"At the first performance," adds the critic, "a scandal was caused by the crazy and tumultuous admirers who, at each hiss that was raised, shouted, 'Down with the idiots! Put the brutes out!' It was a large, well-drilled cohort of friends who were sent into the theatre before the proper hour, and they applauded to excess all that the public thought truly disgusting. Notwithstanding this, and in spite of this extraordinary claque, the hissing was strong enough for the name of M. Victor Hugo to be flung out amidst the tumult. In spite of this startling failure, a second performance was announced for Thursday. Compared with this, Hernani is a genuine masterpiece ..." (Ah! monsieur critic, if we had but the time how we would like to read what you said about Hernani!) "and Boileau's epigram against Corneille might be applied to M. Victor Hugo.
"'Après l'Agésilas,
Hélas!
Mais, après l'Attila,
Holà!'"
Do you not think these four lines of Boileau against the author of the Cid, of Cinna and of Polyeucte were among the unworthy things he wrote? But Boileau at least confined himself to denouncing the plays of old Corneille as weak: he did not denounce them to the police as immoral. Then, with great satisfaction, the critic ends up his article in these words—
"We learn to-night that the ministre des travaux publics has given orders to stop the performance of the play."
Now let us follow the drama of our friend Victor Hugo before the Tribunal de Commerce, as we have followed it on the stage of the Théâtre-Richelieu, only let the author himself speak. M. Victor Hugo's prose is much better than mine, consequently my readers will have no ground for complaint.
"The appearance of this drama at the theatre gave rise to an unprecedented ministerial act. The day after the first performance, the author received from M. Jouslin de la Salle, stage manager of the Théâtre-Français, the following note, the original copy of which he preserves most preciously—
"'It is half-past ten and I have just received the order to suspend the performance of Le Roi s'amuse. M. Taylor has sent me the order on behalf of the Government.
"'23 November.'
"The first impulse of the author was to doubt it. The act was arbitrary to the point of incredibility. In fact, what is called the Charte-Vérité says, 'The French have the right of publishing...' Note that the text does not merely say the right of printing, but, large and clear, the right of publishing. Now, the theatre is only another means of publication, like the press, like sculpture or lithography. The liberty of the theatre is, therefore, implicitly indited in the Charter with every other form of liberty of thought. The law adds fundamentally, 'The censorship can never be re-established.' Now, the text does not say the censorship of newspapers or of books, it says censorship in general, all censure, that of the theatres as well as of writings. The theatre cannot, then, henceforth be legally censured.
"Besides, the Charter says, 'Confiscation is abolished.' Now, the suppression of a theatrical play after representation is not merely a monstrous act of censorship and arbitrariness, it is confiscation out and out, it is the violent robbery of a property belonging to the theatre and the author.
"Finally, to make all plain and clear, to preserve the four or five great special principles which the French Revolution has cast in bronze intact on their granite pedestals, in order that they cannot surreptitiously attack the common right of the French with forty thousand ancient damaged arms which rust and disuse have eaten away in the arsenal of our laws, the Charter, in a final article, expressly abolishes all that which in laws anterior to it would be contrary to its wording and its spirit. This is explicit. The ministerial suppression of a theatrical play attacks its liberty through the censorship, and its copyright through confiscation. Our whole sense of public right rises in revolt against such a method of procedure. The author, unable to believe in such insolence and folly, rushed to the theatre. There, the fact was confirmed, in every particular. The Government had, indeed, notified the order in question, by its divine right of governance. It had no reasons to offer. It had taken his play, deprived him of his right and seized his property. There was but one thing more to do to the poet—to put him into the Bastille.
"We repeat, at the time we are living, when such an act comes and bars your way and lays hands on you roughly, the first feeling is one of profound surprise. A thousand questions occur to your mind—Where is justice, where is right? Can such things really happen? Was there, indeed, such a thing as the July Revolution? It is evident we are no longer in Paris! In what pachalic do we live?
"The Comédie-Française, stupefied and struck with consternation, wished to try some advances towards the Government to obtain the revocation of this strange decision, but its labour was in vain. The divan, ... I mean the council of ministers, had met during the day. On the 23rd, it was an order from the Government—the same on the 24th. On the 23rd, the play was only suspended; on the 24th, it was definitely forbidden. The theatre was even enjoined to erase the four dreadful words 'Le Roi s'amuse.' The unlucky Théâtre-Français was, moreover, instructed that it was not to complain or to breathe a word. It may be fine, loyal and noble to resist such Asiatic despotism; but theatres dare not do it. The fear of the withdrawal of their privileges makes them serfs and slaves, liable to taxation and statute-labour at the mercy of eunuchs and the dumb.
