V.--American Life in France: 1851

SEPTEMBER 22d.—Yesterday we were at the Oratoire. We heard M. Adolphe Monod, a celebrated preacher. I like the French preaching very much. It is earnest, and keeps the attention constantly alive. French clergymen use no notes. I do not know whether their discourses are committed to memory or extemporaneous. If the latter, their command of language and power of arrangement are wonderful. But I think it impossible that this should be the case. Most of the sermons we have heard have been very finished productions.

The children came home Saturday as usual. They are well and happy. All my anxieties about Willie are over. They were very keen that first Monday morning, when we went away and left the little fellow to his fate. I seemed to be abandoning him to the cold outside world that day. Besides the thought of the strangeness and the loneliness and the homesickness, there was that of the dry, hard work, without help or praise or sympathy. Willie had never before been put to compulsory study. When we sent him to school in Boston, it was that he might be with other boys, and that he might imbibe something of general instruction. We made a stipulation that he was not to do anything which he did not do of his own accord, or bring any lesson home except by his own choice. I remember his bringing home one lesson. It was on ancient Egypt. He had thought beforehand he should like history. He grappled with the lesson obstinately, and mastered it, almost demolishing the leaf of Taylor’s Manual, against which his efforts were directed. After all, he found himself indifferent to the ancient Egyptians. He thought their affairs did not concern him. We agreed that he should let history go until it came down somewhat nearer to him. We both thought that arithmetic would be convenient ; so he chose arithmetic as his principal school study.

Willie kept up his little lessons at home with me. They were given chiefly to German and French. I began teaching him German when he was very young, thinking it important to a good knowledge of English. I began by telling him stories into which I introduced a German word which I made recur frequently ; when he was familiar with this, I gave another word in German, and so on until the whole or nearly the whole story was told in German. When he already knew a number of common words, I let him begin to read very simple things in German. Whatever he read, he read over, day after day, until he knew it entirely by heart. He acquired in this way quite a stock of little poems and stories, which he had ready for recitation at school on the day when this exercise was called for, and which he had acquired without the slightest trouble ; for I never hurried him. When he was ready to do without the book, he would push it away and recite his piece instead of reading it. Then I would tell him the titles of other tales and ballads, until he caught at one that hit his fancy. We would then begin on the new piece, and in the same way, by slow degrees, make it our own. He can read anything in German that interests him. I am afraid he will have to lose his German now. I had meant to keep it up by reading a very little with him two or three times a week. But it will be impossible. He will have as much laid upon him as he can bear ; that I see ; and it will not do to add a feather’s weight.

He does not know as much of French as of German, for he did not begin it as early. As I wished chiefly to prepare him for speaking it, I let him read stories in which there was a good deal of conversation. I found some nice little story-books at the Antislavery Fair. The children’s talk in them was pretty and simple, without affectation.

I began with giving him a sketch of the story he was going to read, in order to awaken his interest without wholly satisfying it. Then I translated for him a single sentence, first freely, then word by word. When he asked to translate it himself, I let him do so, prompting him quickly, however, without leaving him time to hesitate or suggest a wrong meaning. This sentence perfectly learned, we added another, and so on until the whole story was familiar. After this he read the same story over and over, until he received the meaning directly from the French words without translating them into English.

Before he had been in France a fortnight, I observed that he followed perfectly a French conversation which passed in his presence. At school he talks with everybody, Alfred says. M. Gachotte is confident that the language will not be an impediment in his general studies. And yet Willie never studied French regularly with dictionary and grammar until he came here. He hardly knows how he got what French he has, any more than how he came by his English. One consequence of this is, that he has no false shame about speaking; no thought except how he shall bring his meaning to the light. The way in which he compasses this is sometimes truly surprising.

The approved principle of our time seems to be to make everything as hard as possible to children, in order to exercise their brains. I went on the plan of saving him all the trouble I could. I believe many a delicate brain is injured by early over-exercise and injudicious exercise. And in the end what has been gained ? I have observed that some children who spend a vast deal of time over grammars, Latin and other, never arrive at a knowledge of the language itself. If we are to have but one, surely it is better to have the language than an account of it. Not that I undervalue the study of grammar. It must have its place, but at a later period, when it is demanded by the student himself, as it certainly will be if he has not been disgusted, with all study.

