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Sept. 6, 1851.] Cft* Hi ft & It, 849
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BOULOGNE, 1840: LYONS, 1851. The sentenc...
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RAILWAY INSURANCE APPLIED TO RAILWAY SER...
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—known and employed as such by Kossuth. ...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Adulteration And Admixture Of Forkiun Fl...
which the public may secure for themselves a good and genuine bread loaf , in place of the spurious article which they now eat . The remedy is in their own hands ; it is quite enough for us at present to expose the eviJ .
Sept. 6, 1851.] Cft* Hi Ft & It, 849
Sept . 6 , 1851 . ] Cft * Hi ft & It , 849
Boulogne, 1840: Lyons, 1851. The Sentenc...
BOULOGNE , 1840 : LYONS , 1851 . The sentences of the court-martial of Lyons , however anticipated in form , were so preposterous in degree , that all France , Reactionist as well as Democratic , was struck with consternation . The military council had obeyed too well the impulsion under which it acted , and had recognized too faithfully the blind vindictiveness of the Government of whose extra-legal rigours it was the fatal instrument . The deep and painful impression created in the minds even of those honest and moderate " Conservatives , " whose conspiracies are officially protected , was attested by an instant and sensible decline in the public fund ? . Even at the Bourse—that stronghold of Reaction , that
sanctuary of the " Party of Order "—a feeling of stupor and dismay prevailed . A sinister presentiment succeeded to astonishment , as men remembered the shifting sands upon which the fortunes of political majorities are reared , and which might engulf next year the giddy hopes of the Counter-revolution , as the Revolution had in a few hours engulfed a dynasty of eighteen years . It was impossible to forget the political trials of the 6 th of October , 1840 , and not to compare the sentence of the Court of Peers , with the sentence of the court-martial of Lyons . In 1840 , the crime was patent , the rebellion overt , the guilt positive . The attempt to destroy and to change the Government and the established order of succession was
incontestibly proved . The punishment of death for political offenders was still in vigour ; yet the Court of Peers discarded the extreme penalty , and M . Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was sentenced to no severer destination than perpetual imprisonment in a fortress situated on the Continental territory of the kingdom . The then accomplices and present intimates of the first President of the French Republic were condemned to very light periods of detention or imprisonment ; and only one of the prisons , M . Aldenize ( who has now forfeited the patronage of his " Prince " by apparent Republican sympathies ) , was sentenced to deportation . But in 1840 , deportation was merely a nominal punishment . Since June 8 , 1850 , it has become a real
puishment , and by the very terms of the law , replaces the punishmeut of death . And when we add , that it is deportation beyond the continent of the Republic , to islands in the Pacific Ocean so desolate and so remote that no ship visits , except by force of accident , their inhospitablo crags ( for neither water , nor fruits , nor anchorage , can tempt the approach of civilization ) , may it not be said that deportation to the " Valley of Vaithau , " or to the " Island of Noukahiva , " is not simply a substitution for , but rather a horrid aggravation of , the punishment of death ? It is what De Montalembert in his liberal days indignantly said of exile in Siberia , a " protracted execution . "
Had it not been for the noble decree of that Provisional Government which abolished capital punishments , when it restored to M . Louis Napoleon a country , and for the fifth article of the Republican constitution , which M . L . Napoleon once swore and now forswears , three of the accused at Lyons ( not to speak of the four who were sentenced by default ) , Alphonse Gent , Ode , and Longomazino would die by the guillotine . If ever there was a Government to which its own past antecedents recommended future indulgence * , surely it was the Government of the proscribed rebel , whom the monarchy he had attacked treated with clemency , the revolution pardoned , and universal fcufFrage exalted .
