Iv.--American Life in France: 1851

SEPTEMPER 16th. — Among those who were most influential in restraining the people of Vivarais from rescuing and from avenging their pastor was Paul Rabaut, whose memory Protestant tradition consecrates as that of the model servant of Christ. This man, the true chief and leader of a people whose hereditary king made himself known to them only by exactions and persecutions, had, for years, no other home than that the fastnesses of the mountains afforded him. A den made of stones thrown rudely together to avoid the appearance of design, the entrance masked by a growth of brambles, was a cherished retreat to which he returned after his journeys, and which he regretted when it was disclosed and he was forced to abandon it.

The commune where the presence of a minister was detected was visited by punishment. Yet the news of Paul Rabaut’s intended coming was received with heartfelt joy by the faithful. Messengers were sent out through a wide circuit to announce it, and to designate the wild, unfrequented spot which had been fixed on as the place of prayer. The religious meeting was hardly less dangerous to the disciples than to the teacher ; but eight, ten, twelve thousand people gathered at the appointed place to join in the prayers and listen to the exhortations of the revered man.

The galleys and confiscation of goods for attendance on a meeting for prayer; the galleys for knowing of such a meeting and not denouncing it: thus it was in France a century ago, under that blessed royalty whose return is invoked.

Only twenty-five years before the convocation of the notables, Francois Rochette, a native of Gévaudan, a sister state of Vivarais, was passing near the town of Caussade, in what is now the department of Tarn-et-Garonne. A robbery had been committed in the neighborhood. A patrol, in search of the robbers, met and captured him with two peasants, his guides. The mistake was at once discovered, and he would have been set at liberty, if, in giving his name, he had not also declared his profession, — that of a minister of the Reformed religion. It was intimated to him by those who examined him, that he might withdraw this avowal, and they would consider it unspoken. His youth, his intrepidity, his bearing, described as uniting in a remarkable manner grace, sweetness, and spirit, moved them to compassion ; but in vain. He would not deny his calling or purchase his safety by a departure from truth. He was sent to Toulouse for the trial, whose issue could not be doubtful. Condemned, he bad to console his jailers and sentinels, who had learned to love him. “ My friend,” he said to a soldier who was shedding tears over his fate, “you are ready to die for the king; and do you pity me, who am to die for God ?”

This type of man is not extinct in France. Beside these figures from the past, dignified, simple, devoted, rise figures of the present, not unworthy to take place beside them. And those congregations, which by thousands and tens of thousands braved such dangers to offer their united worship to the true God, are they unrepresented ? Their descendants, now upon the scene, inherit with their blood the tradition of endurance and persistence. It was the office of the fathers to keep alive a pure religious faith ; it is that of the sons to make it practical in the larger life, to regenerate their country through its means. The struggle is the same ; it is still the war between freedom and arbitrary power, between progress and stagnation, between order and systematized anarchy, between the world that God organized and the world that rebels to his law have contrived.

September 17th.— We have just returned from the Louvre, where we have passed a delightful morning with the children. Apart from the acquaintance with art gradually formed there, galleries of paintings are very instructive places for children. Pictures suggest so many questions. And instruction given when it is asked for is so much more welcome and so much more fruitful than when it is administered ! I believe the children really learn more in a few hours at the Louvre, than in as many days or perhaps weeks at school; and how cheerfully, how swiftly these hours go by !

Both the boys enjoy their visits to picture-galleries, but each in a different way. Alfred, having read about painters and paintings, and knowing something of the relative standing of the different masters, has, with the pleasure which a natural love of art gives, also some share of that which is found in the exercise of the critical faculty. Willie takes things strictly on their own merit, their merit, that is, to him. The freshness and frankness of the little fellow’s tastes and emotions is a constant delight. I have never let the Bible become hackneyed to him. He is familiar enough with it to be interested in what relates to it, and not enough for its scenes to have lost their vividness and reality. He stopped before a picture of the Crowning with Thorns and turned quickly to me with a look which seemed to say, ”Can it be?” “ Yes ; it is our Saviour, mocked by the soldiers.” He turned sternly back to it. Then, as he looked, his compressed lips quivered; his eyes flashed through the mist that had begun to gather over them ; his little hands were clenched unconsciously. “ O, how mean ! ” I could not convey to you the intensity of the accent.

