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which the public may secure for themselves a rood 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 evil .
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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 funds . 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 punishment 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 inhospitable 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 Viiithau , " 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 upcak 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 Kiiffragc 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 outtiet declared , as they 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 Paris , in which many of the highest Legitimists , as well a »
Republicans , were involved . Among the rest , M . de Chateaubriand . The accused 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 , offences b
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 in 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
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 , arid 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 , but 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 be believed that ardent and exclusive
Republican fanatics were conspiring with 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 cmtps d' 6 tat , 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-raff scoundrels , " finally suppressed , at the instance of the Assembly , by the President himself .
Do not the Legitimists conspire ? Do not the Orleanists conspire ? Is not the Government of M . Louis Napoleon Bonaparte , the culprit of 1 H 40 , the amnestied exile of the Revolution of 1848 , a permanent conspiracy against all other parties , and against the Republic lie solemnly swore to uphold and to maintain ? Oh ! 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 , these accusations of conspiracy may be far 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 France 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 Vai' thau 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 , imprisonmen t 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 dut ) r , 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 .
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ENGLAND THE TOOL OF ABSOLUTISM . Hnuland will be disgraced if the suspicions suggested by the case of the " Baroness von Beck " be not dispelled—Kngland will be disgraced by suffering the continuance of a Ministry which permits itself to be a department of the Austrian police . We arc not using any metaphor . The Baroness von Beck is now known to have been a hired spy of the Hungarian National Government
—known and « 'roplo \ ed as such by Kossuth . Vve may regret to learn that Kossuth did employ such engines ; but we may remember thai they bnve been employed by nfl leaders in troubled tuner , from Napoleon to Henry the Fourth , from I eter the Great to Washington . She came to London , offered herself to the Commi « iionerH of Police-as a spy in " the Foreign department of the Angltnh
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Sept . 6 , 1851 . ] C »* fUafret . 849
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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 ia 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 practical 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
passeng' rs an Insurance Ticket ; and one is disappointed to lin'J on questioning their men , who incur nearly all the danger , that few if any are provided for in this way . For a very smnll sum , one Insurance Society now proposes to insure any Passenger for Life in case of ltail way casualty . Permit me thus to suggest , that railway companies insure their own servants . Assurance Societies against Railway Accidents , of which there are 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 oflieer might be insured for 10 b . Some might argue , as Mr . Sheil did , against the legalization of marriage with a deceased wife ' s sister . Sheil held that love had no substantial attraction , where change of affection was made legal , and some may hold , that if th «* lives of servants are insured , they will cease to take care of them . Such a capricious 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 6 clf icspcct . A frequent traveller , " ( I . J . IIOLTOAKK . "
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 6, 1851, page 849, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1899/page/13/
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