forefathers, and as we have won them for ourselves. If that Government really wished to develop to their fullest capacity of danger the real elements of instability that are involved in every government of revolutionary origin and repressive agency, it could scarcely hit upon a more successful device than to proclaim aloud its own sensitiveness to criticism which it cannot prevent, and to demand for the private and public vices of the persons composing it a complete immunity from inquisition and censure. The French Emperor and his Ministers may rely upon the " com- mon sense and good faith" of the English nation, if they, will only trust to it. " Calumnies " are not the means by which Eng- lish journalism of the higher class acquires its readers and its in- fluence; nor, on the other hand, are " calumnies " in foreign journals, as a general rule, at all formidable to a government honestly endeavouring to discharge its duties to its subjects at home and to its allies abroad. From " calumnies" the French Emperor and his Ministers have their best defence in the genuine desire of the English nation that the alliance should be perma- nent, and in their own ability and integrity. But the alliance was founded on no principle of " honour among thieves " : we did not make ourselves participes criminis as regards the means by which Louis Napoleon mounted. the Imperial throne, still less are we going to make ourselves participes criminis by a tacit or avowed approval of any arts by which the Ministers of that Im- perial throne might choose to erect the edifice of their private fortunes.
If we might presume to give a " warning " to the august per- sonage who has in a manner departed from the ordinary reserve maintained by foreign sovereigns, and has addressed the English nation face to face, it would. be to remind him, for the hundredth time, that he is governing a nation that cannot be restrained from discussion, and that will revenge itself for any attempts at such restraint by a tenfold indulgence in the discontent and secret cen- sure which is the only danger of discussion. For one malignant story, for one disagreeable disclosure that a free press* would cir- culate, Parisian gossip, debarred from its' natural and wholesome occupation, invents twenty, which lose nothing'by being handed about as confidential secrets, except the chance of being openly refuted. Louis Napoleon knows something of England and Eng- lish history. Let him recall any of those periods when the press in England was less free than it is now, when a prosecution by Attorney-General was the certain fate of every Writer who
offended the Government ; he will find that those were the pe- riods of gross personality and of unmeasured credulity on the part' of readers. Nothing was too bad to be asserted of a party oppo- nent, nothing too gross to be believed by the people. If he com- pares the English political press of those days with the same press today, .he may find still something to object to, but in proportion' as freedom and publicity have prevailed, so have temper, tour- test', good sense, honesty, and high feeling, ,gained ground over their opposites. If a government'does not like to be libelled, its best ptoteetion is to leave 'its' actions to free discussion, always provided it be sure that they will bear the light.
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