"An author should be and remain a stranger to these theatrical proceedings. He, a poet, does not depend upon any Government. His duty as a free writer forbids him to make the entreaties and solicitation he might make if he meanly consulted his own interests. But to ask for grace from a power is to admit that power. Liberty and ownership are not matters for antechamber settlement. A right does not solicit like a favour. For a favour he must beseech the Government; but for a right he appeals to the country. He must, then, go to the country for redress. There are two ways of obtaining justice: public opinion and the law courts. He chose both. The case is already judged and won in the eyes of public opinion. Here the author must warmly thank all thoughtful and independent persons connected with literature and the arts, who showed him on that occasion many proofs of sympathy and cordiality. He reckoned upon their support in anticipation. He knows that, when it is a question of struggling for liberty of intellect and thought, he will not go singly to battle.
"Let us say, in passing, that the ruling power, with very mean-spirited calculation, prided itself it would have on that occasion, as its auxiliaries, the literary passions that have for a long period raged round the author. Literary hatreds the author supposed were even more tenacious than political animosities, seeing the former have their root in amour propre, and the latter simply in principles. The Government is mistaken. Its brutal act has disgusted right-thinking men in all camps. There rallied round the author to oppose arbitrariness and injustice those even who a little time before had attacked him the most violently. If, by chance, a few inveterate haters persisted, they have since regretted the momentary support they gave to the Government. Every honourable and loyal man amongst the author's enemies stretched out hands to him, even though ready to begin the literary battle again as soon as the political fight is at an end. In France, whoever he is who is persecuted, his sole enemy is the persecutor.
"So, now, having settled that the Government's act is detestable, unjustifiable, impossible in right, we will condescend for a moment to discuss it as a material fact, and try to find of what elements it would seem to have been composed. To this end, the first question which presents itself is one which everybody will put—What can be the motive for such a measure?
"Certainly, if we deign to condescend for one moment to accept the ridiculous fiction that, in this instance, it is the care of public morals which moves our rulers, and that, shocked by the condition of licence into which certain theatres have fallen during the last six years, they wished at last, urged to extreme measures, to make an example, in the teeth of all laws and rights, of one work and writer, the choice of the work would, it must be confessed, be a singular one, but the choice of the author would be no less strange. In fact, who is the man that this short-sighted power attacks so strangely? A writer so placed that, though his talent may be contested by everybody, his character is called in question by no one. He is a man of avowed, proved and established character, a rare and valuable thing in these days. A poet who was the first to be disgusted with the licence to which the theatres were yielding; who, eighteen months ago, upon the rumour that the inquisition of theatres was going to be illegally re-established, went himself personally, with several other dramatic authors to warn the Government that it ought to guard against such a measure; and who there openly urged for a repressive law to regulate the excesses off the stage, whilst yet protesting against the censorship in such severe words that the Government is very sure not to forget them. He is an artist devoted to art, who has never sought success by ignoble means, who has been accustomed all his life to look the public straight in the face; a sincere and temperate man who has already fought more than one battle for liberty and against despotism; who, in 1829, in the last year of the Restoration, rejected everything which the Government then offered him in compensation for the interdict laid on Marion Delorme, and who, more than a year later, in 1830, after the revolution of July, refused, in spite of the advantages to his material interests, to allow that same Marion Delorme to be played, because it might have been made the occasion of attack and insult against the fallen king, who had proscribed it; a very simple line of conduct, no doubt, that every man of honour would have followed under similar circumstances, but which, perhaps, might have rendered him henceforth inviolate from all censure, and about which he wrote himself in 1831 as follows: 'Successes gained by hunting out scandals and by making political allusions hardly pleased him.' He admits that 'such success is worth but little and is short-lived. It is precisely when there is no public censorship that authors should criticise one another, honestly and conscientiously. In this way, they will exalt the dignity of art: when people have entire liberty it is desirable to keep within due bounds.'