I am confident that the surest and most thorough way for children to learn a language, their own or another, is by the repeated hearing and reading of things pleasing in form and interesting in substance. They will not weary of this, if we do not. It is a mistake to suppose that children crave continual novelty. With them, what pleases once pleases always. Their familiar poems and tales are their familiar friends. They attach themselves to ideal personages as to real persons, and always welcome their appearance on the scene. My children would ask for the same ballads every twilight for years, and seemed only to grow fonder of them the oftener they heard them.

From children themselves we learn what is good for children, for they know. It is through a continued, habitual familiarity with beautiful things that the heart and mind are cultivated. This is a tranquil, an insensible work. The kingdom of Heaven cometh not with observation.

I do not believe in intellectual taskwork for young children. We must only offer, not press our gifts. What is to profit them will win its way, and establish itself in the memory by a right of its own. Let us not be too solicitous to provide either occupation or entertainment for our children.

Everything is new to the young; every good and beautiful thing full of meanings, which unfold themselves, one after another, in a series of enchanting surprises. The emotions of children are so vivid, their pleasure in the reception of ideas so keen, that, if we do not try to do too much for them, if we only supply the proper material as it is called for, and leave them the leisure to feel and to ponder, their own minds and imaginations will afford them perpetual pastime, and will carry on for them a work sure and perfect, as all the processes of nature are.

As poetry makes the earliest literature of a people, so poetry should, I believe, be the vehicle of the first deliberate instruction of a child. But I would never give a young child ‘‘a piece,”as we say, to learn by rote alone. The least of the evils arising from this supposed labor-saving method are the faults in pronunciation, emphasis, and expression he will fall into, and which it will be hard to correct. The piece itself is fruitless to him at the time, and probably lost to him forever ; so that the better the selection, the greater the sacrifice. It is probably connected in his mind thenceforth with a sense of annoyance and injury, and is discarded from among his mental stores. It might have been a possession for life in all its beauty, with the added associations of tenderness and sympathy, which transfigure the common things of life and invest the beautiful and rare with yet a sweeter and a more enduring charm.

Above all I would never make a task-book of the Bible. Those who prize the Bible most devoutly, and always more and more, are those who never sighed over it in childhood, casting longing glances towards the window, and longing thoughts towards the outer door ; they are those who first heard it, not read in a conventional or in a didactic tone, but from fond lips, in the subdued voice of love and reverence.

I must believe that the mother is the best teacher for the child, at least until it is ten or twelve years old. I will only except those rare teachers who have a genius for their art, and that passion for it which people have for what they are born to. And yet, why should I except even these ? Who can be so earnest for success as the mother ? who so ingenious in finding out the way to it ? Love, parental love, is so inspiring, so inventive, that it supplies the place of genius and even of instruction.

And what does not the mother lose who foregoes this delightful work! Is there a pleasure equal to that of teaching a bright, affectionate child ?

The little creatures are so fond of the company of their elders, so pleased and proud to have a common occupation with them ! With what high contentment they establish themselves in the chair set as close as possible to yours! How they turn from time to time, to exchange a look of mutual felicitation !

It has been made an objection to the mother’s being the teacher, that it obliges her to exercise too much restraint over the child, and thus weakens its love for her. This is an unfounded fear. The more mother and child are together, the more their interests are one, the closer will be the bond between them.

The mother who is associated in her child’s mind with the truest gains of his life, who has awakened or developed tastes and susceptibilities which are his security against the dominion of inferior ones, who has opened avenues to pleasures from which no caprices of fortune can exclude him, insures, with the constancy of his gratitude, the permanence of her own influence.

There are those who think that the indulgence of the mother will render her instruction desultory and superficial. This danger must be thought of; yet I think it a less one than that of over-solicitude and undue requirement.

Children will not put up with superficial teaching unless they have been rigorously trained to it by an arrogant, meagre-minded teacher. There is no way of finding out one’s own ignorance so sure as teaching a child. How many things we think we know because we have gone over them, yet find ourselves, on proof, possessed only of some vague and disordered notions! We are compelled to method and exactitude when we set ourselves to present a subject before a child’s mind in a simple and perspicuous manner. Our children train us quite as much as we train them.

A well-constituted child is orderly, patient, constant ; enjoys the use of his faculties, takes delight in accomplishment. We have only to set him in the right direction, and not make the path unpleasant to him ; he will walk forward as fast as is good for him.

