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    August 21,1852. TH£ gTAE Qf FBEEd0M# 29

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    REVIEWS. Napoleok le Petit, Par Victor H...

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    The Duty of the Age. London: Shorter, 34...

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    August 21,1852. Th£ Gtae Qf Fbeed0m# 29

    August 21 , 1852 . TH £ gTAE Qf FBEEd 0 M # 29

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    Reviews. Napoleok Le Petit, Par Victor H...

    REVIEWS . Napoleok le Petit , Par Victor Hugo . London : Jeffs . The work of retribution has already begun . History is already affixing her indelible stigma upon the most atrocious crime that ever stained her pages . In the work before us , Victor Hugo pursues the assassin of his country ' s liberty , the betrayer of his country ' s honour , with all the implacable vengeance , all the fiery indignation , with which the treason , perjury , and assassination of the monster Bonaparte could inspire his poetic soul . Well may the tyrant quail before the words of fury , scornand

    indigna-, tion of the patriot . Filled with rage and horror at the atrocities of the coup d ' etat , with sorrow and shame at the present degradation of his native land , Victor Hugo has yet faith in the ultimate triumph of justice—he has faith in the future , France , and in the Republic . He hopes and believes that France will speedily put a period to her shame ; and it is to goad his countrymen on to vengeance , to open their eyes to the degrading position they now occupy , to display , in their native , hideousness , the atrocities of the coup oVetat , and all the acts and the character of the

    infamous bandit , who has betrayed and insulted the nation that had adopted him , and who has extinguished their every liberty in the people ' s blood , that he has written Napoleon le Petit . He has performed his task bravely ; it is for the future to say if he has performed it successfully . If his eloquent denunciations of the blood-thirsty usurper , and his burning appeals to all the higher and nobler sentiments of men fail to arouse the French people from their inaction , then must France be indeed fallen , and European freedom have nothing to hope from her .

    The book begins by recalling the oath of Bonaparte , and his reiterated assertions that he would abide by the constitution and the law , would always look upon the legislative power as the superior , as the inviolable ; yet , on the morning of the 2 nd of December , Paris learnt that Louis Bonaparte had destroyed the Assembly , and that fifteen of these " inviolable" representatives had been arrested ! What was and is the duty of the representatives of the people , and what France is under Napoleon ' s rule , Victor Hugo shows in the following extracts : —

    5 IAXDATE OP THE KEPKESEXTAT 1 VES . The men who , in their character of representatives , had received in trust for the people the oath of December 20 , 1848 , and who beheld its violation , had with their mandate assumed two duties : the first , whenever that oath should be violated , to rise up to oppose their breasts to the bullets of the usurper , regarding neither the number nor the strength of the enemy ; to shield with their bodies the sovereignty of the people , and with the resolve to combat and depose the usurper , to seize every arm , from the laws that may be found in the code , to the pavingstones up-torn in the streets . The second duty was , after having accepted the combat and all its hazards , to accept

    proscription with all its miseries ; to stand up for ever in the face of the traitor , his oath in their hands ; to forget their immediate sufferings , their private woes , their dispersed families , their destroyed fortunes , their bruised affections , their bleeding hearts j to forget themselves , to have henceforth but one affliction—the affliction of France ; never to bend , never to relent ; to be implacable ; to seize the crowned perjurer , if not hy the ami of the law , hy the grasp of truth ; to burn red in the blaze of history the words of his oath , and to brand with those burning words his brow . The writer of these lines is one of those who recoiled from no endeavour to accomplish the first of these duties : in writing these pages he fulfils the second .

    THE TRE 8 EST . Since the 2 nd December , 1851 , a successful ambush , an odious and disgraceful crime , ' triumphs and dominates , rises to the height of a theory of government , expands in the face of the sun , makes laws , renders decrees , takes society , religion , and domestic virtues under its protection ; gives the hand to the potentates of Europe , calling them ' brother , or cousin . This crime no man denies , not even the men who won , and who live hy it , and who only say , ' it was a necessary act ; ' not even the chief malefactor ; he only says that he has been ' absolved . '