"Now, that the supposed immorality of the drama is reduced to nothing, now that all the display of evil and shameful arguments lies beneath our feet, now is the time to point out the true motive of the measure, the motive behind the scenes in the Court, and the motives they do not give because they dare not admit them among themselves, and therefore have carefully concealed them beneath a pretext. This motive has already transpired among the outside public and the public has guessed it correctly. We will say no more about it. It is probably of service to our cause that we should set our adversaries the example of courtesy and of moderation. It is good that the lesson of dignity and wisdom be set the Government by a private individual, by him who is persecuted to the body which is persecuting him. Though we are not of the number of those who think to cure their own wounds by poisoning the wounds of others, it is but too true that there is, in the third act of this play, a line where the untoward sagacity of some familiars of the palace discovered an allusion (I ask you myself where is this allusion?), of which neither the public nor the author had thought until then, but which, when proclaimed in this fashion, becomes the cruellest and most deadly of insults. It is all too true that this line was enough to cause the order to be given for the playbills of the Théâtre-Français to be taken down, in order that the curiosity of the public should not again be afforded the sight of that little seditious phrase, le Roi s'amuse. We will not quote the line which is such a red rag to a bull; furthermore, we will not point it out unless we are pushed to the last extremity, and people are imprudent enough to make us take our stand upon it in self-defence. We will not revive old historic scandals. We will spare as far as possible an exalted personage the consequences of the thoughtlessness of his courtiers. It is possible to be generous in warfare even to a king. We mean to be so. Only, let those in power consider the inconvenience of having as friend a bear, as it were, who crushes with the pavingstone of censorship the imperceptible allusions which happen to cross their minds. We are not even sure that we do not feel some sympathy for the ministry itself. To tell the truth, the whole thing inspires us with great pity. The Government of July is new-born, it is only thirty months old and still in its infancy, with the puerile passions of childhood. Is it, indeed, worthwhile to spend much virile anger against it? When it is full-grown, then we will see.
"Meantime, to look at the question for a moment from the individual point of view, the censorial confiscation under consideration perhaps causes more injury to the author of this drama than of any other. In fact, for the fourteen years he has been writing, not one of his works but has had the unfortunate distinction of being chosen as a battlefield upon its appearance, and disappeared after a more or less lengthy period in the dust and smoke and turmoil of a battle. Therefore, when he produces a play for the theatre, the most important thing to him of all, as he cannot expect a quiet audience after the first night, is a series of performances. If it happens on the first day that his voice is drowned in uproar, that his idea is not understood, the following days may correct the first one. Hernani had fifty-three performances, Marion Delorme had sixty-one; Le Roi s'amuse, thanks to ministerial violence, only had one. The injustice done the author is assuredly great. Who can give him back intact at the point he left off, the third experiment, so important to him? Who can tell him what might have occurred after the first performance? Who can give him back the public of the morrow, a public ordinarily impartial and without friends or enemies, the public which teaches the poet and which the poet instructs?
"We are at a curious period of political transition. One of those moments of general lassitude when all kinds of despotic acts are possible in society, even the most advanced ideas of emancipation and of liberty. France advanced rapidly in July 1830; she did three good days' work then; she made three great oases in the field of civilisation and of progress. Now, many are harassed, many are out of breath, many demand a halt. They want to keep back the energetic spirits who are not tired, but still press on; they wish to wait for the laggards who have stopped behind and give them time to catch up. Hence, a strange fear of everything that moves and talks and thinks. It is an odd situation, easily defined. They are all the elements which are afraid of ideas; the league of interests clashing with the movement of theories begins, and takes fright at systems: the merchant who wants to sell; the street which is frightened of the counting-house; the armed shop on the defensive.
"In our opinion, the Government takes unfair advantage of this disposition to repose, this fear of fresh revolutions. It has come to petty tyranny. It does wrong towards itself and towards us. If it thinks there is indifference now in people's minds towards liberty of ideas, it is mistaken; it is only lassitude. It will demand severe account some day of all the illegal actions that have been accumulating for some time past. What a dance it has led us! Two years ago, one feared for order; now, one trembles for liberty! Questions of free thought, of intellect and of art are imperiously mowed down by the viziers of the King of the Barricades. It is profoundly sad to see how the revolution of July has ended, mulier formosa supernè.