Evening. — There is a sad contrast between the life of foreigners here for their pleasure, who can every morning plan out a day full of cheerful interest, to be closed by an evening of amusement, and the life dragged on in apprehension and uncertainty by the poor refugees from despotism who looked for an asylum in the Republic of France. Many find here the prison they came here to escape. Numbers are forced to take up again the staff of travel, and go forth to face the pains and humiliations of a new exile, a new struggle for a spot to stand on and work in. Many, not driven out, go, through fear of worse. For those who remain, every step, every act, is haunted by fear. They endanger those who show them kindness; they are endangered by those who are the most prompt to offer it. It is not a home they have here. hardly a resting place. They can look forward but some months at most ; and a breath may destroy their claim to even this narrow hospitality.

The republicans assert that refugees from oppression ought to live, in republican France, under at least as favorable conditions as in monarchical England. They draw upon themselves the persecutions they cannot avert from others ; but at least they have exonerated themselves from the complicity of cowardice.

September 18th. — These times, so cruel and so hateful under some aspects, have yet their consoling side. Nothing can be more admirable than the intrepidity of the republican editors and writers,“soldiers of the press,” as one of their number has called them.

I send you a bold jeu d'esprit from the Charivari, — a jeu d'esprit, but, indeed, a very serious one : —

“ ARDÈCHE UNDER MARTIAL LAW.

“ Ardèche is under martial law. The other departments are soon to have their turn, concluding with the department of the Seine. M. Léon Faucher has justified this vigorous measure before the committee of surveillance. It was thus that this man of energy expressed himself: —

“ Ardèeche is a department which borders on Drôme and Isère, both under martial law. Why should it not participate in the régime of its neighbors ? We have been obliged to put an end to this anomaly. Other motives not less grave, and of a logic not less imperious, compel us to severity with Ardèche. The inhabitants profess opinions incompatible with the existence of a well-regulated society. They are republicans. In the cities the greatest depravation prevails. The National and the Charivari have subscribers there in great numbers. The call for a revision has found there only some few signatures. It is a gangrened country.

“ In the rural districts it is still worse. There the schoolmasters enjoy the sympathy of the population. The Frères Ignorantins have not been able to fix themselves there in a complete and durable manner. Republicanism leads to irreligion. Men who do not send their children to the Ignorantins are atheists. Who is capable of all crimes ? The atheist.

“ We have ejected a great number of schoolmasters, hoping that, without bread, without shelter, and the greater part burdened with families, starvation would rid us of them. The inhabitants have taken them in, have fed them, have withdrawn them from their merited punishment.

“ Lastly, devoted men who have endeavored to promulgate through France the Napoleonic idea, the idea of modern times, in Ardèche have not been able to obtain a hearing,

“ The savage inhabitants even affected never to have heard of the Emperor ! They carry their stupidity even so far as to prefer the Republic to the splendors of the Imperial epoch. The failure of the apostles of prolongation has at last fully enlightened us as to their condition.

“ Can we let a department, a portion of our country, stagnate in irreligion, ignorance, and republicanism ? No. This reply, which you approve because you are statesmen, the council has also sanctioned, by adopting my proposition to place the department of Ardèche under martial law. “ Rouher wishes this benefit to be extended to Cantal, and Fould to the Eastern Pyrenees ; but we have been obliged to restrict ourselves. Later, we shall find means to satisfy this double wish. I only wait an occasion. For the rest, gentlemen, be without uneasiness. The government will not be wanting to its mission.

“ Every department which shall give signs of republicanism shall be placed under martial law. It is time to purify this unhappy country infested with democracy.

“ M. Léon Faucher ended by assuring the commission that, with the aid of martial law, he would answer for the tranquillity of Ardèche. The committee separated, satisfied with the political situation of the country.”

The Charivari has hardly caricatured the language of the reaction. Some of the most respectable of that party, members of the Assembly or journalists of note, employ language in speaking of republicanism and republicans which make one doubt one’s eyesight and go back to read again. The extravagancies of the magistracy in this line are something incredible. At the trial of some republican editors of the Southwest, for a political offence, the procureur-général made an address to the jury, which, if it had not come from a procureur, might well have been taken for burlesque.

