also most necessary, strong faith, in the institutions of the Republic, which does not prevent a wholesome watchfulness of individuals, or indeed, it must be added with sorrow, an occasional abuse of this watchfulness into unfair and embarrassing suspicions. The French have not this strong political faith; they have never had it, from the time of Louis XIV. down to this day. The frequent changes of their government are enough to show it. Had they believed in any of their governments since 1789 — even in that of Napoleon with the same earnestness which we entertain for our Constitution, it must have stood in spite of all the pressure from without.

It has been stated that the French are destitute of moral elevation. At the same time, they are very intelligent, and very impressionable — ready to admire what they understand that is to say, any achievement of courage or talent. Hence it follows that a man who is clever, daring, and successful, loses no moral ground by being unscrupulous; his dishonesties, his illegalities, his perjuries, do not excite the same popular indignation that they would in England or America. Every reader can make the application for himself, without its being necessary for me to say anything personal in reference to the Prince-President. The French have admitted success as the test of merit; the end of success justifies, in their eyes, the adoption of all means. Such could not be the case in England or America.

Well, the French have chosen their government, as they had a perfect right to. Si populus vult decipi decipiatur. But Americans may draw one or two lessons from the present occurrences in France.

1. Louis Napoleon has been elected and re-elected by universal suffrage. Ergo, universal suffrage is not necessarily of itself a preservative against tyranny. Like all other kinds of suffrage, its effect depends upon the character and wisdom of those who exercise it, not on any virtue or charm inherent in its name or form.

2. England has at present, and has had for years: a. Free right of travel through her territory without passports;

b. A free Press;

c. Free right of public meetings.

France has none of these things, and never had for any length of time.

The first and second of these rights affect foreigners as well as citizens. Every American who has lived in England, and in France, has the difference of the two countries in respect of personal liberty brought home to him every day.

Can any rational man hesitate as to which is the free country, France or England?

Can any American, who is an American, hesitate as to which country has more points of sympathy with our own?

Knickerbocker, February 1852.

AN INTERCEPTED PARISIAN EPISTLE. - We have great pleasure in presenting the accompanying 'Letter from Colonel Cranberry Fuster to Jefferson J. Grabster, Junior, Esquire, Acting Editor Pro. Tem. of the Oldport Daily Twaddler. ED. KNICKERBOCKER.

Paris, Rue St. On-a-ray, November 10, 1851.

'MY DEAR JEFFERSON: We have always maintained, as you doubtless remember, that it does a young man, or even a middle-aged man, much good to see something of foreign lands; not that he can possibly hope to learn any thing there, especially in the way of morals or politics, but because (according to the popular belief, to dissent from which would be flat blasphemy) his experience of other countries must infallibly make him more contented and better satisfied with his own. Such a lesson cannot but be of great value, and is worth being learned thoroughly: it is therefore gratifying to find so many of our countrymen, particularly the more juvenile portion, disposed to learn it thoroughly. They frequently occupy several years in comparing the institutions of benighted Europe with our own, and studying the phases of life under despotic or semi-despotic governments, among all sexes and classes of the population. It can hardly be doubted that, when they return, it will

be with a thorough appreciation of and preference for the manners, morals, and tastes of our own happy hemisphere.

'Our numerous friends and subscribers will doubtless be desirous to know, in the first place, the particulars and incidents of our outward-bound trip. Unfortunately, our journal was interrupted very early in the passage; to say the truth, (which we may be permitted to do in the present instance, having nothing to gain by adopting a contrary course.) we have but a very indistinct recollection of what took place during the first thirty-six hours. Even after our ideas began to assume a more definite shape, and our locomotive and digestive faculties had recovered their pristine vigor, we found considerable difficulty in eliciting all the information we could have wished respecting the other passengers. Most of them seemed singularly stupid and incommunicative, although we took good care to let them know who we were, and left several copies of the Twaddler on the saloon-table.