The fault which we must guard ourselves against most watchfully is impatience to see results. We must not expect advance from day to day, hardly from month to month. If, on looking back six months or a year, we perceive a gain, it is enough. The mental growth, like the physical, is gradual and imperceptible. We ought always to keep this analogy in view. We do not cram children with food ; why should we try to cram them with knowledge? We do not let them have indigestible things, or force them to take what they have a decided distaste for ; why should we oppress or sicken them with heavy or repulsive studies ?

What we have to do for children is to instil into them good principles and help them to form good habits. It is important very early to cultivate the habit of attention and of persevering pursuit. This must be done by keeping the interest engaged. We can interest them only by being interested ourselves, genuinely interested; not in the distant aim of their future advantage. but in their work of the hour, in all their little thoughts and emotions of every moment. Sympathy is the great power in the human world. This it is which works the miracles.

I could wish that the mother need not give up the charge of her children’s education, even when they pass out of childhood, but could continue to be their guide and companion in what are called the higher studies.

I have had in my mind, of course, mothers whom their condition and the custom of our time relieve or deprive of the material work of the household, — an exemption which is a blessing or the reverse, according to their capacity for providing themselves with such substitutes for the discarded occupations, as shall be an equal discipline to themselves, and give them the same importance to their family that the practical housewife has to hers. It is true, that no American women are so unfortunate as to be entirely exempt from domestic cares. But even those who have many in the way of administration and superintendence can almost always find an hour or two in the day which they can give to reading and study, and they can, with this, easily keep in advance of their children. The hour so given will more than regain itself in the increased value of the others. It steadies the mind, composes the nerves. It is, in its effects, like a journey into another country. The return to customary scenes, after this short but complete withdrawal, finds them all fresh and charming. Things stand in their just proportions. Exaggerated troubles and anxieties have shrunk, leaving to the compensations and promises of life their just pre-eminence.

It would, I think, be an admirable thing if mothers of the same family or the same circle would associate themselves for the education of their children, each taking charge of the department for which she may have a special gift or taste. Thus, one could teach music, another drawing ; one this language, another that. If it were necessary to have a teacher for some branch in which the circle had no proficient, mothers and children could take lessons together, and afterwards go over them together. This companionship Would give a zest to study, would make it real and earnest. The acquisition of knowledge would become what it was meant to be, one of the chief joys of life, and especially of the life of the young, instead of being an imposition and a bugbear. If such a system could come into use, its success, even in the ordinary sense of the word, would be so great that it would lead to the certain renovation of our public institutions, still fearfully clogged by the monastic tradition.

September 23d.— At Montpellier, Le Suffrage Universel has been seized in the post and at its office. The article which has occasioned this seizure is one on martial law in Ardèche. I should like to see this article.

M. Chevreau, the prefect of Ardèche, has come out with a new decree in the cause of order. He has observed, he says, that certain individuals affect the color red, wearing this one a belt, that one a neckerchief, of the offensive color, while others permit themselves to exhibit it at the button-hole. He decrees, therefore, that henceforth red caps, red cravats, red belts, red ribbon, and so forth, are formally forbidden in the department of Ardèche. The “ and so forth "probably covers the red carnation or the red rose, which the peasant may not put in his buttonhole until further order.

As I am on the chapter of prohibitions, let me mention a few other instances.

General Castellane has prohibited, in the sixth military division, “the sale of engravings and lithographs representing the portraits of persons implicated in the Lyons Plot.”

The five departments over which the sway of the general commanding the sixth military division extends seem to be of a most persistent and impracticable character. They keep him well on the qui vive, forcing him to be always prohibiting them, now this, now that. It is a picture ; it is a medal; it is a pamphlet by Louis Blanc ; it is a book by Esquiros. The very titles of some of the forbidden books are so suggestive of radicalism, that it must revolt this champion of order to be obliged to publish them himself, though only in a prohibited list. Think of a people more than two years under martial law, still having heart enough left to run risks for the sake of reading “ The Martyrs of Liberty". Such a book was still read in these departments last summer; for General Castellane heard of it and prohibited it.

In the department of Nord, the colportage of the Bible has been prohibited by the prefect. A Protestant colporteur, who had applied for permission to carry round the Bible in this department received a refusal through the mayor of the village where he was when he made his application. Not wishing to give up his work at the first rebuff, he went to Cambrai, the chief place of the arrondissement, to renew his demand ; but only to learn that the colportage of no religious book, whether Protestant or Catholic, was permitted in the department. Here is a prefect who goes to the root of the matter.

