Lynchburg Virginian

LOUIS NAPOLEON
Mr. G. W. Kendall, of the New Orleans Picayune, in a letter written from London on December 1st, speaks in the highest terms of Cavaignac, and builds vain hopes of his election to the Presidency upon his triumph over his accusers in the Assembly. Of Louis Napoleon, the "man with a name," as he calls the pretender, Mr. Kendall speaks as follows:
"Under no other named man (than Cavaignac) could the Republic last a twelvemonth, much less go on and flourish. But unfortunately, just as his own capabilities have been thoroughly proved; steps in an untried pretender, whose only capital is a great name, and with a rush the thoughtless masses rally under his standard. Just at the very moment when the Republic needs a man with a head on his shoulders and with arms in his hands, an adventurer appears with neither the one nor the other, and dearly will the people rue it if they bestow upon him the first office within their gift. A reign of anarchy and terrorism will be sure to follow, to be succeeded by another revolution perhaps more terrible than those which have preceded it; and at the very time when France most needs repose she will find herself tossed on a sea of convulsion, without pilot, rudder or compass; and all this when she has a man at hand really capable of carrying her safely through her troubles if she will but have patience. The real lover of free institutions and liberal government could almost sit down, and weep to see them thus jeopardized, as it were by an idle whim.
Louis Napoleon has come out with an address to the voters of France, in the first paragraph of which he says that his name is offered them as "a symbol of order and security," and at this the thoughtless multitude will throw up their caps and fill the air with vivas. They will not reflect that when the great first possessor of the name left his country, the Prussians were hunting his beaten and dispersed followers through their own fields, as men pursue mad dogs, and that the wild Cossacks were riding rough shod through the pleasant places of their proud capital. All this is forgotten, Waterloo and its history is a fable, and on the glare of the previous great and glorious achievements of the uncle, the insignificant nephew is to ride into power. When the Israelites made unto themselves a calf, and bowed down and worshipped it, it had at least the merit of being of gold; the idol, the French masses would set up has neither this nor any other claim upon their suffrages or their veneration.
It were idle to deny that the address, which Louis Napoleon has sent forth is a temperate and well written document, and that he has chalked for himself policy which, if strictly carried out, would redound to his own glory and to the well being and prosperity of France.— But what sane man is there who for a moment believes that he would be able to carry it out, or that his friends and advisers would permit him to do so even were he himself disposed? His friends and partisans lay great stress on one clause in his address, in which he says that if not elected, he shall "bow to the will of the people" What else could a man who loved his country well do? and what extraordinary merit is there in bowing to the will of the majority? The Pretender could not well say that, if not returned, he would come out with a second edition of Strasburg or Boulogne; in other words, if the people could not feel and see his claims and merits, he would open their understanding at the bayonet's point, and put the result on another revolution. This is the English of one part of his address which has been the subject of special praise."