Tin opposition which the projected budget encountered in the Legis-
lative Body seems yet unappeased. The commission persistsin rejecting the tax on salt, accepts with marked repugnance, and under certain modifications, the increase of the registration and stamp fees, the duty upon carriages, the reduction of every tax affecting the 1,300,000 work- men(travailleura),but demands with a certain emphasis a notable reduc- tion in the expenditure of the Minister of War. This resistance has surprised the Emperor, and annoyed his Ministers. They are how- ever, confident that they will be victorious (we think so too), but they will be victorious only at the cost of sundry concessions, and this first resistance to their will is unquestionably most important, as it shows that there are limits to the docility of the most servile assemblies which cannot be transgressed.
Taking into account the point of view of the recalcitrant members of the Legislative Body, it may be asked whether their opposition is well grounded. We must take leave to doubt it. One of them, who lately boasted of his opposition before an ancient minister of finances under the Government of July, received the following reply : "Yon and I can hardly agree. You approve the Imperial policy, and you reject the Imperial taxes. I accept the taxes, and combat the policy."
There is much point in the remark. Those who understand the wants of the country, and who would save it from the perils which threaten it, ought above all things to abandon for ever a policy which for the last ten years has been leading France to the brink of a preci- pice, and to fill, even at the cost of considerable sacrifices, the deficit of our finances. The deputies of whom we speak have always, on the contrary, supported by their votes and acclamations the policy followed at home and abroad by Napoleon III. They have voted an address which expresses in that respect unlimited confidence, and. when the Empire calls upon them for the necessary subsidies to con- tinue that policy, they haggle over the necessary resources. To dis- claim the new taxes, and not curtail the expenditure, is an impos- sibility. To ask the Government. to diminish the immense public works which absorb without measure and without reason the resources of France, is to deprive it of the means of dazzling the bulk of the middle classes and attaching the working populations. To ask for a reduction of the army is to strip the Empire of that military halo which is the necessary condition of the existence of all absolute powers, and to prevent it from escaping at any given moment from difficulties at home by throwing France into foreign adventures, either in Mexico, or in the East, or on the borders of the Rhine. In other words, such demands are so many embargoes laid upon the Empire to abdicate itself. Is it not strange that the Government should be indirectly placed in this dilemma by its own creatures, while pro- claiming their fervent admiration? Is it not singular also that these men, who never lose an opportunity of carping at the parliamentary system, persist in shutting their eyes to the fact that they must in- evitably choose between a liberal Government under control, and a policy of adventure and dilapidation? We should not lay such stress upon this point, did we not find in the dispositions which we have pointed out in our deputies a curious and faithful symptom of the public feeling which they, perhaps unconsciously, reflect. France, at the present moment, has not yet learnt to crave for those free in- stitutions which she once so passionately loved. She still acquiesces in the Empire, but, without repudiating the principle, she begins to feel alarm at the consequences. Be this as it may, M. Fould's enterprise has proved abortive. The past is not liquidated, the future state of our finances is still unsettled. We have said what was the result of the conversion of the Renter, which was to have paid the uncovered debt. The rectifying budget of 1862 (budget rectificatif) showed that the deficit was growing every day, and would attain proportions vastly superior to the pre- visions of M. Fould. The reforming minister, who was to have brought back order in our finances, and equilibrium in our budgets, sees all his projects rejected. The Emperor has obstinately refused to concede every reduction in the expenditure. The Legislative Body cuts down the new taxes upon which he relied for the increase of the revenue. M. Fould's situation is assuredly a difficult one, and we can easily understand the very natural disappointment under which he was smarting, when recently he solicited the Emperor's per- mission to go himself and defend his own budget in person in the Legislative Assembly. This permission was denied. But if, under the pressure of events, the Government should be induced some day to make the concession, we should see in the compliance one of the most considerable events in our interior history during the last ten years. The presence of the ministers in the Legislative Body in- volves, as a necessary consequence, and despite all the constitutional checks, the responsibility of the ministers. And the ministerial re- sponsibility once re-established, in fact and in law, we have no hesita- tion in saying that we need only wish in order to be free. One of the most melancholy effects of absolute power is that the respect for law is gradually fading from the public mind, and that Frenchmen are becoming gradually accustomed to arbitrary rule. To-day, after two years of despotism, and thanks to the silence of the press, we have become sufficiently callous to be able to look un- moved upon acts which in other times would have assumed the com- plexion of political events. We scarcely know if the attention of your readers has been called to a measure of this nature which has overtaken Mires since his liberation, and which seems to have