"No doubt, if one only considered the slight importance of the work of the author now in question, the ministerial measure which has smitten it down is not a great matter. It is but a malicious little literary coup d'état whose only merit is that of not spoiling the series of arbitrary acts of which it forms a part. But, if we look higher, we see that this affair is not merely one that affects a drama and a poet, but, as we said at first, both liberty and the rights of ownership are involved in the question. Great and serious interests are involved in it, and, although the author be compelled to deal with this important affair by a simple commercial lawsuit at the Théâtre-Français, not being able to attack the Government directly, barricaded behind the principles of non-receivers of State advice, he hopes that his cause will be regarded as a great one in the eyes of all when he takes it to the bar of the Consular tribunal, with liberty in his right hand and proprietorship in his left. He will himself speak of the need for the independence of his art. He will plead his right resolutely with gravity and simplicity, without personal animosity, and yet, at the same time, fearlessly. He counts upon the concurrence of all, upon the free and cordial support of the press, on the justice of opinion and on the equity of the courts. He has no doubt he will be successful. The state of siege will be raised in literary precincts as in political.
"When that is done, and he has secured his liberty as poet and as citizen intact, inviolable and sacred, he will peaceably return to his life's work, from which he has been violently torn away, which he would like never to have had to leave. He has his duty to do, he knows, and nothing will distract him from it. For the moment, the political rôle has come to him: he has not sought it out, but he accepts it. Surely the power which attacks us will not have gained much, in forcing us who are artists to quit our conscientious, tranquil, honest, serious task, our sacred task, a task which belongs to the past and to the future, in order to mix ourselves indignant and angry with the irreverent and scoffing audience which, for the last fifteen years, has watched the various poor devils of political bunglers as they pass by hooting and whistling, thinking they are building up a social edifice because they go daily, at great trouble to themselves, sweating and panting, to cart heaps of legal schemes from the Tuileries to the Palais-Bourbon and from the Palais-Bourbon to the Luxembourg!
30 November 1832."
On 19 December 1832, the matter came before the Tribunal de Commerce. All the artist world of Paris gathered together in the Salle de la Bourse, surprised to find itself in such good company. After his barrister had spoken, Victor Hugo rose and made the following speech:—
"Gentlemen, after the eloquent orator[6] who so generously lends me the powerful assistance of his speech, I should have nothing to say if I did not believe it my duty not to let pass the daring, culpable act which has violated our public rights through my person without a solemn and serious protest. This is not an ordinary cause, gentlemen. It seems to some persons, at the first glance, to be only a simple commercial action, a claim for indemnity for the non-execution of a private contract—in a word, simply the lawsuit of an author against a theatre. No, gentlemen, it is more than that, it is the lawsuit of a citizen against a government. The basis of this matter is a play forbidden by order; now, a play forbidden by order is censorship and the Charter abolished censorship; a play forbidden by order is confiscation. Your sentence, if favourable to me, and, it seems to me, I do you wrong to doubt it, will be to lay the blame manifestly, although indirectly, at the door of censorship and confiscation.
"You see, gentlemen, how the horizon of this cause lifts and widens. I plead here for something higher than my own interest, I plead for my rights in general, for my right to think, and to possess, that is to say, for the common right due to all. Mine is a general cause, as is absolute equity yours. The minor details of the case are lost sight of before the question thus put. I am not simply a writer, you are not merely consular judges. Your conscience confronts mine. At this tribunal, you represent a great idea, and I, at the bar, stand for another. Your seat is justice; mine, liberty. Now, justice and liberty are made to be heard. Liberty is right, and justice is free.
"This is not the first time that M. Odilon Barrot has told you before me, gentlemen, that the Tribunal of Commerce has been called upon to condemn, without departing from its jurisdiction, the arbitrary acts of those in authority. The first tribunal to declare the ordinances of 25 July 1830 illegal has been forgotten by no one, it was the Tribunal of Commerce. You, gentlemen, will follow that memorable precedent, and, although the question is much smaller, you will uphold right to-day as you upheld it then; you will, I hope, listen to what I have to say to you with sympathy; you will warn the Government by your sentence, that it is on a bad path, and is wrong to degrade art and thought; you will give me back my rights and property; you will brand the police and censorship on the brow, who came by night to steal my liberty and my property from me by breaking the Charter.
"What I say here I say without anger, the reparation I demand of you I ask with due gravity and moderation. God forbid I should spoil the beauty and rectitude of my cause by violent words! He who has right on his side has strength, and the strong scorn violence.
