The French Chamber of Peers has been convoked by King
Louis Philippe to try. a Peer for murder ; but the prisoner has escaped from gaol and judge, by committing suicide. Never perhaps did any atrocious crime excite more indignation than the butchery of the Dutchess de Choiseul-Praslin. From the first, the wishes of the public anticipated the issue of the trial ; and the execution of the suspected husband was demanded with such bitterness as amounted to intimidation of the judges. The Government and the Court of Peers were threatened with the consequences of acquitting the accused. The public had alto- gether prejudged all the parties concerned. The injured Dutchess was worshiped as a faultless woman. The Duke would be called a daimon, but that it suffices the popular wrath to re- member that he was a Peer ; his guilt was settled without extenuation of any sort. A governess, whom he is suspected to have admired too ardently, is adjudged to have been an ac- complice. It is not., indeed, established on any known evidence that the Dutchess's jealousy of this person was well founded ; that the dependant felt more than a reasonable attach- ment to her pupils and their father; or that the Duke may not have had some provocation in the high-toned upbraidings which he is supposed to have received from his wife. The public has settled, without the trial, that she was spotless, the governess sinful, and the Duke without a redeeming motive. His escape, though by a mortal and torturing way, is the signal for shout of anger so bitter that it takes the shape of scornful jests. It is all but openly asserted that the Government, by leave or wish of the King, must have permitted the Police to supply the Duke with poison, in order to spare shame to him who was their com- panion, and to save the institution of the Peerage from the dis- grace which the trial would have entailed upon it—such a trial at such a time ! If these suspicions are correct, the indulgence extended to the Duke is not more revolting to the notions of mo- rality on this side of the Channel than it was impolitic on the French side.
The manifest and general sense of contempt and hatred for those high in station or office has been only aggravated, not caused, by this incident. Already the charges of official corrup- tion had provoked such a feeling that the sight of a Minister in the streets raises a shout of "Au voleur " That this feeling, however, has now been worked up to a moat dangerous pitch, is a fact corroborated by the demeanour of the Royal Family and the upper classes. The private murder is regarded as a public cala- mity, which must have ulterior consequences. Poor Queen Amelie, always so anxious for her husband, has fainted several times. The Duke now accused of' wife-killing was a friend and frequent companion of the Duke de Nemours ; an awkward inti- macy, and one which would make the suspected connivance at suicide only the more impolitic.
But the French Government seem to have been exasperated by their reverses and difficulties to a pitch of desperation beyond all
thought for policy. While this ferment goes on, the officials wage open war with the press. Seven journals have been seized ; one for a licentiousness in a story—though the licence, it is said, was not greater than has often passed ; others for sneering at the demoralization of the privileged classes, for significant but gene- ralizing exhortations on honesty, or for copying such remarks from other journals • and some for anticipating the stages of these strange proceedings with too much probability. A more uneasy and dangerous state of feeling has not existed in France since July 1830.