re- mained unperceived by the French public. Mires, on reaching Paris, conceived the idea of opening a loan, contracted with an object of which he reserved to himself the later indication, but which, ac- cording to him, would procure to the subscribers considerable profits. What the enterprise in question actually was, matters little. But if he found persons confiding enough to trust him on his word it was no business of the Government, further than that the law should intervene, in due course, if the enterprise took a fraudulent character in the sequel. But matters turned out otherwise. The Imperial Government, in its paternal solicitude for the fortune of its subjects, forbade the papers to announce, and Mires to make his loan. Except Russia and Turkey, we do not believe there is a country in Europe where a Government could meddle with impunity in such matters. We are not concerned here with the personality, assured) little worthy of interest, of M. Mires,* but the proceedingsdirected * Perhaps your readers may feel surprised to see M. Mires so soon at loggerheads with the powerful protectors to whom he owed his acquittal. Whatever the causes of the rupture may be we must say no time was lost in the brewing. Scarcely had he left prison, when Mires published a letter in which the prelude of ulterior reprisals and fuller revelations was distinctly shadowed, and in which he complained bitterly that, among his keenest as- sailants, was M. le Comte de Chaumont-Quitry, chamberlain to the Emperor, and deputy, to whom he had, he said, given once upon a time, in one of his operations, a premium of 150,000 fr. The honour of M. de Chaumont- Quitry seems rather heavily touched by such an accusation. Nevertheless, he has not prosecuted M. Mires for libel, and he still holds his office of chamberlain.
against him to-day, may be turned to-morrow against au y other financier of irreproachable character, and render impossible any enterprises which happen to be obnoxious to the Government, however useful they may be. It is superfluous to add that in such cases recourse to law is impossible. The tribunals have no juris- diction over administrative acts, and they would, besides, offer very feeble guarantees to the interests at stake. The history of our magistracy will be one of the most shameful pages in the his- . tory of the actual regime. With rare exceptions it may be said of this magistracy as a body what the Due de St. Simon wrote of a servile magistrate of his day : "Between Peter and John he is in- corruptibly just ; but as soon as an interest peeps out or a patronage is to be secured, he is sold." The decisions lately given by the Im- perial Court of Paris, in which the dispositions of the law of general safety have been practically applied, will count among the monuments of the present judicial servility. You know the terms of that law, which punishes with imprisonment and permits the expulsion from the French territory as a matter of administration, of any one soever "who, with intent to disturb the public peace or to bring hatred and contempt upon the Government or the Emperor, shall have practised manoeuvres or kept up secret communications whether at home or abroad." A young man, 23 years of age, M. Taule by name, has just been found guilty, in accordance with the provisions of that law, under circumstances well worthy of your notice. The young man edited a democratic paper called Le Travail, which had a large circulation in the Latin Quarter. He conceived the idea of writing to M. Ledru Rollin to express his personal sympathy and to procure his adhesion to the principles developed in his newspaper, requesting at the same time a copy of a speech made by him at the funeral of a certain refugee. The letter was seized at the post-office, and consequently never reached M. Ledru Rollin. M. Taule was arrested, and on ac- count of that letter found guilty by the "Tribunal Correctionnel de la Seine" of communicating with foreigners. M. Taule appealed to the Imperial Court. He maintained that he could not be condemned for "secret communications abroad," inas- much as the letter under condemnation had not gone abroad. He cited, moreover, the following words, spoken by M. Baroche to tho Legislative Body, and intended to serve as a commentary upon the meaning and scope of the law of general safety. "A letter seized," said M. Baroche, "containing reflections, even attacks, upon the Government, does not constitute a manoeuvre in the sense of the law : that which characterizes manoeuvres is the habit and the culpable habit."
How, then, was the author of a single letter, which had not even reached its destination, to be condemned ? The argument was not easy to meet, and, nevertheless, it was very desirable to have M. Taule condemned. This is what the Imperial Court of Paris con- trived: it admitted that the letter did not constitute a delict, and that the prisoner was not guilty of "secret communication abroad;' but it declared that from that letter it resulted that M. Taule was in rela- tion at Paris with enemies of the Government, and kept up with them "secret communications at home," with intent to bring hatred and con- tempt on the Government. The verdict against M. Taule was con- firmed.
Thus the fact for which M. Taule was prosecuted does not constitute a delict. He is condemned, however, and condemned upon another fact, wholly different from the first, and which had not even come under the notice of his first judges. Such is the sleight of band by which our magistrates contrive to pronounce a sentence, the result of which, independently of the actual punishment inflicted, is to put a young man of twenty-three for the rest of his life under the thumb of the administration, by whom he can at will, and without trial, be sent out of France, or even transported, to spend the rest of his days
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