As to the steamer herself, the 'Screw-driver' may justly be called a floating palace. She a' n't any thing else; and her officers are men who deserve to win and have won golden opinions from every one. The captain secured us a seat near his own at table, and helped us out of his own champagne-bottle every day, so that we were enabled to dispense altogether with the usual formality of a wine-bill: of course he is a scholar and a gentleman; and as the mate smuggled through several thousand cigars for us, we cannot do less than pronounce him a most enterprising and gentlemanly man. The day before our arrival in port, we had the pleasure of proposing our commander's health in a speech of twenty minutes' length. At the conclusion of our remarks, the passengers manifested the liveliest satisfaction. The only dissentient voice was that of a specimen of 'Young New-York,' who audibly expressed a wish that 'he could get some of the gas out of that speech to put into the ale! The impudent little sprig of codfish-aristocracy! The ale was quite good enough for him; I'll be bound he never drank as good at home; or if he did, it was because his father was a bankrupt, and cheated his creditors. But in truth, this young animal was of an

insolence altogether insufferable: he did n't know his place, nor who he was talking to, and continually spoke of newspaper correspondents, and even of editors, just as if we were mere ordinary vagabonds; whereas your readers will acquit me of vanity when I say this much, that we are frequently very extraordinary ones.

'Another passenger, who gave himself very unnecessary airs, was a Mr. Carl Benson, from the city of Gotham, a person of strongly-marked British sympathies, and a venomous enemy of republican institutions. I have reason to suspect him of being in the pay of Lord Palmerston, and that he has been hired to abuse our Southern brethren in the English periodicals. From a conversation in his state-room which I overheard, (accidentally, of course,) I gather that he is at present concocting for Frazer's Edinburgh Magazine, a scandalous, inflammatory, and would-be pathetic story on the subject of the Fugitive Slave Law. He showed his aristocratic disposition during the whole voyage by wearing the oldest clothes, never smoking, and drinking nothing but water; but this may also have been owing to the embarrassed state of his finances; for I was told that . . . .

[Here we are constrained to omit a number of assertions and suppositions respecting our correspondent, Carl, and various members of his family, because we have no reason to suppose them accurate, nor, if ever so accurate, of the slightest public interest.

ED. KNICKERBOCKER.]

"This young gentleman's criticism was on a par with his other opinions. One day I found him making merry over an article in the 'Young Ladies' Magazine,' a perfect gem, entitled, The Death of Cæsar, and for which we are indebted to the pen of that sweet songstress of Arkansas, Anna Maria Mathilda Biggs, who had on this occasion confined her aspiring pinions by the bands of prose; and, sooth to say, she danced in her fetters most gracefully. On my polite inquiry what there might be in this elegant composition that had so moved his mirth, he pointed disdainfully to the following sentence:

"A gun from the Capitol announced the approach of Cæsar.'

'It is unnecessary to dilate on the obvious anachronism.

But can a gushing, impulsive, self-educated, inspirationrapt female be expected to remember these niceties of scholarship like a small book-worm? And what must we think of the man's soul who could pronounce on the merits of a whole article from reading one sentence of it? 'Among our passengers were three Jesuit priests from Canada. I always make it a point to be civil to such people, on the principle that some African tribes worship the d-1; there is no knowing how much harm they may do you else some day. We had also on board four Protestant clergymen, of different denominations. When the first Sunday came, all the seven wanted to preach at once. We were obliged to submit their claims to the decision of the ballot. I gave my vote for the Catholics, in accordance with the true theory of social-democratic liberality and toleration: Always go against your own church, and never into any."

'We landed at Havre. Of this place I will not say that it always rains there, having had pretty positive experience that it sometimes snows. The difference in intellectual progress between the Europeans and ourselves was strikingly manifested from the first. This benighted population had never heard of the 'Oldport Twaddler! I doubt if even a copy of the 'New-York Sewer' could have been found in the whole town! Of course I made the shortest possible stay in this moral wilderness, and hurried on to the capital of France, where I am now pleasantly enough lodged in the Sinkiame, as they call it; but you do not sink at all to arrive at it: on the contrary, you have to mount either five or six stories, I am not sure which, for I always get put out in counting the steps. These elevated situations are recommended by the medical students, and others well acquainted with the laws of physiology, on account of the greater purity of the atmosphere. Our street derives its appellation from the fact that the saint to whom it is dedicated (St. Peter, I believe) is represented in the pictures as sliding down from heaven on a sun-beam, and is therefore called Saint On-a-ray.

"The disaffection of the people toward the government, and their admiration of and longing for our really republican institutions is so openly manifested on all occasions, that he who runs can't help reading. Every