TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MONTALEMBERT AND COMPIEGNE.
THE people of England are beginning slowly but surely to realize
the true position of the French Emperor and Empire in relation to the growth of humanity, and the general civilization of the nineteenth century. The institution and the mats are, day by day, being regarded more andmore as a mere avatar of fraud and force, necessarily but of brief duration, but capable of eouccus. trating the trouble of centuries in a single decade of. supreumey.- The smoke of the Crimean war has had time to clear away from men's minds. The prestige of conquest, and the mutual regard bred by mortal struggles nobly sustained side by side, have been well nigh dissipated by stern reflection forced upon Englishmen by stern facts. The alliance which was relied on as the great guarantee Of public right, and human progress, has in these later months taken the shape of a fellowship with the works of darkiieSs.: Mutual esteem, upon which alone, in spite of all the callous pedantry of diplomatists, can safe alliances between men nations be built, has given place to mutual suspicion, recriuduaes tion, and disgust. The phrases of friendship still remain, a dull • and melancholy echo of the reality. But hearty regard, energetic • cooperation for any conesivable political purpose between free England and the French Empire hereafter, safety and honour alike forbid for ever.
It will be well if the apprehension of these truths grow fast enough both for honour and for safety. it will be well if public sentiment acquire a force direct and strong enough to supplement the grave deficiencies moral and intellectual, on this head, of Eng- lish statesmen. It will be well if the absolute incompatibility be- tween the French empire and. the free British nation, which thus forbids future common action, be so far recognized as to induce our public men to shape betimes a policy founded upon a with- drawal of those ties of intimacy Nrhich have now become a mere mockery. We do not believe that international relations such as ours with the French Emperor can be left to the mercy of events without those events becoming calamities. The time is fast coming, according to all appearances, when England, must arm and speak. -Unless our public men anticipate the development of the present situation by vigorous honesty of this kind, we hold that a war with France resolves itself into a mere question of the dura- tion of the present despotism and the life of the French Emperor. It is as bearing upon these questions that the trial and condem- nation of Count Montalembert becomes of such pressing practical importance to Englishmen. We shall nut join in the naive de- clamations and astonishment which appear to have overcome some of our contemporaries at this episode in the regi»ie of the coup (Mat. The leopard cannot rid himself of his spots, nor can a go- vernment founded in perjury and murder perform the deeds of an angel of light. The French Emperor believes in fate, and verily fate in this case, like the wisdom of the Scriptures, is justified of her child. Au iron necessity, bred of crime, has evidently de- prived the French Emperor of all power of judging of the true bearing of his acts. England must reckon with linn as Avail a man blind-drunk with tyranny as a Caligula or a Domitian. Eu- rope must reckon with him as with an incendiary who has the power of hurling half a million lighted torches among her palaces and farm-yards. We cannot believe it possible that under the pres- sure of this universal suspicion and aversion, under the ban of universal humanity, any Empire can live lung in the present stage of European civilization. The scorn and dislike of the world for the present repisne in France constitute for it a sen- tence of death, which we may expect to see executed before the world is old enough to outwear the indignation and disgust in- spired by the incarceration of the Count Muntalemtert and the humiliation of the Portuguese Crown. If there be any Englishmen who still cling to the idea of an alliance with France Mier this memorable trial, AVe earnestly re- commend them to consider carefully its bearing upon the institu- tions and fixed social habits and methods of this country. If the eloquent and temperate wisdom of Count Montalembert's noble article are a danger to the Freneh empire, how must the unani- mous and untemperecl execration which the English press pours upon it be characterized ? It is not suffieient to reply that the foreign nation and the English tong-ue make all the difference in the two cases. They make some differeuce no doubt. But that man must have little judgment who can fancy that the mind which has determined to deal with the one publication as a criminal offence, eau view with equanimity, and even friendship, the nation and people who make themselves with one voice responsible
for the others. or must it be forgotten that a French Minister Ions already hinted, in the face of the Congress of Paris, and without protest from an English representative, at a scheme for curbing the license of the general press of Europe. In truth, the alliance and the criticisms are incompatible and mutually de- tructive ; and if the French Emperor dare to assert this, in the form of an overt complaint, an English Government must, in • polite diplomatic phrase, admit the truth, and notify that, under the pressure of circumstances over which the French Government has had much but the British no control, intimacy must be re- placed by civility, and alliance by public law.