"Yes, gentlemen, right is on my side. M. Odilon Barrot's admirable argument has victoriously proved to you that the ministerial act which has forbidden Le Roi s'amuse, is arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional. It is in vain for them to attempt to revive a law of the Reign of Terror by attributing the censorship to authority, a law which commands in clear terms the theatres to play the tragedies of Brutus and of Wilhelm Tell three times per week, only to give republican plays, and to stop representations of all work which tends, I quote word for word, 'to deprave the public mind and to awaken the shameful superstition of royalty.' Gentlemen, dare the actual supporters of the new royalty indeed invoke such a law, and invoke it against Le Roi s'amuse? Is it not evidently abrogated in its text as in its spirit? Made for the Terror, it died with the Terror. Is it not the same with all imperious decrees by which, forsooth, officials will have the right not merely to censure theatrical works, but the power of sending an author to prison according to its own good pleasure without trial? Do such things exist nowadays? Was not all this irregular and haphazard legislation solemnly done away with by the Charter of 1830? We appeal to the solemn oath of 9 August. The France of July did not reckon for either conventional or imperial despotism. The Charter of 1830 did not allow itself to be gagged either by 1807 or by '93.
"Liberty of thought in all its various methods of expression, at the theatre as in the press, in the pulpit as in the tribune, there, gentlemen, lies one of the fundamental principles of our public rights. No doubt each of these modes of expression needs an organic law in accord with the fundamental law, a law of good faith, repressive but not preventive, which, leaving each career at liberty, shall imprison licence under strict penal laws. The theatre in particular as a public place, we are anxious to declare, does not know how to protect itself from the legal surveillance of the municipal authority. Well, gentlemen, this law, easier to make, probably, than is commonly supposed, which each of us dramatic poets has probably constructed in his own mind more than once, is wanting, and is not created. Our ministers, who produce year in year out from seventy to eighty laws per session, have not deemed it fitting to make such a one as this. A law for theatres did not seem urgently needed. Not urgent, when it concerns the liberty of thought, the progress of civilisation, public morality, the reputation of families, the tranquillity of Paris, which means that of France, and, indeed, the tranquillity of Europe itself!
"A law affecting the liberty of theatres ought to have been proclaimed since 1830, in the spirit of the new Charter, but it is still wanting, I repeat, through the fault of the Government. Past legislation has evidently fallen away, and all the sophistries with which they plaster its ruins will not build it up again. So, between a law which no longer exists and one which is still needed, the authorities do not possess the right to stop a play at a theatre. I will not linger over what M. Odilon Barrot has demonstrated so supremely well.
"Here an objection of secondary importance arises which I am, however, going to discuss. True, such a law is needed, people will say, but in the absence of legislation, ought authority to be completely defenceless? Might there not appear suddenly on the stage one of those infamous pieces—evidently made on purpose to make money and scandal—where all that is sacred in religion and morality and in the heart of man is insolently scoffed at and ridiculed; where all that goes to make the peace of family life and of citizenship is held up to question; where even living personages are pilloried on the stage amidst the hootings of the multitude? Do not State reasons lay upon the Government the duty of closing the theatre to such monstrous work, in spite of the silence of law? I do not know, gentlemen, if such a type of work has even been produced, and I do not wish to know, or to believe it, and I will not accept here, in any degree whatever, the task of denouncing them; but, even in such a case, I declare, whilst deploring the scandal caused, and realising that others would advise the State to stop works of this kind immediately, and at once to demand the Chambers for a bill of indemnity, I would not relax the strictness of the principle. I would say to the Government: See the consequences of your negligence to create a law so pressingly needed as a law affecting theatrical liberty! You have done this wrong, repair it and hasten to ask the Chambers for penal legislation, and, meantime, pursue the guilty drama with the code of the press, which, until special laws be made will, in my opinion, rule all public fashions. I say, in my opinion, for this is but my own personal view. My illustrious defender would, I know, only allow liberty to theatres with greater restrictions than I should; I speak here not with the opinion of a lawyer, but with the simple common sense of the citizen; if I am wrong, do not let my words be laid to the account of my defender, but at my own door solely. I repeat it, gentlemen, I would not relax the strictness of the principle; I would not grant the ruling authorities the power to confiscate liberty even in a case, apparently, where it was legitimate, for fear a day would come when it would confiscate it in all cases; I think that to repress scandal by arbitration is to create two scandals in place of one, and I say with an eloquent and serious-minded man who must shudder to-day at the way in which his disciples apply his doctrines: 'Il n'y a pas de droit au-dessus du droit' ('There is no right over right').
