Some fifteen years ago, a proposition was started in a Paris daily newspaper for the popular collection, in small sums, of a sufficient amount to erect a statue to Voltaire in the French capital. When the success of the subscription seemed sufficiently assured, petition was made to the government to grant a site on some public square on which to place the statue. After long delay, and some appearance of unwillingness, the petition was finally granted; but the announcement of this fact was immediately followed by the presentation of a large number of protests against the erection of the statue, which came in from all parts of the empire. One of these protests, signed by a thousand inhabitants of the departments of Le Gard and the Drôme, and the city of Nîsmes, and addressed to the senate, was referred to a committee of senators for consideration and report. The committee has made a report, which is understood to be written by M. Silvestre de Sacy, well known as former chief editor of the _Journal des Débats_, and a distinguished member of the French Academy. From it we learn something of the petition, but not as much as we would like to know. After a recital of the facts we have stated, the report goes on to say: Undoubtedly, the government had authority to refuse the permission asked, and still has the power to withdraw it. The right of private persons to award statues to whomsoever they please, and to meet and raise money to pay for them, is certainly lawful. But the public streets and squares are not their property. The number of these persons does not increase their right. They act, in such a matter, solely for themselves, and not for the whole country, of which they have no right to pretend to be the representatives. Among the serious considerations which might have made the government hesitate, is the very name Voltaire, which has two significations: the one glorious for the human intellect and for French literature; the other for which Voltaire himself would now blush, dragging down as it does the great historian and great poet to the miserable calling of an impious and cynical pamphleteer. But it appears that the subscribers have obtained the permission asked for. The site has been selected, and the statue will be erected in one of the squares of the new _Rue de Rennes_. The petition before us protests against this permission, and prays the intervention of the senate with the government to obtain the withdrawal of a permission which it characterizes in the strongest terms. These petitioners see but one Voltaire--an impious, immoral Voltaire, hostile to all religion; a Voltaire who conspired with all the enemies of France for the humiliation and ruin of his country; a Voltaire who, Prussian at Rosbach with King Frederick, Russian with Catherine II., against unfortunate Poland, the violator of our purest glory in his poem _Jeanne d'Arc_, the enemy of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as