The Court of Peers have quite relieved Louis PHILIPPE of
the exclusive odium of persecuting the press : what it did for him, with his thanks, it has now done for itself with scarcely less flagrant violation of all sense and justice. M. CHAMBOLLE wrote a short article in the Slick sneering at the Peers and their conversation about what they called an address ; regretting that one of their number, a real patriot, did not deliver his oration in some other arena ; and pointing out another who had been made a Peer only on account of his wealth. This tame attack alarmed the constitu- tional fears of the nobles, who saw the second estate of the Legis- lature endangered by such contemptuous mention ; so, regardless of M. CHAMBOLLE'S avowal of the authorship, they punished the managing editor of the paper. M. CHAMBOLLE is a member of the third estate, and to meddle with him might have been dangerous. The case is the more remarkable, because the Siede is a Conserva- tive journal ; and the prosecuting Peer expressly stated that he impeached it on that very account!
But the crusade against the press had yet another step to make : j
Government have ventured to attack the esters. M. ErEBERT, the Attorney-General, was rewarded for his zeal, and the willingness of the Peers to be convinced in the case of DUPOTY, by a cross of the Legion of Honour. On that fertile theme the Charivari made some bitter jests—less bitter, however, than the occasion warranted. Fines and imprisonment were the payment for the scoff, exacted both from editor and printer. The affair begins to assume a very serious aspect. The feeling of the ruling parties—parties, for many join in supporting these de- cisions—seems to be, that the press must be put in irons. Mi- nisters and the Chamber of Peers are directly committed to take z..,ote of every hostile commentary, and to prosecute. Nothing seems to be f;afe to print but any announcements of fact. The More appears to present but one alternative—either that the free- dom of the press shall be extinguished, which is absurd, or that it shall be fully restored in spite of. the Bing, Ministers, and Peers. They seem as if they would not surrender an iota, as if they would not spare a single outrage to crush the offending press : and it is a mechanical law, that the counteraction opposed to force should be of' equal force.
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