"Now, gentlemen, if such an abuse of power, exercised even upon a licentious, impudent or defamatory work would have been inexcusable, how much more so when it fastens upon a work of pure art, when it picks out for proscription among all the plays which have been produced for the last two years, a serious composition, strict in its morality? And that is precisely what the left-handed power which governs us has done in stopping Le Roi s'amuse. M. Odilon Barrot has proved to you that it has acted without justice; I will prove that it has acted without reason.
"The motives that those who are in with the police have been whispering abroad for some days to explain the prohibition of this play are of three kinds: there is the moral reason, the political reason and—we must say the words though they be laughable—the literary reason. Vergil relates that several ingredients went to make up the thunder which Vulcan made for Jupiter. The petty ministerial thunder which has struck my play, which the censorship had forged for the police, is made up of three bad reasons rolled up, intermingled and united, très imbris torti radios.
"There is, first of all, or, rather, there was, the moral reason. Yes, gentlemen, I swear it, because it seems incredible, the police made out at first that Le Roi s'amuse was, I quote the actual expression, 'an immoral play.' I have already silenced the police on that point. In publishing Le Roi s'amuse, I declared openly, not for the benefit of the police, but for those honourable men who wished to read me, that the drama was profoundly and strictly moral. No one has disbelieved me and no one will, it is my profound conviction as an honest man. All the precautions the police for a time succeeded in raising against the morality of this work have disappeared at the time I am now speaking. Four thousand copies of the book issued to the public have pleaded this trial in their own way, and these four thousand advocates have won their cause. In such a matter, also, an affirmative is sufficient; I shall not, therefore, enter upon a superfluous discussion. Only, for the sake of the future as well as the past, I would have the police to know, once for all, that I do not write immoral works. Let this be taken as conclusive, for I shall not return to it again.
"After the moral argument there comes the political. Here, gentlemen, as I can only express the same ideas in other terms, allow me to quote you a page from the preface I put to the drama ..." (We have ourselves laid that page of preface before our readers.)[7]
"After moral and political reasons, come the literary. A Government stopping a play for literary reasons is a strange thing, but it is not, however, without foundation. You remember—if by chance it was worth your trouble to remember it—that, in 1829, at the period when the first works called romantic appeared upon the stage, about the time when the Comédie-Française received Marion Delorme, a petition signed by seven persons was presented to King Charles X. to demand that the Théâtre-Français be closed by the king, simply to the works of what was called the New School. Charles took it laughingly, and replied wittily that in literary questions he had only his place in the pit of the theatre like the rest of us. The petition collapsed beneath ridicule. Well, gentlemen, to-day many of the signers of this petition are deputies, influential deputies belonging to the majority, having a share in the governmental powers and voting for the budget. What they timidly petitioned for in 1829, they are able, all-powerful as they are, to carry out in 1832.
"Public rumour, in fact, says that it was they who, the day after the first performance, approached the minister at the Chamber of Deputies and obtained a promise from him under the most moral and politic excuses imaginable, that Le Roi s'amuse should be stopped. The minister, an ingenuous, innocent and candid man, bravely took up the challenge; he could not distinguish beneath all those wrappings the direct and personal animosity; he believed he was performing a political proscription. I am sorry for him, they made him execute a literary proscription. I will not say more on this point.... It inspires me with infinitely less anger than pity; it is odd, that is all. The Government lending assistance to the Academy in 1832! Aristotle become the law of the State once more! An imperceptible literary revolution being carried on at the brink of, and in the midst of, our great political revolutions! The deputies who deposed Charles X. working in a tiny corner to restore Boileau! How despicable!...
"Gentlemen, I will sum up. By stopping my play, the Government has not, on the one hand, an article of law to quote from; on the other, not a single valuable reason to give. This measure has two aspects, both equally bad: as law, it is arbitrary; as reasoning, it is absurd. What, then, can the power which has neither reason nor law on its side allege as its motives? Its caprice, fancy, desire —that is to say, nothing!