    This crime includes iill other crimes : treason in the conception ~ perjury in the execution—murder and assassination in . the assault—spoliation , swindling , robbery in the triumph . ^ This crime bears within its bosom as integral parts of itself—the suppression of law , the violation of constitutionally inviolable guarantees , arbitrary sequestration , confiscation of property , nocturnal massacres , secret butcheries , ' commissions' replacing tribunals , ten thousand citizens transported , forty thousand citizens proscribed , sixty thousand families ruined and driven to despair . These facts are patent I Ah ! well , painful as it may he to confess , the assent of silence follows the crime : it is there , it

    present , visible , sensible to the sight and touch : men let pass , they go to their business ; the shops are open , the Exchange gambles ; trade , sitting on its bales , rubs its hands contentedly , and we are approaching the time when all will be treated as a matter of course ! The man who sells a yard of cloth does not hear the very measure he holds in his hand say , * It is a false weight that governs . ' Singular Ordek is this , having disorder for its basis , in the negation of all rights , its stability founded on iniquity . In these days let every man who wears a scarf , a robe , or a uniform , let all who serve that man know well , that when they deem themselves the agents of a Power , they are but

    tlie comrades of a pirate . Since the 2 nd of December there are Jio more functionaries in France—they are only accomplices . The moment has come for every man to declare what he has done , and what he is still doing . The gendarmes that arrested the citizens , whom the man of Strasbourg and Boulogne calls insurgents , arrested the guardians of the Constitution : the j « dge who tried the combatants of Paris and the provinces , set m the dock the upholders of the law . The gaoler who turned the dungeon-bolt upon the condemned prisoners , held in durance the defenders of the Republic and of the State . The African victims

    general who imprisons at Lambessa the transported sinking under the burning heat , shuddering with fever , digging furrows which will be their graves—that General , I say , robs , tortures , murders men with whom is the right . All—generals , officers , gendarmes , judges—ail are guilty of a henious crime : they are the persecutors—I do not say of innocent men , but of heroes -not of victims , but of martyrs ! The present aspect of tuhigs , seeminglv calm , is really troubled . Let none be mistaken . when public morality is eclipsed , a dreadful shadow creeps ° ver the whole order of society : every guarantee is lost—all pro-

    Reviews. Napoleok Le Petit, Par Victor H...

    tection vanishes . Henceforth there exists no longer in France a tribunal , a court , a judge that dare administer justice or pronounce a sentence upon any man , in any matter . Drag before the assizes what criminal you will , the thief will say to the judge—" The Chief of the State stole 25 , 000 , 000 fr . " out of the Bank ; " the false witness will say to the judge— " The Chief of the state swore an oath before God and man , and that oath he a m , ' " ^ le man reused of arbitrary sequestration will say—The Chief of the State arrested and imprisoned , in spite of every law , the representatives of the sovereign people ; " the swindler will say— " The Chief of the State swindled , his mandatehis

    , power swindled , swindled the Tuileries : " the forger will say- " The Chief of the State falsified the suffrage ; " the footpad will say- " The Chief of the State plundered like a cutpurse the princes of the house of Orleans ; " the murderer will say— " The Chief of the State mowed down by grape and musket shot , sabred and bayonetted the passers-by in the streets ; " and all alike—swindler , forger , false witness , burglar , and assassin , will say— "And you , judges , you went to salute that man—you went to praise him for his perjury—to compliment him for having committed a forgery—to glorify him for having swindledto felicitate him for having ' robbed-to thank him for having assassinated !

    V \ ith the holy faith of a true patriot and poet , our author cannot believe that his country ' s horrible degradation can continue—that this Dutch bastard , with the aid of some drunken soldiers , can completely overthrow civilization andprogress , or keep the French people long subject to his infamous tyranny . His belief in the approaching triumph of truth andjusticehe expresses in language as beautiful and admirable as his faith : — AX AWAKENING IN THE FUTUUB .

    The sceptics smile and insist ; they say , " Have no hope . This regime , according to you , is the shame of France . Be it so , that shame is endorsed at the Bourse ; have no hope . You are but poets and dreamers , if you have . Look around : the tribune , the press , intelligence , speech , and thought ; everything that constitutes liberty , has disappeared . Yesterday these moved , agitated , and lived ; now all are petrified . Ah , well ! People are content , they accomodate themselves to that petrification , they attend to their business , and live under it in the usual way . Society continues , and many honest people find things very well as they are . Wherefore would you have the situation change ? Wherefore would you have the situation finish ? Do

    not delude yourself ; it is solid , it is stable ; it is the present and the future . " We are in Russia . The Neva is frozen ; houses are built upon it ; heavy chariots role along its surface . It is no longer water ; it is rock . The passengers come and goupon that marble which has been a stream . A town is improvised , streets are traced , shops opened ; they sell , they buy , eat , drink , and sleeps ; fires are made upon the stream . Everything may be permitted . Fear nothing ; do what you please ; laugh , dance , it is as solid as the earth itself . Truly , it sounds under the foot like granite . Long live winter ! May the ice exist to * all eternity ! And looking at the sky , is it day ? Is it night ? A dull wan light is cast upon the snow . It is said that the sun

