At Chalons-sur-Saone, on the night of Saturday, March 6, there 
was a Republican outbreak on a small scale; on Wednesday night, 
March 10, there was a seditious gathering in this city; since the 
24th of February, the tenth anniversary of the Revolution of 
February, wholesale arrests have been carried on in such an 
Algerian razzia style** that, as The London Punch says, there will 
soon be left but two classes in France, prisoners and jailers*; there 
has appeared a semi-official pamphlet, “Napoleon III. and Eng- 
land,” and at the same time the Moniteur published extracts from 
the correspondence of Napoleon I‘; and, lastly, half Paris has 
been on its legs to make sure of places to witness Orsini’s 
execution, which has not yet taken place. Commencing with the 
concluding article in this Imperial bill of fare, it ought to be 
remarked that by a concurrence of circumstances, not generally 
known, the question of Orsini’s “launching into eternity,” as the 
cynical Cockney phrase runs, has assumed proportions more fatal 
than even the execution of the Buzangais rioters in Louis 
Philippe’s time.*” In the latter case, a storm of popular 
indignation was roused because that bloody act, although judicial 
and in accordance with all the formalities of French law, laid bare 
the most disgusting features of Louis Philippe’s hypocritical reign. 
The Duke of Praslin had poison administered to him, in order to 
spare him the ignominy of a felon’s death,*” while these émeutiers 

a “A Bad Look Out”, Punch, March 13, 1858.— Ed. 

of famine, half-starved peasants who had committed manslaughter 
in an affray caused by the export of grain, were mercilessly 
surrendered to the executioner. Orsini, on his part, has manfully 
avowed his participation in the attempt, and taken all the 
responsibility upon himself.* He has been condemned according to 
law, and whatever sympathy the mass of the Paris population may 
feel for him, there can be nothing in his doom, considered in 
itself, particularly damaging to the second Empire. Yet the whole 
face of the affair is completely changed by the circumstances 
accompanying it. Throughout the whole of the judicial proceed- 
ings, the curiosity of Paris was stirred by their exceptional 
management, unheard of in the annals of French political trials. 

In the act of accusation, mild and moderate expressions were 
used. The facts elicited by the Juge d’Instruction were only 
vaguely alluded to, while the long and repeated interrogatories of 
the police authorities, which used to play a principal part in that 
sort of trials, were altogether dropped. The less vou say of them 
the better, seemed the prevailing notion.” For the first time, a 
prisoner was decently treated in an Imperial court of justice. 
There was, as an_ eye-witness says, “little or no_ bullying, 
brow-beating or attempt at declamation.” Jules Favre, Orsini’s 
advocate, was not even called to order when he ventured to give 
vent to this sentence: 

“T hate force when not devoted to the service of right. Hf a nation existed 
miserable enough to be in the hands of a despot, the poniard would not sever its 
chains. God, who counts them, knows the hours of the despot’s weakness, and 
reserves to tyrants catastrophes more inevitable than the dagger of the assassin.”¢ 

Neither did the low murmur which approved this passage 
afford occasion for a legal ebullition on the part of Mr. Delangle, 
the President. This was not all. It oozed out that the letter written 
to the Emperor by Orsini? was carried to the Tuileries by Jules 
Favre himself, examined by the Emperor, who is said to have 
struck out two phrases of it, and allowed to be published. Hardly, 
however, had sentence been passed on Orsini, when the extremest 

universel, No. 57, February 26, 1858.— Ed. 

No. 58, February 27, 1858.—- Ed. 

“ 

severity was shown to him, and, on his asking permission to “set 
his papers in order,” he was answered by the immediate 
application of the camisole de force.’ 