"You will do justice, gentlemen, to that desire, fancy, caprice. Your sentence, by giving me the case, will inform the country of this business—which is but small as compared with the greatness of the ordinance of July—what force majeure there is in France besides that of the law, and that at the basis of this trial there is an illegal order which the Government did wrong to issue, and the theatre was wrong to obey; your sentence will teach the powers that its very friends blame it candidly on this occasion; that the rights of every citizen are to be respected by all Governments, that, given the conditions of order and of general safety are fulfilled, the theatre ought to be respected like other means of expression of public thought, and that, whether it be the press, the tribune or the theatre, none of the loopholes for the escape of liberty of intellect can be closed without peril. I address myself to you with profound faith in the worthiness of my cause. I shall never be afraid under similar occasions of grappling with a ministry hand to hand; the law courts are the natural judges of honourable duels of pure right against arbitrary dealings, duels less unequal than people think; for if, on the one side, there is a whole Government, and, on the other, only a simple citizen, that simple citizen is, indeed, strong when he can bring an illegal act before your bar, ashamed of being thus exposed to public view and public scourging, and confronting it as I am doing with four articles from the Charter!
"I do not, however, disguise from myself that the present time is not like the latter years of the Restoration, when resistance to the encroachments of the Government was so much applauded and so popular. The ideas of stability and of authority are momentarily more in favour than those of progress and of freedom. It is a natural reaction after that rough revival of all our liberty at a rush styled the Revolution of 1830. But this reaction will not last long. Our ministers will some day be surprised by the implacable memory with which the men even who compose their majority then will recall all the grievances they seem to have forgotten so quickly to-day; moreover, let that day be late or soon in coming it will not matter: on that score I neither look for applause nor fear invective; I have but followed the strict monitions of my right and my duty.
"I ought to say here that I have strong reasons for believing that the Government will take advantage of this fleeting torpor of the public mind formally to reestablish the censorship, and my affair is but a prelude, a preparation, a step to a putting of all theatrical liberty outside general laws. By not making a repressive law, by purposely letting licence have free scope on the stage for the past two years, the Government imagines it has created, in the opinion of respectable men, who might be disgusted with that licence, a prejudice in favour of dramatic censorship. In my opinion it is mistaken, and the censorship will never be anything else in France than an unpopular and illegal proceeding. As far as I myself am concerned, whether the censorship of the theatres he re-established by an illegal decree or an unconstitutional law, I declare I will never submit to such an act of authority without protesting; and I make such a protest solemnly now and here both for the present and for the future.
"Further, observe how wanting in greatness, openness and courage the Government has been in the series of arbitrary acts which have succeeded one another for some time past. It has slowly, subterraneously, surreptitiously, indirectly, tortuously undermined the beautiful though incomplete edifice which the revolution of July had reared. It always took us treacherously from behind when we least expected. It dared not censure my play before the representation; it stopped it the following day. It attacks our most vital liberties; it cavils at our best attained efforts; it bases its despotism on a heap of ancient worm-eaten and repealed laws; it lies in wait to rob us of our rights in that Forest of Bondy of imperial decrees, through which liberty never passes without being stripped....
"I say it is for the probity of the law courts to stop its course, which is as dangerous to it as to us. I say that the ruling power is specially wanting in greatness and courage by the underhand manner in which it has performed this hazardous operation, which each Government in strange blindness attempts in its turn, and which consists in substituting, more or less rapidly, arbitrariness for the constitution, despotism for liberty.[8] ... If it only continues for some time longer in this way, if the proposed laws are adopted, the confiscation of all our rights will be complete. To-day, they take away my liberty as a poet by censure: to-morrow, they will take away my liberty as a citizen by a gendarme; to-day, they banish me from the theatre: to-morrow, they will banish me from the country; to-day, they stop my mouth: to-morrow, they will transport me; to-day, the state of siege is in literature: to-morrow, it will be in citizenship; in liberties, guarantees, charters, public rights, in a word, annihilation!
"If the Government be not better advised by its own interests to stop at the precipice while there is yet time, before long we shall have all the despotism of 1807 without its glory: we shall have the Empire without the Emperor. I have only a word more to say, gentlemen, and I desire it may be in your mind whilst you are deciding. There has been in this century but one great man, Napoleon, and but one great thing, liberty! The great man is no more with us, let us try to have the great thing. V. HUGO."
Of course it goes without saying that the tribunal pronounced itself incompetent to deal with the case, and no justice at all was done to the poet.