September 19th. — This trial, which was of great interest on more than one account, took place recently before the assize court of Lot-et-Garonne. A plot against the safety of the state was in question. It was known as the plot of the journalists of the West. It was, in fact, an offshoot of the Lyons plot. The accused, who had already suffered ten months’ imprisonment, underwent a part of it at Lyons, but happily escaped coining before the military tribunal there.

The journalists from whom this branch of the great conspiracy “ for the overthrow of the government” takes its name are, M. Gauzence, editor of LeRepublicain de Lot-et-Garonne ; M. Desolme, editor of Le Republicain de Dordogne; and M. Lesseps, described as a journalist residing in Paris. With them a M. Dufau was tried as their accomplice. The advocates who had charge of the defence were all members of the National Assembly. M. Lesseps was defended by M. Jules Favre ; M. Desolme, by M. Crémieux ; M. Gauzence, by M. Destours ; M. Dufau, by M. Bac.

The city of Agen, where the trial took place, overflowed with strangers on the day of the opening. The authorities, in anticipation of this concourse, had taken “all the measures necessary for public security.” That is to say, in addition to a large force of gendarmes, a strong detachment of regular troops occupied the streets leading to the Palais de Justice. For the more complete tranquillization of the timid friends of order, the fact was made known that these troops were of the Seventeenth of the line ; “ which had particularly distinguished itself under the walls of Rome.”

The origin of this plot, like that of the plot of Lyons, is found by the prosecution in the dissatisfaction occasioned by the electoral law of the 31st May. Thus, the Act of Accusation : “ It will be remembered what a lively emotion was excited in the country by the debates of May, 1850, in the Legislative Assembly,” etc. The procureur-général spoke of “ the lively effervescence that the project of electoral law in May, 1850, spread throughout the demagogical party.”

Thus, whatever general accusations of criminal designs the present possessors of power may bring against the republican opposition, they continually show themselves aware that all that the people desire, or their leaders for them, is the share in their own government which the Revolution of ’48 won for them and which their Constitution secures to them.

The part taken by the republican representatives in restraining the people and preventing violent opposition to the law of the 31st May was distinctly recognized by. the prosecution.

Some imprudent articles and passionate letters written while this law was under discussion in the Assembly and after its passage made all the important part of the evidence against the accused. As usual, unsupported charges, foreign to the present trial, were introduced to prejudice the minds of the jury and of the public. M. Gauzence was the principal sufferer in this way. When the Act of Accusation had been read by the greffier, and the procureur had made his opening statement, the president of the court ordered the reading of the letters on which the prosecution rested its case. The last of these was one sent by the prefect of Haute Garonne to the prefect of Lot-et-Garonne. It concerned M. Gauzence. “ The accused,” says the reporter of the trial, “ is represented as professing ardent opinions which he disseminated in the clubs in 1848. His private life was made the object of very severe animadversion. But the vagueness of the expressions employed in the letter indicates that the details given by M. le Préfet reached him only by hearsay.”

When the president began to interrogate M. Gauzence, the accused requested permission, before replying, to protest against “a defamatory piece ” which had been read ; “ a tissue of falsities,” he pronounced it to be.

M. Crémieux, his counsel, was betrayed into an indignant exclamation. “ Explain your words, M. Crémieux,” cried the president; “ this piece comes from the prefect of Haute Garonne.” As if calumny were sacred, coming from a prefect! “ I referred to the

anonymous authority,” replied. M. Crémieux, composedly.

M. Gauzence stated, in reply to the assertions contained in the letter, that he had been three years professor in a school in Toulouse, without incurring the smallest reproach ; that he had afterwards been professor of history in a college of the West, and, still later, in his native city, Pamiers ; that in both these situations his conduct had, in like manner, been exempt from reproach ; that he was still at Pamiers when the Revolution of February took place ; that he was a republican, and had expressed his opinions openly before his fellow-citizens, as so many others had done.

The most cruel charge which the letter brought against M. Gauzence was that of having ill-treated his wife, and to such a degree as to cause her death. M. Gauzence said that his wife, who was the daughter of a notary, and not of a baker, as the letter asserted, had died of consumption ; that she had made him her sole heir; but that he had broken the will and given all her property to her relatives. M. Gauzence, in making these explanations, the reporter says, “appeared the prey of violent emotions.”

