find it hard to disapprove of the suppression of the “Univers,” which, while availing itself of every possible license to advocate the extremest doctrines of despotism in Church and State, demanded the suppression of freedom of all kinds in every other quarter.  It is an advantage to the enemies of free speech, that they can avail themselves of its existence to advocate restriction in its comprehensive sense, while their opponents cannot consistently demand that they shall be silenced.  Under the liberal policy which has just been inaugurated in France, great advantages will be enjoyed by the enemies of the government, and of free principles generally; and the Emperor is reported to have said that he shall accept the logical consequences of that policy, let the result be what it may.  What has thus far happened confirms this report; but it ought not to surprise us, if he should find himself compelled to have resort to measures of restriction not much different from those “warnings” that have been fatal to more than one journal in times past.  The tendency in the French mind to illegal opposition, and of the French government to meet such opposition by harsh action, will not allow us to be very sanguine as to the workings of the experiment upon which the Emperor has entered.  His chief object is to establish his dynasty, and he cannot tolerate attacks upon that; and attacks of that kind would form the staple of the opposition press, were it permitted to become as free as the press is in England and in the Northern States of America.

One of the charges that have been made against the Imperial system is, that it is a stratocracy, a mere government by the sword, and that it must pass away with the Emperor himself, or be continued in the person of some military man; so that France must degenerate into a vast Algiers, and be ruled by a succession of Deys.  There is something plausible in this view of the subject, which has imposed upon many persons, and which is all the more imposing because the Emperor is fifty-three years old, while his only son has but completed his fifth year; and Prince Napoleon is not popular with the army, and is an object of both fear and dislike to the members of several powerful interests.  The Imperialists have themselves principally to blame for this state of things, as they have encouraged and promulgated opinions that favor its existence.  Clever historical writers have discovered a remarkable resemblance between the France of to-day and the Roman Empire of the days of Augustus.  Napoleon I. was the modern Julius Caesar, and Napoleon III. is Octavius.  The Emperor is writing a Life of Julius Caesar, and it is believed that it is his purpose to establish the fact that his family is playing the part which the family of Caesar played more than eighteen centuries ago.  If one were disposed to be critical, it would not be difficult to point out, that, as the first Roman imperial dynasty became Claudian rather than Julian in its blood and character, after the death