A Napoleonist journal attributes to the French people a habit of sympathizing with conspirators, and of blaming the government for the measures it takes to secure the public safety. When the people of a country sympathizes with conspirators, it must be either because it believes in their cause, or does not believe in their guilt. If the French people thought a conspiracy extended throughout the country, having for its object the extinction of all actual holders of property and its division among banditti, there would be very little sympathy felt for the conspirators. Fear is ruthless.

The complot Français-Allemand does not appear to have had a great success as an engine for working on the fears of the community. The Lyons trial did a great deal towards disabusing the public mind, and rendered a new appeal to this class of apprehensions a delicate experiment. There is an apparent sense of failure, and an abandonment of the expectations which may have been entertained of this conspiracy when its discovery was first announced. Foreigners are still imprisoned and exiled in its name, but many of the Frenchmen who were caught up in the first days of the alarm are obtaining their release ; it being admitted that there is no evidence to be produced against them, or only, perhaps, their signature to an insignificant note found in a suspected house.

When the discovery of a conspiracy is in progress, the agents of the law pounce down upon the houses of the persons who are to be implicated in it, and sweep up all written papers. The signatures appended to notes and letters are put upon a suspected list which suggests new domiciliary visits productive in their turn. Such masses of documents were accumulated for use on the Lyons trial, that M. Michel (de Bourges) said, “ If all these papers are to be read, we must make up our minds to pass the rest of our lives reading papers.” M. Thourel, being a hospitable and social man, had probably a large correspondence ; so many letters had been laid up on his account, that the prosecution itself proposed to pass the greater part of them over, if the defence did not object. The defence objected the less, inasmuch as the letters in question had nothing to do with the case.

The more ardent Republicans have sometimes repelled the counsel of the calmer and graver, and have chafed under the restraint imposed upon them by their leaders. At such times they have expressed their dissent and impatience, not only publicly in the journals of their party, but also and yet more unreservedly in letters to friends of their own shade of opinion. Such letters the prosecution takes a peculiar satisfaction in producing, and exults in the evidence of differences which it hopes to revive and imbitter by these exposures. The republican leaders respond nobly by coming forward to defend and vindicate the men whom a too ardent patriotism may for a moment have misled, but who are frankly forgiven by those whose prudence they once assailed, since, though they struck, they heard.

The royalists are greatly disconcerted by the union and harmony which prevail among the Republicans of different parties, who lay down their differences in order to secure success in their great common aim, the rescue of the republic. The various royalist parties encourage each other to a similar abnegation, but no one seems yet ready to take the lead on this uninviting path.

L’Union, a legitimist journal, has recently had an article on this subject. “ The republican parties,” it says, “ are preparing for the crises of 1852 by reconciliations, by manifestoes of union, by sacrifices of opinion and of resentment. They say and they demonstrate that their strength is in union.” With this conduct, the royalist paper compares that of the royalist parties, “ who insult, calumniate, vilify the servants of their own cause.”

It is true that the Royalists of different views say very bitter things of each other. They agree fully only in their dread and hatred of the republic.

The Union is of opinion that, as soon as the Republicans have by their concerted action defeated the other parties and carried the elections of 1852, they will immediately fall apart again, and each particular sect court partisans on its own account.

Undoubtedly ; and here precisely the value of popular institutions shows itself. No one of the different parties of Republicans — I have heard ten enumerated, and probably there are more — can hope to elect its own candidate. They must unite on one who represents the great principles in which they all agree. They must be satisfied with some honest man who respects the institutions of the country, and will not favor any illegal interference with them. This settled, the various parties are at liberty to propagate their several theories. What germs of truth there are in each will take root, and in due time will influence legislation.

The reaction has itself contributed to the good understanding which daily gains ground among the republicans. It has aided to level the barriers which divided them. It has called all Republicans Socialists, has called all republicans Reds ; it has included in the Mountain republican members of the Assembly who would have disavowed that appellation, as well as those who accepted it. These words are thus acquiring new associations, which displace the older injurious ones. And the Republicans proper are ceasing to protest against these names, and are beginning to protest against the calumnious meaning imputed to them. Again, the reaction, by justifying suspicions and apprehensions which might once have seemed chimerical, has forced the more sedate Republicans to admit the clear-sightedness of the more ardent ; while the advanced school of liberals, seeing men whom they once decried as half-hearted tried as with fire, recognize their loyalty and disinterestedness, and, furling their separate banners, enlist under the common standard. This standard is that of the republic, the democratic republic, whose essential conditions are universal suffrage, a free press, free speech.

