COUNT DE HORNY AND THE " SIECLE."
The following phrase in the speeech of Count de Horny, on open. rag the Council General of the Department of the Puy-de-Rime, has given great offence to some of the Liberal papers : "For my part, I sincerely rejoice in seeing my country endowed by its sovereign with an additional liberty, because I am of opinion that liberties bestowed (libellee octroyeee) will establish themselves better among us than liberties which have been obtained by conquest." " Libertes octroyees I" says the Sick; the "phrase is unfortunate, and we fully unite in sentiment with the reflection suggested by those words to the Prem. France for the last forty-seven _years never heard such a_phrase pronounced with such solemnity. That phrase offended the French nation when pronounced by Louis XVIII., and it did not cease during fifteen years to protest against that pretended gift. To say that anybody makes a present of a liberty to a nation is to say that liberty does not belong to it, and that it may again be taken back, and experience has taught us that practice follows theory very quickly. Charles X. wished to deprive the French people of the pre- sent made to them by Louis XVIII., and he acted logically, for if liberty be not the first and most valuable of our rights, it is nothing, and it is not worth the efforts which people have made to obtain it by conquest. To say that it is presented to us as a gift is to speak the language of another age-the language of 1788 and 1811. It is to attack the principles of 1789, which the Government has always claimed as its own and as the basis of the Imperial Constitution."
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