The president resumed his interrogatory. M. Gauzence, however, had afterwards his little triumph.

“ You make yourself the apologist of civil war ! ” cried the president.

“Pardon, M. le President,” replied the accused journalist, “this eulogium of civil war is not mine ; it is an extract from a legitimist journal, La Mode, and I only cited it to show the condition of minds, and to denounce it.”

If M. Gauzence was not proof against the cruel attacks upon his domestic life, he did not falter where his political principles were concerned. Like the convicted of the Lyons plot, he maintained that in case of an attempt at usurpation, it was the right and duty of the people to defend the Republic. Questioned concerning a certain letter addressed to him, he replied . “ This letter was in reply to an hypothesis proposed by me. Remember the circumstances of that period ; the principle of universal suffrage was attacked; the projects of the reaction were becoming more clear every day. They were extolling civil war. It was my duty as a journalist to keep watch for the defence of the threatened Republic. I proposed to Dufau an hypothesis in this sense. Dufau answered. This is the whole conspiracy. The opinions and sentiments of that time I still hold ; and on leaving this place, if I am acquitted, as I ought to be, I shall repeat that I will resist usurpation.”

M. Dufau, the writer of the letter, being questioned in regard to it, answered with similar firmness : “ I expressed my personal opinion in reply to a question addressed to me. If the Republic were menaced, I should rise to defend it.”

The procureur warned the jury that “ the times were not such as to allow them to follow the dictates of their hearts, and exercise clemency, as they might perhaps do, without great damage to society, if there were union between parties, if minds were in the same views and governed by the same principles, and if ideas of order were everywhere powerful and respected.

“Do you suppose,” cried he, “ that the conspiracy woven by the accused has not committed ravages in the country because it did not break out? When they say incessantly in their letters, ' We have democratized city and country ; all is organized, the communes, the cantons, the arrondissements,’judge what a work of agitation they must have carried on in the minds of the masses to arrive at such a result! How many unhappy workingmen they must have democratized! how many bad instincts they must have awakened! in how many hearts and families they must have enfeebled or annihilated the love of labor and the respect for authority !

“ Would you, then, send out the accused on the theatre of their sad exploits, that they may continue this demoralizing work, and recommence all these appeals to the worst passions of the human heart? No! I know you. I have observed you in the course of this session ; I have appreciated your rectitude, your firmness, your love of duty. You will come to the aid of society shaken by so many storms, and you will have gained the gratitude of all good men. The public conscience will applaud your patriotism and your inflexible spirit of justice.”

The defence was conducted in a very able and fearless manner. The counsel for the accused alleged that the forms of French justice had been shamefully violated on the part of the prosecution.

M. Crémieux and M. Jules Favre protested energetically against the irregularity of the proceedings and the neglect of the ordinary forms of law ; against what M. Crémieux called “this incredible forgetfulness of all there is of protective, of generous, of humane, in the laws of our Revolution ; this incredible return to all there was of abusive, of secret, of inquisitorial, in the laws of past times.”

When the reporter comes to the part of M. Jules Favre, he seems to forget the impartiality he usually imposes upon himself: “ M. Jules Favre rises in the midst of a most profound silence. He presents the defence of Lesseps. In a few fervent words he recalls the long combat sustained by Lesseps in the Paris press against the corruption and the arbitrary acts of the last reign ; then entering on the trial, he examines the procedure; brands it as null in a legal point of view, and as unworthy of our civilization and manners. He protests energetically against the rigors of preventive imprisonment ; against the recklessness with which the liberty of the citizen is trifled with; and, above all, against the intrusion of the police into the intimacies of friendship and the fireside.

“ Then he examines the evidence, entirely written, brought forward against his client. Word by word, sentence by sentence, he rends, he destroys it. The prosecution more than once bows the head before his keen exposition, the stinging shafts of his sarcasms.

