FOREIGN NEWS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 46, 22 November 1851, Page 3

FOREIGN NEWS.

Fhance.—The first day of the debate on the revision of the Constitution, was more remarkable for the unusually decorous attitude of all parties, than for the arguments or eloquence delivered on behalf of any from the tribune. M. de Falloux's re-appearance on the stage of debate was hailed with great favour, and the peculiar delicacy and elegance of his style, harmonising with his frail look of convalescence, interested his audience, and procured him a willing and unremitted attention. The most noteworthy point of his speech was his answer to the famous mot of M. Thiers—" The republic is the government which divides us the least.'' " The republic," said M. de Falloux, " is the government which permits us to remain divided." This expression found a certain echo in the Assembly, and when the orator proceeded to show the liberal use which had been made during the last three years of the permanent division of parties, and quoted the history of the last half century to show how all parties interested in the preservation of social order had been successively ruined, and had done their utmost to ruin the country with them through their rash desire to exercise an exclusive domination; when he required from the concert and combined energies of all, the common preservation of the country, not on behalf of this or that party, but in the name of the national union— a feeling as of "a second Daniel come to judgment" pervaded for a moment the listening benches. But the illusion soon disappeared, and when it became necessary to abandon the ground of generalities for distinct explanations, it was evident that the orator made no concession to the principle of union, but wanted to drive all parties into his own narrow pen-fold. He had no better solution to offer than that which is daily served up in the legitimist papers. Thus each in turn confesses the sickness of the state, and after finding fault with all that has been done for the patient, recommends, with a preliminary flourish of patriotism, his own little quack medicine. Of the four speakers in the debate of yesterday, contrary to the usual custom, three spoke against the motion. Mr. Payer undertook the apology, or rather eulogy, of the provisional government, M. de Mornay the prostrate adulation of the monarchy of July. The latter spoke in a vein so evidently personal of the Orleans family, of his attachment to them and theirs to him, and made the cause which he defended cut such a pitiful figure, that the Mountain begged him to continue his speech, while his own party called on him to leave the tribune. General Cavaignac was called up by an allusion of M. de Falloux, but he neglected, in his answer to the legitimist, to assail the only part of his speech which produced an unfavourable impression, viz., the argumentum ad terrorem, by painting the coalition of the northern powers against Fiance as the necessary result of a democratic form of government. This poor-spirited recommendation to extinguish democracy to avert the frown of Russia, jarred on the ear of the Assembly, and will, doubtless, be severely handled by M. Pascal Duprat and Jules Favre. The speech of Cavaignac, although cold and metaphysical, was listened to with attention. Although he repudiated the expression of " right divine of the republic," he maintained, by an abstruse train of logic, the immutability of republican institutions. It was said in the Assembly that he had acted as the soldier of the Republic, but talked like its high priest. Setting ihe republican principle, as

a truth changeless and eternal, above the sphere of universal suffrage, he perfectly justified the attack of M. de Falloux, who accused him of imposing upon the national will more rigorous restrictions than resulted from the law of May. In the second part of his speech he exposed, in a rigorous chain of reasoning, the contradictory motives of the advocates of revision. Speaking of the dynasticprinciples, he said, " It was the dynastic sentiment that supported Louis XI., that encouraged Francis 1., and caused Henry IV, to say, "Paris is well worth a mass ;" but on the day when Louis XV., forgetting the dynastic for a a personal sentiment, said, "It will last my time," the monarchy was lost. But above all did monarchy become impossible on the day when it first stood face to face with the national sovereignty. August, 1792, July, 1830, and February, 1848, are nothing but one continued victory of the sovereignty of the people over monarchy.