But there is a great and an anxious question for Englishmen at this moment, front which there is no escape, on which we would gladly forego criticism, were it not that the duty of faithful journalists forbids silence. It is a state fact of the utmost im-
portance,; that at a moment when the French Emperor is outraging evert English sentiment, and is fresh from the perpetration of an inSult upon this country which has no precedent, the English ministerial side, mad. opposition side alike, have, by the proceed- ings of their nominal agents, sacrificed the case and the honour of Great Britain.. That the Government of Lord Derby has been guilty of a corrupt connivance at the degradation of the country in the matter of the Charles-et-Georges, appears to be already placed beyond reasonable doubt, and will in all probability be shortly proved to demonstration by the publication of the diplo- matic papers. But the passive attitude, with which Lord Derby's cabinet became accessory to this great offence against England and public right, is as nothing compared with the deliberate homage to the offender which is being paid at this moment by Lords Palmerston. and Clarendon at Compiegne. We can only understand this visit if these two Lords have definitively made their choice between power in England and the private friendship of the Emperor of the French. If they suppose that they can retain their place in the lead of their party and the country after thus uncovering the nakedness of their souls, they are not aware of those limits beyond which political blundering becomes public in- decency. Had the prophecy been has irded that after the lesson of the defeat on the Conspiracy Bill, and after six more months of outrage perpetiated by the French Emperor on the English name, and on the liberties of the world, at the very moment when a Montalenabert was convicted of crime for that which all intellects not darkened. -and all hearts not depraved proclaim to be virtue, my Lords Palmerston and Clarendon. would. be found sharing in the ill-omened revelries of Compiegne, who would not have re- garded the prophet as crazed and malignant ? . But here is the stubborn-fact. Sc for as Lords Palmerston and Clarendon bare it in their power they make the-Liberal party of England respon- sible for the insult to Portugal, and the gaol of hlontalembert. So far as they can they paralyze the Parliamentary opposition which they still dare to assume to lead, by,rnaking ft. an nocesrvIrY after the fact to Lord Derby's ignoble negligence. They have revived a form of degradation for the public men of England which we had thought the world had seen for the first and last time in the corrupt rhetoricians of the declining day of the free states of Greece. For except in that darkening hour of Grecian liberties, when Philip debauched the public men of Greece from their duties by his hospitalities, the world has had till this day no example of the statesmen of a free state, openly, in the face of day, preferring the smiles of an unfriendly despot to the hearty allegiance of their own nation. But now that this preference has been expressed so openly and undisguisedly, we hope and believe that the Liberal party of England 'will be true to their traditions and duties, and that when Parliament meets steps will be taken to discriminate unmistakeably between those who do now follow Lords Palmerston and Clarendon and those who do not. More than once during the last session of Parliament we expressed an extreme unwillingness to declare that the time was come for ostracizing any public man. But we now do most deliberately declare that the " safety, honour, and welfare of her Majesty and her dominions" are bound up with the speedy and definitive ex- clusion of these noblemen from the high places of office and the confidence of the Crown, to which they pay but a half- hearted and spurious allegiance. Indeed the time is come when the Parliament and public must exchange the languid indifference and aversion with which they regard these men, again and again unfaithful to their trust, for the solemnity of the judge and the vigilance of the turnkey. For it would be ludicrous indeed if the very unanimity and entireness of reprobation which they have earned were to be a ground for allowing them to retain those high places of power of which they are the disgrace. It was absurd of the Athenian to ostracize Aristides because he was perpetually called the Just. But will it not prove Englishmen blind and deaf, if they leave these blind and deaf leaders in the van of affairs, because they are perpe- tually called the unjust ? We look forward with a deep anxiety to the course which shall be taken in this most important question of public morals and party honour and organization. Alone of the principal statesmen of the day, Lord John Russell has pre- served himself free from this miserable epidemic of subservience to the French Emperor, which has attacked in turn all other of our leading public men. If he will use the present oppor- tunity aright he may do signal justice upon those who have done scant justice to him. But with his help or without It, some effectual fervent protest against those who are con- spiring to make Parliament powerless for the correction of political evil, needs must be made by all who wish to wash their hands of the responsibility of its decline. All those rising public men at present of the second rank in the Liberal party, who declined to follow Lord Palmerston in the riotous de- gradation of his Ministerial career, must find some means of wresting from him and those who cling round him what remains of power, influence, and authority on the front bench of opposi- tion. The duty of doing so has been made plainer in the recess than it was even during the session of Parliament. For the Li- beral party is crippled beforehand in its just and necessary oppor- timities of attack upon the Government, by the attitude of Lords Palmerston and Clarendon towards the French Emperor. There are men in the Liberal party who have virtually assumed the dis- charge of this duty by ejecting Lord Palmerston from office, and keeping him out of it last session. The next will show whether their resolution and wisdom amounts to more than the negative
power of giving an adverse vote and making an adverse speed; or whether impressed by the deep gravity of the times, stimn.. lated by the perpetual insult of a leadership against which thev perpetually protest, and upheld by the affectionate hearty sup- port of the greatest and most free of the peoples of the earl); —they will know how to develop a dispersed majority into a go- verni n g power, and do needful though tardy justice upon states_ men who lead only to falsify their principles, to betray their fol- lowers, and degrade their country.
Previous page