“ The powerful logic of the defender takes, one by one, each argument of the procureur-général, and breaks it. When he has thus completely demolished the whole procedure, and thrown the most withering scorn upon ‘these dusky conspiracies of folly and the police,’ he finishes magnificently by an appeal to respect for the law, to the impartiality of justice, declaring that the Republic will know how to defend the constitution and to repel usurpation, whether it come darkly in the form of conspiracy, or openly in that of empire.”

The jury were probably unwilling to forfeit altogether the high opinion formed of them by M. le ProcureurGénéral, yet they seem to have been willing to buy its continuance as cheaply as possible. They found one of the accused, M. Gauzence, guilty, but with extenuating circumstances. This verdict meant, I suppose, that he was guilty of the crime on which the procureur had enlarged so eloquently, that of “democratizing the people.” An extenuating circumstance was probably found in his innocence of the offence for which he was tried.

M. Gauzence was condemned to one year’s imprisonment and to five years’ interdiction of civic rights. Yet he may surely think himself a fortunate man. If he had been tried by a military tribunal, he might have shared the fate of poor Longomazino, the journalist of Digne, sentenced to deportation.

The jury acquitted the three other prisoners, MM. Lesseps, Desolme, and Dufau ; so that M. Gauzence was left conspiring alone, and that publicly, in the columns of his journal.

M. Lesseps and M. Desolme, on leaving the court-house, set off immediately for Villeneuve, where M. Lesseps was to rejoin his family. M. Jules Favre accompanied them. The news of the acquittal had gone before them. Two miles before they reached the city they were obliged to alight from their carriage to respond to the congratulations of the crowd which had poured out to meet them. Men, women, and children gathered about them crying, “Vive la république! ” “Vive la constitution!” “Vive Lesseps!” “Vive Jules Favre!” The prisoner left behind was not forgotten. His name was mentioned with expressions of regret and sympathy. In the public square of Villeneuve an immense crowd was assembled. It was addressed by M. Jules Favre and by M. Lesseps briefly, but fervently. “ And now,” said M. Lesseps, “ give to the slanders of the reaction a decisive refutation by the example of submission to the laws. Withdraw quietly and give our enemies no pretext for fresh persecutions.” In ten minutes the place was empty.

M. Dufau, who was accompanied by M. Bac and M. Detours, had a similar reception from his townsmen of PorteSainte-Marie. “All took part in it,” says the republican account, “except the juge de paix, the gendarmerie, and the police.”

I have several times mentioned M. Crémieux, one of the defenders of the accused of the plot of Agen. Let me tell an interesting incident in his life. His father, a political prisoner during or after the French Revolution, was released from his captivity to find that his house was ruined and that a compromise had been made with his creditors. It was many years after his death that these facts first came to the knowledge of his son, who held his memory in peculiar veneration, and who immediately devoted himself to redeeming it from the reproach even of a bankruptcy which had in it nothing dishonoring. He toiled for many years with this object before him, and at last paid off the principal of the debt, with thirty years’ interest. A decree of the court of Nîmes rehabilitated his father’s memory in 1838.

Is this man likely to be among the enemies of “property and the family,” or the defender of those who are ?

This crime of democratizing the people which is at the present time one of the most serious which can be committed in France was committed in 1848 by the framers of the Constitution and by the constituent Assembly which accepted the Constitution.

That instrument declares that “the French Republic is democratic, one and indivisible.” Nor was this word admitted without due consideration of all that it implied.

When this article was proposed to the Assembly for acceptance, M. de la Rochejacquelein asked what the word “ democratic ” meant.

It was M. Dupin, one of the committee who drew up the Constitution, who undertook to give an answer : —

“ M. Dupin : If there is anything in France which has no need of definition. it is the word ‘democracy.’ In 1789 France was disembarrassed of the aristocracy which ruled over her. In 1830 the last remnant of aristocracy disappeared. What we now call democracy is what we formerly called the third estate, that which a man of genius has demonstrated to be the whole nation. It has its symbol in universal suffrage.”

M. de la Rochejacquelein expressed his entire satisfaction with this explanation, and congratulated himself on having been the means of calling it forth.

These three words, democratic, one, indivisible, were afterwards separately put to the vote and separately adopted.

The republicans stand to-day on the same ground on which M. Dupin and the other members of the constituent assembly who now belong to the reactionary majority of the Legislative Assembly stood with them in 1848.

