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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 59.: FRENCH NEWS [3] EXAMINER, 21 NOV., 1830, P. 745 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

59.: FRENCH NEWS [3] EXAMINER, 21 NOV., 1830, P. 745 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I [1822]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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59.

FRENCH NEWS [3]

EXAMINER, 21 NOV., 1830, P. 745

This article is headed “London, Nov. 20.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55.

the debate in the french chamber of deputies, on the motion for reducing the stamp duties on newspapers, is disgraceful to the Chamber.1 M. de Villèle’s famous chambre des trois cents2 would not have made a more discreditable display on this proposition, which was resisted chiefly on the avowed ground of the necessity of curbing the licentiousness of the Press. So rapidly has the new oligarchy succeeded to the worst feelings, and even to the silliest catch-words of its predecessors.

The new ministers, we lament to say, did not support the motion, alleging that they were not prepared to consent to any sacrifice of revenue. This temporizing is very deplorable, as it would be the grossest hypocrisy in the ministers to pretend to suppose that the profuse expenditure of the Bourbon government does not admit of retrenchments far exceeding the trifling revenue afforded by the taxes on discussion.

Several of our newspapers, and their correspondents at Paris, continue to heap abuse upon the popular party.3 There are no wise and moderate men, according to them, but those who think that 88,000 men should have the power of dividing among them, at discretion, a revenue amounting (independently of the interest of the public debt), to thirty millions sterling; all the rest are firebrands, who seek to throw the world into disorder. The 88,000 electors are the nation. The nation is declared to sympathize with the Chamber, because the 88,000 have generally re-elected the old members: although even the 88,000, when they had no old member to re-elect, have in many instances elected new ones of a very different complexion.

The Times takes great pains to represent Mauguin, one of the feeblest declaimers in the Chamber, as the leader of the popular party, and the organ of its sentiments;4 the real fact being that he is a recent and unexpected proselyte to that party. The Times adds, that although an abler man than M. Odilon Barrot, he was never mentioned in the late contest for the ministry. This, in the first place, is incorrect; and secondly, M. Odilon Barrot, if he be not a far abler man than M. Mauguin, ill-deserves the reputation he possesses. The true reason why M. Mauguin was not put forward by the popular party generally, for a place in the ministry, is simply that they did not consider him fit for it.

The chief measures of the Belgian Provisional Government, as specified in their address to the Congress, which we have given in another part of the paper, will form an advantageous contrast to those of the French Chamber.5

All attempts in favour of the Constitutional cause in the north of Spain appear to be, for the present, at an end.6

[1 ]See Moniteur, 7, 9, 10, 11 Nov., 1830, pp. 1403-4, 1423-6, 1430-2, 1432-4, 1436-40. See also No. 58, n6.

[2 ]A reference to the Villèle ministry’s safe majority in 1824.

[3 ]See, for example, “Private Correspondence. Letter from Our Correspondent at Paris” (13 Nov.), Morning Post, 19 Nov., 1830, p. 3; and leading articles, Standard, 8 Nov., 1830, p. 3, and 9 Nov., p. 4.

[4 ]The Times, 17 Nov., 1830, p. 2.

[5 ]See “Foreign Intelligence. Belgium,” Examiner, 21 Nov., 1830, pp. 741-2. In 1815 the Treaty of Vienna had united the Belgians and Dutch into the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Belgians resented what they considered the dominance of the Protestant Dutch, and disturbances had broken out on 25 Aug., 1830. On 4 Oct. a provisional government declared independence and on 10 Nov. the National Congress met to draw up a constitution. The chief proposals were that delegates to the National Congress be directly elected, that liberty and equality for all before the law be established, and that liberty of the press, of education, of association, and of religion be protected. At the same time a conference of the five great Powers, Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, met in London.

[6 ]The final two paragraphs may not be Mill’s, but as the first of them, in particular, refers to the text above, they are retained.