    15 dead . No , thou diest not , liberty ! One of these days , at the very moment when thou art expected the least , when thou art the most profoundly forgotten , thou wilt arise . O , dazzling brightness I Suddenly thy star-like face will issue from the earth , and light up the horizon , on all that snow , on all that ice , on that hard white plain , on that water become a block , on that infamous winter thou wilt cast thy golden arrow , thy ardent and burning ray 1 light , warmth , and life . And then , listen ! Do you understand that sullen sound ? Do you understand that formidable cracking noise ? It is the breaking up of the ice ! It is the Neva rushes forward ! It is the stream retakes

    its course ! It is the living water , joyous and terrible , which bursts aud breaks the hideous ice ! That was marble , you said , behold , it is broken as a piece of glass . It is the breaking up of the ice , I tell you ! It is truth that returns , it is progress that recommences , it is humanity that marches onward , and that carries away , crushes , and buries in the waves , as the poor miserable furnishings of a tottering ruin , not only the new

    Empire of Louis Bonaparte , but all the cons tractions and all the works of the eternal despotism ! See all that float past . It disappears for over . You will behold it no more . That half submerged book is the old code of iniquity ! That trestle which is being engulphed , is the throne I That other trestle , almost gone , is the scaffold ! And what is needed for that mighty clearance , for that supreme victory of life over death ? One of thy looks , O sun . ' One of thy rays , O liberty !

    Book the 2 nd is an examination of the Bonapartist government , in the course of which the author gibbets in a masterly manner the bandit and his accomplices—the " great bodies" of the state . Before the coup d ' etat no ruse was more had recourse to , to gain the support of the the Working Classes , than the assertion , that had he the power , Louis Napoleon would endeavour to ameliorate the social condition of the people . The following is a good appreciation of

    THE SOCIALIST EXPEROrI A man swims against a rapid current ; he struggles with unheard of efforts ; he strikes the waves with hand and chest , with shoulder and knee . You say : "he mounts . " A moment after , you look at him , he has descended . He is much farther down the stream than when he set out . Without knowing , or even doubting it , at each effort that he makes , he looses ground . He imagines that he mounts , while he is always descending . He believes himself to advance , while he recedes . The debt , re duction of the rents , as you have said , M . Bonaparte , has

    issued many decrees , which you quality as socialist , and he will issue more . If M . Changarnier had triumphed instead of M . Bonaparte , he would have done the same . So would Henry V . were he to return to-morrow . The Emperor of Austria does so in Gallicia , and the Emperor Nicholas , in Lithuania . After all , what does that prove ? That the current called Revolution , is stronger than the swimmer named Despotism ! But even the Socialism of Bonaparte , what is it ? That Socialism ? I deny it . Hatred of the bourgeoisie , it may be ; Socialism it is not . See , the Socialist ministry par-exellence , the ministry of Agrieul - tnre and Commerce , he abolishes . What does he give you in

    compensation ? The Ministry of Police ! The other Socialist Ministry is the ministry of Public Instruction . It is in danger . One of these mornings it will be suppressed . The first principle of Socialism is education ; graiuitious and obligatory teaching is light . Take children and make them men ; take men and make them citizens ; make intelligent citizens honest , useful , and happy . Intellectual and moral progress first , material progress afterwards . The two first bring , irresistably and of themselves , the last . What does M . Bonaparte ? He everywhere stifles and persecutes teaching . Have you even reflected on the duties of a schoolmaster , that magistrature in which the

    Reviews. Napoleok Le Petit, Par Victor H...

    giants of old took refuge , like criminals in a temple ? Have you ever thought what the man is who teaches children ? You go to the workshop of a wheelwright , he manufactures wheels and cart shafts ; you say ; that is a useful man ; you enter the workshop of a weaver , he manufactures linen ; you say . that is a precious man ; you enter tho forge of a smith , he manufactures matlocks and plough-shares ; you say : that is a necessary man ; you salute those men , those ' good workers . You enter the abode of a schoolmaster , bend lower ; do you know what he does ? Ho manufactures minds . He is the wright , weaver ,

    and smith , of that work , in which he aids God : the future . Ah , well ! Now , thanks to the reigning priestly party , as it is not necessary that the schoolmaster work at that future , as it is necessary that the future consist of darkness and brutality , and not of intelligence and light , would you know in what consists the duties of that grand and humble magistrate , the schoolmaster ? ^ The schoolmaster counts the linen of the sacristy , puts oil into the lamps , beats the cushions of the confessional '

    & c . ; if he pleases , he may employ his remaining time , on condition that he pronounce none of these three demoniacal words ; Country , Republic , Liberty , in teaching the A B C to Httle children . M . Bonaparte strikes a blow at teaching both high and low at once : below , to please the curate , above , to please the bishops . At the same time that he seeks to close the village school he mutilates the College of France ; he overturns with one blow the chairs of Quinet and Miehelet .