It is cheering to see the generous interest the people of England feel in the liberation of Kossuth. Many towns are preparing to give him a public reception. Poor France ! no town of hers can offer him such an expression of sympathy.

September 25th. — Yesterday took place the trial of M. Vacquerie, of the Avénement du Peuple, for publishing Victor Hugo’s letter with a commendatory article of his own. He was acquitted of an attempt to provoke civil war, but convicted of the other offences. He has been condemned to six months’ imprisonment and one thousand francs’ fine.

The author of the letter was not prosecuted. The consent of the National Assembly, not now in session, is necessary to the prosecution of one of its members. The trial must either have been postponed until November, or the Assembly convoked for the occasion. The debates would undoubtedly have been lively. A notoriety would have been given to the affair, and a circulation to the letter of Victor Hugo altogether undesirable.

The advocate-general did not spare the absent author. The guilt of the letter was aggravated by the deliberation with which it had been prepared, — three days having, as the advocategeneral surmised, been employed in its composition ; “if, indeed, a longer time had not been taken, for the condemnation of the Evénement was foreseen in advances

M. Desmarets, who defended M. Vacquerie, having referred to the alarm which the recent severities had awakened, even in a portion of the reactionarypress, added : —

“ But let it reassure itself. The Public Ministry reserves its rigors for the journals of a certain opinion. It does not maltreat its friends. Daily attacks, the most vehement, the most audacious, against the Constitution and the republic are tolerated. A journal which openly, without disguise, makes appeal to a coup d'état, to a new 18 Brumaire, has not been seized.

“ This is what we find in a morning journal: ‘We desire the maintenance of the law of the 31st May, the re-election of the President, and to prevent any Assembly whatever from erecting itself into a convention. In order to obtain these results, we are resolved to march against insurrection, and to trample under foot the articles by whose aid it is thought our will can be enchained. We shall not shrink from an 18 Brumaire, and we shall counsel Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to stifle the republic on the day when it shall try to realize a single one of its threats

“Neither the author of this article nor the conductor of the journal has been prosecuted.”

This example of reactionist audacity is by no means singular. I have seen more than one article as bold in meaning, if not as lawless in language. The Siècle of some days ago, in an article on these condemnations of the liberal press, gives an instance of advice offered to the Assembly, which does not yield either in tone or in substance to the advice given to the President in the passage cited by M. Desmarets.

“ When we are seized,” says the Siècle, “ we republicans, and brought before the jury, we are almost always accused of ‘exciting to hatred and contempt of the government of the republic ’ ; not of the royal or of the imperial government, but of the government of the republic.

“The parquets recognize, then, the government of the republic. They insist on respect to this government, when Republicans are in question.

“ Coming out of the court-house, we find, in the Mémorial Bordelais, an explicit declaration of war against the republic, a declaration in these terms: ‘Sharing with M. de la Vallette the honor ot loving neither the republic nor the constitution, believing with him that the day when both disappear will'be a good day for France, it is natural that we should take part in the debate, and that we should say aloud that we are fully resolved to advise the Assembly to decide, notwithstanding the veto of the two hundred and seventy-eight, that the constitution shall be revised. Now, if our legislators, at twenty-five francs a day, wish to make barricades, to play at conventions, and offer their life to the republic which has so liberally endowed them, they are free to do so. Only their barricades will be thrown down, they will be treated as factious. The army, in whose ranks all the men of order will place themselves, will sweep away the Montagnards, who show themselves so menacing. M. de la Vallette is then right in saying that we shall break all the strings by the aid of which our adversaries pretend to chain us to legality.’