M. Michel (de Bourges) in a conciliatory speech, made last July, when the revision of the Constitution was under debate, defended and explained the Republic : —

“The Constitution would have labor and capital no longer enemies ; and, to this end, would have both concur in making the laws.

“ Universal suffrage; the Republic ; they are the same thing. Universal suffrage is the Republic; the Republic is universal suffrage.

“ And now let us say what republic it is that we want. I will proceed by the method of exclusion. We do not want the ancient republic. The ancient republic is organized brigandage ; it is the strife of robbers for ill-earned wealth.

“We have now the Republic of the United States,—less slavery. This is the Republic we want; the Republic of work. Unite all the statesmen of our time, they can invent nothing better. This Republic in which all unite to make the laws, has it anything which alarms you ? What do we ask ? What justice asks; what humanity asks: the freedom of all, the well-being of all.”

September 20th. — La Presse has recently republished from La Tribune of twenty years ago an acknowledgment of a sum of money contributed towards the payment of a fine imposed upon the editor of that journal, a liberal organ of the time. Here is the paragraph from La Tribune as cited by M. Emile de Girardin in La Presse : —

“ We have received a letter from Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of the ex-king of Holland, who subscribes two hundred francs towards the payment of the fine to which M. Armand Marrast has been sentenced. It is as a French citizen that M. Bonaparte sends us this offering, which is a new homage rendered to the freedom of the press.”

M. de Girardin asks how the subscription of 1831 is to be reconciled with the prosecutions of 1851.

He brought forward this incident from the President’s time of obscurity with especial reference to the prosecution of L' Événement, a republican journal, for an article on the right of asylum.

The prosecution resulted in a condemnation. L' Événement was suspended for a month. The responsible editor, M. Paul Meurice, was condemned to nine months’ imprisonment and three thousand francs’ fine ; M. Francois Hugo, the author of the article, to nine months’imprisonment and a fine of two thousand francs. M. Francois Hugo is the son of Victor Hugo. He is to be confined at the Conciergerie, where his elder and only brother is already a prisoner. It requires some courage to be an opposition journalist in France at this time. The Évinement has now four of its editors in prison.

The article which has given occasion to this last condemnation is an answer to one in the Constitutionnel, which defended, or rather lauded, the conduct of the government towards the unfortunate refugees who are now especially the objects of persecution. As far as facts are concerned, M. Francois Hugo does not differ materially from the Napoleonist writers. It is only that these extol what he denounces, the solidarity of the government of the French Republic with the despotic governments of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Naples. lie writes, indeed, with an eloquence which they have not at command, and yet with a certain discretion ; for his animadversions are almost exclusively directed against the ministers. The President is spoken of directly only twice ; once as the former “ proscrit de Thurgovie,” once as the actual “ auxiliaire de la saintealliance.” This last is the only passage concerning him personally which could justly be found offensive ; and why should imperialists find it offensive ?

That the advocate-general did not think the article, as it stood, sufficiently criminal, would appear from his finding it necessary to misrepresent it absurdly. But it made little difference probably what the article was, or what the advocate-general said of it. A republican accused is to be convicted ; and a republican who is also the son of Victor Hugo !

The other republican journals stand by the Événement in its misfortunes. They have come out with brave expressions of praise and sympathy. “All those,” concludes an article in the National on this subject, — “ all those who have, like us, followed the courageous struggle which the young writers of the Événement have supported with so much talent and so much success against the men and the things of the past, will understand, without difficulty, the feelings we are obliged to restrain.”

L' Événement found itself forced to go out of existence, but came immediately to life again as L'Avénement du Peuple. The last number of L'Événement appeared on the 17th of this month ; on the 18th appeared the first number of L'Avénement. It contained a letter from Victor Hugo to the editor, M. Vacquerie, the last remaining of the staff of L' Événement. Victor Hugo speaks feelingly of the course and the fate of the journal of which his two sons were among the founders. There is a mingling of pride and grief in his tone which is very touching. But the resolution and faith of the devoted citizen and true man predominate over all.

To M. AUGUSTE VACQUERIE, Editor in.

Chief of L' Avénement du Peuple.

