'When we found, erected in every department, a revolutionary tribunal, empowered to banish and transport without trial; when we found a rude soldier made Home Minister, and the country divided into five districts to be each governed by a marshal, we saw at once that France was under a violent military despotism. Until that law was passed the surface was smooth. There was nothing in the appearance of France to show to a stranger that she was not governed by a Monarch, practically, indeed, absolute, but governing as many absolute Monarchs have done, mildly and usefully.
'Of course we might have found out the truth sooner if we had inquired. And perhaps we ought to have inquired. We busy ourselves about our own affairs, and neglect too much those of other countries. In that sense you have a right to say that we chose to be ignorant, since our conduct was such as necessarily to make us ignorant. But it was not because Louis Napoleon was our ally that we chose to be ignorant, but because we habitually turn our eyes from the domestic affairs of the Continent, as things in which we have seldom a right to interfere, and in which, when we do interfere, we do more harm than good.'
We talked of the manner in which the loi de sûreté publique has been carried out. And I mentioned 600 as the number of those who had suffered under it, as acknowledged to me by Blanchard in the beginning of March.
'It is much greater now,' said Lanjuinais. 'Berryer on his return from Italy, a week ago, slept in Marseilles. He was informed that more than 900 persons had passed through Marseilles, déportés under the new law to Algeria. They were of all classes: artisans and labourers mixed with men of the higher and middle classes. To these must be added those transported to Cayenne, who were sent by way of Havre. As for the number expulsés and internés there are no data.'
'In the Department of Var, a man was found guilty in 1848 of joining in one of the revolutionary movements of that time. His complete innocence was soon proved; he was released, and has lived quietly on his little estate ever since. He was arrested under the new law and ordered to be déporté to Algeria. His friends, in fact all his neighbours, remonstrated, and sent to Paris the proof that the original conviction was a mistake. "Qu'il aille tout de même," was Espinasse's answer.
'In Calvados the Préfet, finding no one whom he could conscientiously arrest, took hold of one of the most respectable men in the department. "If," he said, "I had arrested a man against whom there was plausible ground for suspicion, he might have been transported. This man must be released."'
'Has he been released?' I asked.
'I have not heard,' was the answer. 'In all probability he has been.'
'In my department,' said Tocqueville, 'the sous-préfet, ordered by the Préfet to arrest somebody in the arrondissement, was in the same perplexity as the Préfet of Calvados. "I can find no fit person," he said to me. I believe that he reported the difficulty to the Préfet, and that the vacancy was supplied from some other arrondissement.
'What makes this frightful,' he added, 'is that we now know that deportation is merely a slow death. Scarcely any of the victims of 1851 and 1852 are living.'