“In presence of this direct attack against the republic and against legality, of this announcement that we and all who defend the republic and the law are to be treated as factious, we naturally say, ‘ Here are people whom the magistrates of the Public Ministry, named, according to Article 86 of the Constitution, by the President of the republic, who is charged by Article 49 to watch over and secure the execution of the laws, — here are people whom the magistrates of the Public Ministry will certainly bring before the jury.’ But not at all ! These people can, without being seized, say that they will counsel the Assembly to despise the law ; they can outrage the constitution and prepare their plans of battle. If we did as much, we should have good reason to fear, judging by our own particular experiences. Why, then, this difference ? Is it because we are Republicans ? ”

The experiment of prosecution for a real attack upon republican institutions has been tried, however, within a few months. The result justified the confidence of the party of order in the Paris jury. The case was indeed a mild one. M. Alfred Louis Troussel de Mirebeau was prosecuted for an article in his journal, La Gazette des Communes, containing an attack upon republican institutions and upon the constitution. The passages on which the accusation was founded were these : —

“ The republic is anarchy in ideas and in facts ; it is the revolution in permanence ; it is the oppression of all by each and of each by all ; it is disorder, distrust, miserv, and death.

“ The monarchy is order ; it is liberty ; it is respect for all rights ; it is confidence, prosperity, force, and future.

“ France is on the road to monarchy.”

M. Suin, the advocate - general, in conducting the prosecution, beamed with candor, and with clemency. “ La Gazelle des Communes,” said he, “is a legitimist journal. We respect legitimist opinion. We respect its souvenirs, its faith. We know that it exists in virtue of illustrious traditions ; that it supports itself upon great names, and upon the principle of territorial property, which is one of the great foundations of society. But,” continued the advocate-general, “ what we must dispute to La Gazette des Communes is the right to attack, to wish to overthrow an established government. To say that ‘the republic is anarchy,’that it is ‘ revolution in permanence,’ is to make a violent, a passionate attack which no government can tolerate.”

M. Suin was of opinion that political questions should be left to the Assembly, whose concern they were. The Legislative Assembly would decide as to the necessity for a revision of the constitution ; if this decision should be affirmative, the Constituent Assembly would decide between a partial and a radical revision, between republic and monarchy.

M. Suin overlooked the circumstance that, as the Constituent Assembly was to be elected by the people, it somewhat imported them to know which of the two, republic or monarchy, was anarchy and oppression ; which of the two, order, liberty, and respect for the rights of all. Perhaps the advocategeneral was not altogether unwilling to be refuted by the counsel for the defence.

M. de Laboulie maintained that his client, the author of the article in question, had not the least intention in the world of attacking the actual government. Was this government a republic ? The Republicans themselves said it was not. General Cavaignac said it was a counterfeit republic. The republicans were waiting for 1852 to have a republic. For the rest, it was entirely proper for the press to treat of questions discussed in the Assembly. “ M. de Falloux had just told us there that the monarchy ought to be re-established. He repeated with great talent and skill the very things which this writer has said in his journal, namely, that the monarchy alone could make the happiness, the glory, the prosperity of France. General Cavaignac, on the other hand, maintains that the day of monarchy has gone by ; that France can only live as a republic. The right to discuss the question then exists. Let the Monarchists say that the republic is anarchy, let the Republicans say that monarchy is slavery. Be sure that free discussion will elicit truth.”

M. Louis Troussel de Mirebeau was acquitted ; and well that he was, if only the advocates of the republic were allowed the same impunity as its assailants. But the fact that free discussion elicits truth does not work in favor of free discussion with those whose hopes truth would rather confound than confirm.

About a fortnight after this trial, another took place before this same court of assizes of the Seine. It was that of a bookseller charged with having for sale a pamphlet entitled Le Républicain des Campagnes, in which, among other articles, was one by Félix Pyat, called Toast aux Paysans. This article was found to contain an offence to the person of the President of the republic, an attack upon republican institutions and the constitution, and an attempt to incite citizens to hatred and contempt of each other.

The prosecution was, as before, conducted by M. Suin, advocate-general. He found it very much amiss in the republicans that they had never made any appeals to the peasant until after 1848, which gave him a vote. “ The peasants were despised before 1848. Not by us,” he makes haste to add. “ We have always seen in than the veritable population of France; the most interesting population, the most patient, the most sober, the most patriotic.”

One might ask why the magnanimous We, in whose name M. Suin speaks, never offered the most sober and patriotic part of the population that share in the affairs of the country which the despisers of this part of the population have been zealous in winning for it.

There is a remarkable conformity between the view of the peasants’ character expressed by M. Suin and that taken by M. Félix Pyat. Only M. Pyat associates with them the ouvriers and illustrates the patriotism of workingmen by some comparisons of their conduct with that of another class, — comparisons which jar somewhat with those “ illustrious traditions,” “ in virtue of which,” as M. Suin said, “ legitimist opinion exists.” He speaks of some circumstances attending the restoration ; of foreign armies brought by Frenchmen into France; of feasting and dancing among nobles and their allies in palaces, while, in cabin and in garret, the peasant and the workman mourned for their country.

