There are, it is said, at the present moment in France fifty thousand communists; foolish, vicious men; many of them, doubtless, worthy of the galleys; and many, for whom the wholesome discipline of the mad-house would be at once the best remedy and punishment.  Fifty thousand men organised in societies, the object of which is—­what young France would denominate—­philosophical plunder; a relief from the canker-eating chains of matrimony; a total destruction of all objects of art; and the common enjoyment of stolen goods.  It is against this unholy confederacy that the moral force of LOUIS-PHILIPPE’S Government is opposed.  It is to put down and destroy these bands of social brigands that the King of the French burns his midnight oil; and then, having extirpated the robber and the anarchist from France, his Majesty—­for the advancement of political and social freedom—­would kidnap the baby-Queen of Spain and her sister, to hold them as trump cards in the bloody game of revolution.  That LOUIS-PHILIPPE, the Just of Spain, can consign his fellow-conspirator, the Just of Paris, to the scaffold, is a grave proof that there is no honour among a certain set of enterprising men, whom the crude phraseology of the world has denominated thieves.

It is to make the blood boil in our veins to read the account of the execution of such men as LEON, ORA, and BORIA, the foolish martyrs to a wicked cause.  Never was a great social wrong dignified by higher courage.  Our admiration of the boldness with which these men have faced their fate is mingled with the deepest regret that the prime conspirators are safe in Paris; that one sits in derision of justice on fellow criminals—­on men whose crime may have some slight extenuation from ignorance, want, or fancied cause of revenge; that the other, with the surpassing meekness of Christianity, goes to mass in her carriage, distributes her alms to the poor, and, with her soul dyed with the blood of the young, the chivalrous, and the brave, makes mouths at Heaven in very mockery of prayer.

We once were sufficiently credulous to believe in the honesty of LOUIS-PHILIPPE; we sympathised with him as a bold, able, high-principled man fighting the fight of good government against a faction of smoke-headed fools and scoundrel desperadoes.  He has out-lived our good opinion—­the good opinion of the world.  He is, after all, a lump of crowned vulgarity.  Pity it is that men, the trusting and the brave, are made the puppets, the martyrs, of such regality!

As for Queen CHRISTINA, her path, if she have any touch of conscience, must be dogged by the spectres of her dupes.  She is the Madame LAFFARGE of royalty; nay, worse—­the incarnation of Mrs. BROWNRIGG.  Indeed, what JOHNSON applied to another less criminal person may be justly dealt upon her:—­“Sir, she is not a woman, she is a speaking cat!”

Q.

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[Illustration:  PUNCH’S PENCILLINGS.—­No.  XX.