From the moment when the advocates for the defence retired in a body from the court , they abandoned , with the consent of their clients , the foregone conclusions of an arbitrary and exceptional court to the verdict of public opinion , content to know that the rigours of reactionary violence would be redressed by the larger verdict of European justice . They had not at the outset declared , as t hey might have done , the competency of a military board to try prisoners in a time of intestine peace . Since the verdict of the court , the chief of the accused have entered an appeal to the Court of Cassation , with good reason and with complete precedent . . In June , 1832 , there was an insurrection in Purin , « n winch many of the highest JUtfitimiBts , as well as
and declared the trial of civil y a military court to be an illegal stretch of authority and a violation of the Constitutional Charter . The principles of Equity affirmed by the Court of Cassation m 1832 , and those Articles of the Charter of 1830 , subsist in the present Republican Constitution . Is the eloquent advocate of the accused of 1832 , some time minister of M . Louis Napoleon , faithful to his principles ? Or does he too chant the gloomy wail of " Public Safety , " and declare the present state of France to be revolutionary , abnormal ? Is the state of France now less normal and less tranquil
offences b Republicans , were involved . Among the rest , M . de Chateaubriand . The accu sed were refused trial by jury , and made amenable to the summary jurisdiction of a court-martial . Several , among others Geoffroy , were sentenced to death . Geoffroy appealed to the Court of Cassation against the competency of the court . After an eloquent pleading by Odilon Barrot , the Court of Cassation ( always the last stronghold of civil liberties ) annulled the sentences of the court-martial on the express grounds of its incompetency to try civil offenders ,
than in 1832 ? The retirement of the Advocates was , therefore , a solemn protest against the illegality of an arbitrary tribunal : against the intolerable denial of the right of trial by jury in a regular court to civil prisoners , in a time of political quiet . This protest will be echoed by the moral sense of all civilized nations to whom Justice is even more sacred than Freedom .
Nothing can be said against the temper or the impartiality of the officers who constituted this summary jurisdiction . The whole liberal press of France , and the advocates of the prisoners , acknowledged the moderation of the judges in handsome terms . But the whole course of the trials and the whole conduct of the accusations was enough to disgust all honest men . Hearsay evidence furnished by the dregs of the Police ; garbled reports dressed up by anonymous slander ; odious insinuations and revolting charges
greedily exposed by secret purveyors of infamy ; the very court summing up—not the balance of conviction and disproof on the political charges of conspiracy , hut the private lives of the accused , as described by the worst of reprobates whom the police employs . The upshot of these elaborate accusations , of these tedious trials , and of these unmeasured sentences is that the Government of the Bonapartist reaction thought to strike at the roots of the great conspiracy of 1852 , but have only
lopped off a few branches unconnected with the far more formidable organization ( rather than conspiracy ) which holds them in terror and suspense . The alliances of Alphonse Gent were a mere Defence Society in the presence of counterrevolutionary intrigues . The dreaded confederacy of 1852 to fulfil 1848 remains intact . And to prosecute that would be to try four millions of French citizens . As to conspiracy , it was not to he believed that ardent and exclusive
Republican fanatics were conspiring wtth official conspirators to destroy the institution raised at so great a cost , and already so mutilated by reaction . No act was established ; nothing overt ; nothing positive . That there was an extensive and widely spread organization for the defence of the Republic against Monarchical and Bonapartist intrigues , and against coups d'itat , apprehended even by the
Party of Order , and denounced by Moderate men in the National Assembly , was not to be denied But what is this conspiracy as compared to the charitable " society of the 10 th of December , " patronized by the President , organized by his intimates and adherents , composed ( as M . de Lasteyrie said ) of " 6000 riff-ruff scoundrels , " finally suppressed , at the instance of the Assembly , by the President himself .
Do not the Legitimists conspire ? Do not the Orlcanists conspire ? Is not the Government of M . Louis Napoleon Bonaparte , the culprit of 1840 , the amnestied exile of the Revolution of 184 H , a permanent conspiracy against all other parties , and against the Republic he solemnly swore to uphold and to maintain ? Ob 1 these inordinate and excessive sentences of political vengeance are a disastrous and fatal precedent . In this epoch of
change , in this interval between a revolution abortive and a revolution universal and complete , on a soil strewn with the ruins of governments and majorities , thene accusations of conspiracy may be fur too easily and too prodigally bandied from the vanquished to the victors ! The conspirator of today become the hero of to-morrow . Who known what government Franco may choose before
September of the coming year ? May not the intimates of M . Louis Napoleon be then the accused conspirators ? May not they , with with far greater justice than the accused of Lyons , be denounced as having attempted to subvert the Republic ? The Republic was wrested from the Republicans in December , 1848 . May it not fall from the hands of the reaction in May , 1852 ? And it is M . Louis Napoleon and his instruments who point the way to the desolate and inhospitable prisons of Vaithau and Noukahiva ? If their islands are to be peopled with the political chiefs of France , may not the Bonapartists be , if not the first to go , the last to remain ?