    One fine morning by decree , he will declare Greek and Latin letters suspected , and interdict as much as he can the old poets and historians of Greece and Rome , smelling in Eschylus and Tacitus a vague odour of democracy . The physicians , for example , he can , by a stroke of his pen , deprive of literary teaching , letting Doctor Serres say , " We see our knowledge of reading and writing dispensed with by a decree . The present work is not as we had expected , a history of the events accompanying the coup d ' etat . The author is at present engaged in preparing such a history , which will speedily be published to the world , and whicli we will

    notice as soon as it appears . He has introduced into the present work a chapter from the unpublished one in whicli lie shows that the horrible massacre of the people on the 4 th was planned , and distinctly ordered by Louis Bonaparte himself , with a view of awing the populace into submission . It succeeded in effecting this object . The author of Napoleon le Petit perfectly agrees with those who have said

    that on the evening of the 3 rd the feeling of hostility to Bonaparte was universal , and that everything promised for the next day the fall of the coup d ' etat ^ and a glorious triumph for the Republic ; but then came the indiscriminate massacre , and the people shrunk back motionless , and appalled . We conclude the present notice by taking from the extract above alluded to the following account of the

    MASSACRE OX THE BOULEVA 11 DS , For nearly half an hour , shots had been exchanged between the troops and tlie barricade , without any one being wounded on either side , when all at once , as by an electric motion , an extraordinary and terrible movement took place , first in the infantry , and then in the cavalry . The whole of the troops suddenly wheeled round . The historians of the coup a ' etat have said that a shot directed against the soldiers had been fired from an open window at the corner of the Rue du Sentier . Some have said that it came from the house forming the angle of the Rue Notre Dame de Recouvrance and the Rue

    Poissonniere . According to others it was a pistol shot , and had been fired from the roof of a house at the corner of the Rue Mazagran . This shot is contested , hat what is incontestible is , that for this problematical pistol shot , which might have been no more than the sudden shutting of a door , a dentist inhabiting the neighbouring house was shot . In fact , was a pistol or gun shot proceeding from one of the houses of the boulevard heard or not ? A crowd of witnesses deny it . If it was fired , there remains to be answered this question : Was it a cause , or was it a signal ? Whether or not , cavalry , infantry , and artillery

    instantly turned round upon the dense masses of people on the foot-paths , and , without the slightest motive , " without warning , " as the infamous placards of that morning had threatened , from the Gymnasium to the Chinese Baths , that is to say , the whole length of the richest and gayest boulevard of Paris , a butchery commenced . It was a sinister and indescribable moment ; the cries , the arms lifted in the air , the surprise , the terror , the crowd flying in every direction , a shower of kills raining from the pavements to the roofs of the houses , the dead strewing the causeway , yonng men falling , their cigars in their mouths , two booksellers shot at the doors of their shops without

    knowing what was desired of them , the Hotel Sallandrouze bombarded , the Maison d'Or riddled with grape shot , Iortoni taken by assault , hundreds of corpses on the boulevard , a stream of blood in the Rue de'Richelieu . In presence of these , nameless , facts , I who write these lines declare it , I am a clerk , I register the crime , I cite Louis Bonaparte , Icite Saint Arnaud , Maupas , Moray , Magnan , Carrelet , Canrobert , and Reyboll , his accomplices ; I cite the others also , whose names will be found elsewhere ; I cite the executioners , the murderers , the witnesses , the victims , the hot cannon , the smoking swords , the dying , the dead , honour , blood , and tears , to the bar of the civilized world . Next week we will return to Napoleon le Petit .

    The Duty Of The Age. London: Shorter, 34...

    The Duty of the Age . London : Shorter , 34 , Castlestreet East . This is a well-written pamphlet , by an earnest-hearted man , on the greatest question of the age , that is , " big , black , universal Democracy , " as Cariyle characterises it . The author thinks the solution of this problem the imperative duty of the age , and urges it upon the attention of all classes . It must be evident to all that Democracy is the demand of the time , and that it will rush on to its fulfilment . The tide

    is ascending , and only recedes to gather strength , with which to sweep away the barriers of Tyrannv , and to mock the commands of our modern Canutes . Democracy demands other logic than that of bullets and bayonets , and the giant of Revolution , that glared such terror across the barricades of St . Antoine , is not extinct because Paris has been deluged with blood . It demands another solution than that . But

    what Democracy ? Certainly not the democracy of ancient Greece and Rome , with their hereditary hclotage for the masses but the democracy of Socialism . Perhaps we could not better express our idea of this " Democracy , " than to call it realized Christianity . The ideal of Christianity made real ; its law of equality and brotherhood welded into the social machinery ; and a practical realization of its promised redemption . We want the mass of men to help the indi-

• Citation
  • Northern Star (1837-1852), Aug. 21, 1852, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ns/issues/ns2_21081852/page/13/