It thus becomes evident that an infernal double game was here 
played. Orsini had revelations to make, and had made them to 
Piétri, relating to Napoleon’s participation in Carbonarism, and 
the positive pledges which, even after the coup d’état, when still 
undecided in the course to follow, he had given to the Italian 
patriots.*” In order to give Orsini an interest in his own 
moderation, and thus prevent a great public scandal, promises of 
pardon were held out to him which were never meant to be kept. 
This manner of proceeding is no novelty in the annals of the 
second Empire. The reader will perhaps recollect’ the trial of 
Berryer, the son of the celebrated French advocate and legitimist. 
The question then at issue was frauds committed in regard to a 
joint-stock company enterprise—the Docks Napoléoniens. Well, 
Berryer, the father, had his hands full of documents proving 
Prince Napoleon and Princess Mathilde to have been the gainers 
largely by the same swindling tricks that had dragged his son to 
the criminal’s bench. If Berryer, the greatest artist in the French 
way of oratory—a way altogether dependent on the action, the 
tone, the eye, and the gesticulation of the performer, which turn 
words, that appear dull when glanced at in print, into speaking 
flames, into electric strokes when heard—if he had produced 
these documents and commented upon them, the Imperial throne 
would have tottered. Accordingly he was induced to abstain from 
so doing, by the interference of those nearest about the Emperor, 
who offered him his son’s certain acquittal as the price of his 
silence. He yielded; his son was condemned, and father and son 
were duped. The same maneuver has been repeated, and with the 
same success, in Orsini’s case. But this is not all. He was not only 
induced to spare Bonaparte a fearful scandal, but to break his 
silence and commit himself in Bonaparte’s interest. He received 
intimations of the Emperor’s secret leanings for Italian liberty, and 
was thus instigated to write his letter. Then the scene with Jules 
Favre was enacted. Orsini’s letter was inserted in the Moniteur. 
Austria was to be frightened into compliance with Bonaparte’s 
demands by showing her, unmistakably, how Bonaparte might still 
wield the patriotic aspirations of the Italians. She was even 
offended. Orsini’s head is to soothe her anger, and in payment for 
it she is to make herself still more detested in Italy, and to stifle 

the feeble germs of the liberty of the press at Vienna. Such, 
whether true or false, is the general antenprctauon put on the case 
of Orsini. 

As to the Chalons émeute, it is but a premonitory symptom. If 
even all manhood was extinct in France, from a mere sense of 
self-preservation, men would resort to insurrection. To die in a 
street fight, or to rot at Cayenne, is the alternative left to them. 
The pretexts on which the imprisonments are carried on—and 
every arrest may lead to Cayenne, as every road leads to 
Rome—may be exemplified by one single instance. It is known 
that some time ago three Paris lawyers were arrested.* The bar, or 
rather the council of the advocates, took up the business, and 
applied ‘to the Minister of Justice’; the answer was, that no 
explanations could be given, but that these three gentlemen were 
taken up for “intrigues and maneuvers” during the late Paris 
elections, ten months back. If the Chalons émeute appears, 
therefore, fully due in the natural course of things, the behavior, 
on that occasion, of the officers of the garrison hardly tallies with 
the frantic addresses which the French army was ordered to send 
to the Moniteur< The barracks are situated on the right bank of 
the Saone, while the officers mostly live in lodgings on the left 
bank, where the rising took place. Instead of rushing to the head 
of their men in defense of the Empire, they cautiously adopted 
some diplomatic movements in order to ascertain whether or not 
the Republic was proclaimed at Paris. Even the Moniteur dares not 
altogether suppress the fact. It says: 

“The officers of the garrison, who had hastened to the sub-prefecture to obtain some 
information relative to the rumors already in circulation, forced their passage sword 
in hand.”’4 

The Patrie tries to turn the awkward incident that way, saying 
that those curious officers wanted “to arrest the sub-prefect, in 
case he should side with the Republic;”* but the fact is that they 
ran to the sub-prefect to ask him if it was true that the Republic 
was proclaimed at Paris. It was only on his denial that they 
thought fit to exhibit their professional zeal. Castellane has already 

L’Indépendance belge, No. 65, March 6, 1858.— Ed. 

€ Quoted from L’Indépendance belge, No. 71, March 12, 1858.— Ed. 

started from Lyons to investigate their behavior. In one word, the 
army shows symptoms of disaffection. The manner in which it was 
paraded in the Moniteur, and made the laughing-stock of Europe, 
then to be simply thrown overboard out of deference to John 
Bull; Bonaparte’s breaking it up into five armies, for fear of 
abdicating its supreme command into Pelissier’s hands,*who has 
now become cold toward his master; the disdainful letters in which 
Changarnier and Bedeau have declined the permission to return 
to France*; the raising of L’Espinasse, generally detested in the 
barracks since the Dobrodja affair,” to a post of exceptional trust; 
and lastly, that dark presentiment of an impending turn in the 
tide which has always distinguished the “intelligent bayonets” *”' of 
France; all this has contributed to estrange the calculating chiefs of 
the army. Beside the Chalons affair, there is Gen. M’Mahon’s 
conduct in the French Senate to bear witness to this strange and 
rather unexpected change. His remarks on the loi des suspects”” 
were most outspoken, and his was the one adverse vote among 
Bonaparte’s embroidered liverymen.° 

Written on March 11, 1858 Reproduced from the New-York 

Daily Tribune, No. 5285, March 30, 1858;