The name of Félix Pyat is a word of fear in reactionist ears. In the view of many liberals he is an ultra-liberal. One with not more of conservative prepossession than remains to me might well begin to read the ‘'especially incriminated passages” of a prosecuted pamphlet of his, with an expectation of pain and offence.

But what appeal does this man of extreme opinions make to this injured, this long-suffering class, so powerful if they only knew their power ? He calls upon them to vote on the side of the republic !

“ Peasants, it depends on yourselves never to see again those days of shame and sorrow. Your brothers of the city have delivered you from that odious régime. The people of Paris has delivered you from kings, has made you free citizens, has conquered for you universal suffrage. Ah, guard it well ! The republic is in your hands. You are the most numerous. You are the strongest. Peasants, the country is again in danger; it is for you to save it still. You will save it this time pacifically ; no longer by armies, but by votes j by the sole force of numbers and of union. You will save the républic, France, and humanity.”

For offering for sale Le Republicatn des Campagnes, M. Carpentier, bookseller and man of letters, was condemned to six months’ imprisonment and one thousand francs’ fine.

September 26th. — The National, in an article on the political situation, speaks thus of the numerical force of the republican party: “ In saying that the republican party embraces at least the half of France, and balances the party of the reaction, we do not speak our whole thought; for it is evident to us that the Republicans are in the majority, and that their number increases every day. More than this, it is evident even to our enemies, for they have made the law of the 31st May. It is not, apparently, to punish them for not being republican enough that three millions of electors have been excluded from the polls by the Monarchists.”

After speaking of the difficulties under which the other parties labor, —of the illegality of the Napoleonist candidate, which it considers fatal to his hopes ; of the differences between the several parties of Royalists, — difficulties arising from contradictory principles and irreconcilable interests, — the National thus gives its view of the aims and prospects of the Republicans : —

“ We, on the contrary, divided as regards the future on important points, have, for the coming year, one interest and one aim, to save the republic. Our candidate will be neither a prince nor a pretender. The day after the republican principle has triumphed in his election, he will sink into the secondary part which the Constitution assigns him. The representatives will discuss the affairs of the republic. It will be his to execute what shall have been resolved upon.”

M. Dupin, making an address, about a fortnight ago, before the comice agricole of Clamecy, in the department of Nièvre, took occasion to offer some political advice to his audience, which consisted of some thousands of farmers and cultivators. He warned them of the dangers of 1852, “ at which date,” he said, “ what I call the party of crime has given itself rendezvous.” Impressing upon them the importance of their votes, he instructed them that it was of more consequence to have an Assembly of right views than a President.

“ The essential is to have a good legislative Assembly, for, with a revolutionary Assembly, the best President would soon be devoured, while with an Assembly of firm, capable, proved men, a President, were he a Socialist, would be easily reduced and restrained.”

M. Dupin’s hints were as good for the Republicans among his listeners as for the others. With a patriotic Assembly, the most audacious President could not go far on a treasonable path. He can propose oppressive laws, but he cannot make them. He can declare martial law needful, but he cannot impose it. Great, too great perhaps, as is the power which the Constitution has bestowed on the President, it has not left the country helpless before a usurper. On the other hand, with an honest, republican President, the most reactionist Assembly could do little harm. It requires the co-operation of President and Assembly to enslave the country.

It is entirely lawful and suitable for a respectable man like M. Dupin to call the party whose principles he disapproves “the party of crime.” All the newspapers in the country may report these words without being called to account for inciting citizens to hatred and contempt one of another, — a serious offence in these days when committed or supposed to be committed by a Republican.

It is perfectly in order for M. Dupin, a man of order, to discuss political topics before an agricultural meeting; but it would be a most unsuitable and seditious proceeding on the part of a Republican. An agricultural society has been dissolved before now only for listening to an address by a Republican, in which some vital questions were treated from the republican point of view.