MY DEAR FRIEND : L'Événement is dead,—dead by violence in the midst of the most brilliant career. Its standard is not prostrate. You are still bearing it on high. You appear in this breach where five of your comrades have fallen, intrepidly barring the way to this reaction of the past against the present, to this conspiracy of monarchy against the Republic, defending all that we love and value, — the people, France, humanity, Christian ideas, universal civilization.

It is four years since you founded the Événement, — you, Paul Meurice, our dear and generous Paul Meurice, my two sons, two or three young and firm auxiliaries. In our time of trouble, of irritation and misunderstanding, you had one thought, to calm, to console, to explain, to enlighten, to conciliate. You held out a hand to the rich, a hand to the poor, your heart always a little nearer to the last. This was the holy mission you had dreamed. An implacable reaction would hear nothing, would understand nothing. It has rejected conciliation and demanded the combat. You have fought with regret, but resolutely. L'Évdénement has not spared itself; friends and foes both do it this justice ; but fighting, it has remained true to itself, been consistent with itself. It has never deviated from its first aims: fraternity, civil and human ; universal peace ; the inviolability of right ; inviolability of life ; amelioration of manners ; increase of intelligence by liberal education and free teaching ; the destruction of misery, the welfare of the people, the end of revolutions, the triumph of democracy, progress by progress.

L' Événement has urged upon all political parties, as upon all social systems, amnesty, pardon, clemency. It has remained true to every page of the gospel. It has had two great condemnations : the first for attacking the scaffold, the second for defending the right of asylum. It seemed to the writers of the Évéenement that this right of asylum, which the Christian formerly claimed for the Church, they, Frenchmen, ought to claim for France. The soil of France is sacred as the pavement of a temple. This they thought and said. Before the juries which decided their fate they defended themselves without concession, and accepted their condemnation without bitterness. They have proved that the men of gentleness are also the men of strength.

It will soon be two thousand years since this truth was brought to light. We are nothing beside the august confessors who manifested it for the tust time to the human race. The first Christians founded their faith by suffering for it. When the tortures of one were ended, another offered himself. Thanks to God, thanks to the Gospel, thanks to France, the martyrdom of our days has not these terrible proportions. But such as it is, it imposes suffering and demands courage. Courage, then, and forward !

I say it to you, I say it to all who accept valiantly the sacred strife of progress, have faith! You are stiong. You have on your side the hour which is passing and the hour which is coming, the reason of this world, the justice of the next. A man may be put down, — a million of men ; but truth cannot be put down. The ancient parliaments have sometimes tried to suppress truth by a decree. The recorder had not signed the sentence, when truth has appeared erect and radiant above the tribunal.

You say the people love my name, and you ask me for what you are pleased to call my support. You ask me to give you my hand in public. I do so warmly. I am only a man of good-will. If the people, as you say, love me a little, it is because in another quarter I am greatly hated. I do not know why the men — blinded, for the most part, and worthy of compassion — who form the party of the past do me and mine the honor of a special rancor. It seems, at times, that the freedom of the tribune does not exist for me, that the freedom of the press does notexist for my sons. When I speak, clamors try to drown my voice ; when they write, fine and prison. But let us pardon our personal wrongs. Our judges themselves are our brothers. Let us not retaliate, even by resentment. Let us fix our eyes on our aim. Let us think only of the good of the people, only of the future.

Let us pardon our personal wrongs. Let us pardon the ill which has been done us or intended for us. But the ill which has been done the Republic, the ill which has been done the people, — these are wrongs which it is not ours to pardon. I wish, without hoping it, that no one may have an account to render, no one a punishment to undergo.

And yet what happiness, my friend, if by one of those dénouements which are always in the hands of Providence, and which suddenly disarm the guilty rage of these, the just anger of those, what happiness if, by one of these dénouements, that the abrogation of the law of the 31st May permits us to have a glimpse of, we could arrive safely, tranquilly, without convulsion, without reprisals, at this magnificent future of peace and concord, which is there before us ; this inevitable future in which the country will be great, in which the people will be happy, in which the French Republic will, by its example alone, create the European republic ; when we shall all on this beloved soil of Prance be free as in England, equal as in America, brothers as in heaven !

VICTOR HUGO.

September 18, 1851.

