or deliberation and concert, and the betrayal of
all the enormous power and patronage of the State into the hands of the
Aristocratic party. If the Republicans were to attempt holding a
Convention to select a candidate for President, their meetings would be
promptly suppressed by the Police and the Bayonet. This may distract
and scatter them, though I trust it will not. Their Presidential
candidate will doubtless be designated by a Legislative Caucus or
meeting of Representatives in the Assembly, simply because no fairer and
fuller expression of the party's preference would be tolerated. And if,
passing over the mob of Generals and of Politicians by trade, the choice
should fall on some modest and unambitious citizen, who has earned a
character by quiet probity and his bread by honest labor, I shall hope
to see his name at the head of the poll in spite of the unconstitutional
overthrow of Universal Suffrage. After this, though the plurality should
fall short of a majority and the Assembly proceed to elect Louis
Napoleon or Changarnier, there need be no further apprehension.

I hear, as from an official source, that there are now Three Thousand
Americans in Paris, most of them residing here for months, if not for
years. It gives me pleasure to state that, contrary to what I have often
heard of the bearing of our countrymen in Europe, a large majority of
these, so far as I may judge from meeting a good many and learning the
sentiments of more, are warmly and openly on the side of the Republic
and opposed to the machinations of the motley host who seek its
overthrow.

The conviction of Charles Hugo, and his sentence to six months'
imprisonment, for simply writing a strong Editorial in the _Evenement_
in condemnation of Legal Killing, is making a profound sensation here. I
think it will hasten the downfall both of the Guillotine and the "party
of Order" which thus assumes the championship of that venerated
institution. The _Times'_ Paris correspondent, I perceive, takes up the
tale of Hugo's article having been calculated to expose the ministers of
the law to popular odium, and naively protests against a line of
argument by which "those who _execute_ the law are stigmatized as
_executioners_." I suppose we must call them _executors_ hereafter to
obviate the hardship complained of. How singular that those who glory in
the deed should shrink indignantly from the name?

American attention will naturally be drawn to the recen