An agricultural society, founded in the department of Gironde in 1840, and which had proved itself a very useful institution, had, last year, the imprudence to permit an address to be delivered before it by M. Pascal Duprat, who took occasion to elevate the arts of production above those of destruction ; calling attention to the fact that the money squandered in unnecessary and unjust wars would, employed upon agriculture, render all the waste land in the country fertile. He instanced the expedition against Rome, and certainly did not spare the government which employed the money of the people in this work. It was the more ungrateful in the society to listen to this seditious harangue, inasmuch as it had received governmental aid, that very year, to the amount of a thousand francs, or about two hundred dollars. The prefect pronounced the dissolution of the agricultural society. At the meeting held a few weeks ago by the councilgeneral of the department of Gironde, one of the members proposed the reestablishment of the society, on the ground of the great services it had rendered to agriculture.

The prefect defended his act. “ I had always supposed,” he said, “ that a cornice agricole was founded to honor and glorify agriculture, and not to cultivate politics ; but it seems that I was in error; the Montagnards would change all that. Last year, when the cornice of the Landes held its agricultural festival, M. Pascal Duprat was designedly brought to this celebration by his political friends. No sooner arrived than he began to speak. Permit me to cite a passage from his discourse : ‘ The men who govern us know how to find money enough for slaughtering a people or immolating its liberty. Have they not found in the national treasury sixty millions for that deplorable expedition to Rome, which has made the republican standard the accomplice of European royalties ? Why did they not reserve this money, raised upon the fruits of your toil, for the wants and necessities of agriculture ? ’ This incendiary appeal to every bad passion,” continued the prefect, “ occasioned a great scandal among this excellent people of the Landes. The men of order were indignant. I received several remonstrances on the subject. A lesson was necessary. I pronounced the dissolution of the society. I maintain my decision.”

We see, from time to time, reports of addresses made by the men of order to the electors of this or that place. The Republicans cannot, like their antagonists, take advantage of an agricultural meeting to open their views to their fellow-citizens ; neither have they the same freedom to make opportunities for themselves.

The Courrier de l’Eure stated, not long ago, that M. Garnier-Pagès, who was “making a democratic tour” in the department of Orne, was sent for by the procureur of the republic, resident in the arrondissement of Mortagne, to receive “ a severe reprimand, together with the advice to moderate the activity of his republican propagandism.”

M. Garnier Pagès was a member of the Constituent Assembly ; a member of the Executive Commission elected by that Assembly ; the second on the list, coming next to Arago, in the number of votes he received. And this man, the compeer of men once at the head of the affairs of the French nation, is to be reprimanded by a procureur for presuming to speak on national affairs to the people of one of the departments of France !

The Constitution secures to the people the right of association and of peaceful assemblage. The National Assembly has found means to relieve the government of the inconveniences of these republican provisions by giving it the power to suppress the societies it disapproves, and to prohibit meetings which, in its opinion, are likely to be detrimental to the public interest.

Even the meetings preparatory to elections cannot be held without authorization. You can judge, from the general course of things, how easily republican meetings for the choice of candidates may be found detrimental to the public interest. If not absolutely prohibited, conditions may be imposed which are deadly to freedom of discussion. It is evident that, if the republicans would exchange ideas or form plans, they must proceed with precaution. Correspondence carried on with secrecy leads to accusations of conspiracy. Private meetings held with a view to political discussion or conversation are broken up as illegal, and the participators in them are liable to prosecution.

September 27th. — The ignorance of the common people is continually brought forward as a reason why they should have no share in the government of the country. I am not sure that the ignorance of the higher classes is not greater and of a worse kind. But, in any case, ignorance, except that arrogant sort which is the result of false instruction, is not an incurable defect. It cannot be pretended that the common people have not the same aptitude for knowledge or the same faculty for employing it with the class that scorns them. We see men come out from this obscure crowd to take the highest places in the highest departments. We see men, the pride of the reactionary ranks, boasting their plebeian origin to enhance the value of their devotion to royalty and oligarchy. We see men, eminent in the national service, who, of the people, remain of the people, and the best representatives of their capacities are also the best exponents of their wants and hopes. What might not this intelligent people of France have learned in these three years, if political and social questions of universal interest had been discussed before them by competent men of different parties and sects ! But this ignorance, which is made the reproach of the people, is their most precious attribute in the view of those who would still manage and make use of them. It is guarded with anxious care.

The people of France are ostensibly living under a Constitution which ordains for them all the means of political instruction and opportunities of political discussion enjoyed by the most favored nations ; but the most essential of these privileges are as much out of their reach as if they were subjects of Austria or Russia.

M. L. P.