But we , looking from a land of freedom and of justice , upon these miserable perversions , care not for individuals . Let them look to the Nemesis that awaits all tyranny . But when we find the compelled reserve of the independent democratic press of France so absolute that they dare not qualify injustice in the terms it deserves , for fear of fine , suspension , imprisonment ruin— and what is worse ,
the reactionary journals utterly indifferent to so grave a violation of the commonest rights of free citizens , to be judged by their peers , we deem it a sacred duty , in the name , not of freedom merely , but of civilization and humanity , to declare that a Government which abjures justice or bends it to the caprices of political hostilities , is a Government already judged and condemned .
Railway Insurance Applied To Railway Ser...
RAILWAY INSURANCE APPLIED TO RAILWAY SERVANTS . The suggestion made in the subjoined letter to ourselves is worth practical consideration : it has a moral as well as an oeconomical force : — "September 2 , 1851 . " Sir , —To those who travel much in Great Britain two things are peculiarly familiar—railway insurance for passengers against accidents and death , and uninsured maimed and dead railway officials , whose families are left unprovided for on the injury or decease of the parent . An engineer loses a leg ; a stoker is crushed ; a guard is decapitated ; a porter is decimated ; and I do not learn that the respective companies make any substantial compensation or permanent provision for the disabled or the orphans and widows . Since insurance is now so easy , why do not all companies insure their own officers ? The cost would be trifling—the tribute to the men would be of importance , who would take a more personal interest in the welfare of a company who took so practic < il an interest in their welfare . Deaths occasionally reported , twice passing under my notice , are shocking enough ; but more shocking is the after-story of the dependence of the bereaved family . Almost every company will sell the passengers an Insurance Ticket ; and one is disappointed to find on questioning their men , who incur nearly all the danger , that few if any are provided for in this way . For a very small sum , one Insurance Society now proposes to insure any Passenger for Life in case of Kailway casualty . Permit me thus to suggest , that railway companies insure their own servants . Assurance Societies against Railway Accidents , of which there arc now two , might move in . this direction , and cause this question to be debated at Shareholders' Meetings . Now that a Passenger may insure himself for £ 50 for Life for 5 s ., perhaps a company ' s officer might be insured for 10 b . Some might argue , as Mr . Shell did , against the legalization of marriage with a deceased wife ' s sister . Sheil held that love had no substantial attraction where change of affection wa » made legal , and some may hold , ttiat if the lives of servants are insured , they will cease to take enre of them . Such a capr icious estimate of human nature is little warranted by experience . The sense of Insurance begets the sense of consideration ; that in its turn , a practical self ; importance and self importance begets self respect . A frequent traveller , " ii . J . IIOLYOAKK . "
—Known And Employed As Such By Kossuth. ...
—known and employed as such by Kossuth . We may regret to learn that Kossufh did emp loy such engines ; but we inny remember thai they nave been employed by all leaders in troubled tune , from Napoleon to Henry fbe Fourth , from I eter ( he Great to Washington . She came toLondon , offered herself ro the Commi «« ioner « of Police as a spy in " the Foreign department of the Lnglish
ENGLAND THE TOOL OF ABSOLUTISM . England will be disgraced if the suspicions suggested by the ease of the " Baroness von Beck " be not dispelled—England will be disgraced bv KjiifTcring * the continuance of a Ministry which permits itself to be a department of the Austrian police . We are not . using any metaphor . The Baroness von Beck is now known to have been a hired spy of the Hungarian National Government
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 6, 1851, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_06091851/page/13/
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