The first number of L’Avénement du Pettple was seized in the post-office and at the office of the journal by command of the procureur of the Republic, who has ordered a prosecution to be commenced against the responsible editor of that journal, “ on account of a letter signed 'Victor Hugo,’ and of an article signed ‘ Auguste Vacquerie,’ beginning,

' Nous arborons cette admirable lettre.”’ The letter and the article introducing it are charged with a threefold offence, — disrespect to the law, an apology of acts designated crimes or misdemeanors by the penal code, and provocation to civil war. This we learn by the journals of this morning.

September 22d. — The frequency and severity of assaults upon the press have occasioned uneasiness beyond the limits of the liberal party. Even the Fournal des Ddbafs has been disturbed by these excesses of authority, and has confessed, though with avowed reluctance, that it “has seen with affliction many journals and many writers, among others two young men bearing a celebrated name, visited by condemnations which it cannot prevent itself from finding very severe.”

The republicans ask how it is to be explained that, while they are continually prosecuted and condemned for “ exciting to hatred and contempt of the government of the Republic,” accusation and punishment never fall on those who attack the Republic expressly and avowedly, urging the claims of royalty or empire, and advocating the most illegal and violent measures for their establishment. The reactionists affirm that it would be useless to attempt to punish journalists for such offences, inasmuch as the jury would not convict them. The republicans rejoin that such an assertion implies an insinuation in regard to the manner in which jurors are selected, which they themselves are very far from presuming to make.

A little episode in the debate on the right of petition, which took place last summer in the National Assembly, throws light on the verdicts of Paris juries. It is a very characteristic scene, and has not only a political but a dramatic interest.

M. Hennequin offered an amendment to a proposed law on the exercise of the right of petition ; but added that, whatever the fate of his amendment, he should oppose the law, for the reason that, even if good in itself, it was bad in the hands of the actual administration. He remained in the sentiments of distrust which the Assembly had manifested by a solemn vote. Other members might have found reasons for passing from distrust to confidence, but he, for his part, had found none. Prosecutions for the violation of this law must come either before the magistracy or before the jury ; and M. Hennequin had confidence in neither, where political matters were in question.

M. Hennequin. The jury! but we have all protested against its organization ; we have pointed out twenty times what there is monstrous in this fact, that the jury is chosen from a list prepared by a commission which, at Paris, is named by the government itself.

M. le President broke in : Permit me. I cannot allow the institution of the jury to be attacked from the tribune.

M. Crémieux. There is no jury at Paris ; there is a commission.

M. le President. I cannot, I ought not, to allow the institutions of the country to be attacked here.

M. Bac. This is not an institution.

M. Hennequin. It is not my intention to attack the institutions of the country. But in each of us the citizen is to be distinguished from the legislator. When the simple citizen appears before the jury, he must submit to its decision, he must respect it, he must not protest against it. But when we are here as legislators, called to examine whether the institutions of the country are good or bad, we ought in all sincerity, in all liberty, to examine into the vices of legislation. It is evident that our mandate would be limited if we could not say that the institution of the jury appears to us defective.

M. le President. You have not the right to enfeeble respect for institutions.

M. Charras. The Constitution is attacked every day with impunity.

M. le President. You can make more noise than I. There is no doubt of that. You have perfectly the right to make propositions for modifying the institutions of the country ; but you have not a right to say, in speaking of the jury, that it is a monstrous institution.

From the Left. He did not say that. M. le President. I heard distinctly. M. Hennequin. Gentlemen, the words of M. le President will be recorded in the Moniteur. I must efface their trace as far as depends on me. If I had used the expression which M. le President attributes to me, I should withdraw it at once, and I should ask pardon of the Assembly for having uttered it. Gentlemen, I am positively sure that the ears of M. le President have deceived him. I used the word defective, and not monstrous.

M. le President. The explanation suffices. I shall not consult the Assembly to know whether it heard as I did. I believe I heard correctly.

A voice from the Centre. M. Hennequin spoke first of a monstrous fact, and then of a defective institution.

M. Benoist d’Azy, one of the vicepresidents, presided on this occasion.

The lucid intelligence of M. Benoist d’Azy presided over the meeting of the permanent committee which found the decree of the President placing the department of Ardèche under martial law “ a good and necessary measure.”

M. L. P.