"My chief hope now is that the French journals, which are always so busy saying useless things, will now, without fail, warn the Alsacians and Lorrainers of their danger, and explain to them that if they declare for France their persons and their property will be guaranteed in safety by the treaty; but if they neglect to do so, their persons and their property fall under the Prussian laws. They would even do well to furnish a clear and simple form of declaration. By this step, all who are interested would be clearly informed, and these papers would have done the greatest service to France.
"As for me, here I stay! I am here upon my own land; I have bought it; I have paid for it with the sweat of my brow. I will pay the taxes; I will hold my tongue, that I may be neither worried nor driven away. I will sell my crops to the Germans as dearly as I can; I will employ none but Frenchmen; and if the Republic acquires strength, as I hope it will—for now the people see what Monarchies have been able to do for us—if the nation transacts its own business wisely, sensibly, with moderation, good order, and reflection, she will soon rise again, and will once more become powerful. In ten years our losses will be repaired: we shall possess well-informed constituencies, national armies, upright administrations, a commissariat, and a staff very different from that which we have known.
"Then let the French return; they will find us, as before, ready to receive them with open arms, and to march at their sides.
"But if they pursue their old course of coups d'état and revolutions; if the adventurers, the Jesuits, and the egotists form another coalition against justice; if they recommence their disgraceful farces of plébiscites and constitutions by yes and no, with bayonets pointed at people's throats and with electors of whom one-half cannot read; if they bestow places again by patronage and recommendation of friends, instead of honestly throwing them open to competition; if they refuse elementary education and compulsory military service; if they will have, as in past times, an ignorant populace, and an army filled with mercenaries, in order that the sons of nobles and bourgeois may remain peaceably at home, whilst the poor labor like beasts of burden, and go and meet their deaths upon battle-fields for masters they have no concern with:—in a word, if they overthrow the Republic and set up Monarchy again, then what miseries may we not expect? Poor France, rent by her own children, will end like Poland; all our conquests of '89 will be lost. Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Holland, all the free nations of the Continent will share our fate; the great splay feet of the Germans will overspread Europe, and we unhappy Alsacians and Lorrainers will be forced to bow the head under the yoke, or go off to America."
This speech of George's made me reflect, and I resolved to wait.
Many Alsacians and Lorrainers have thought the same; and this is why M. Thiers was right in saying that the Republic is the form of government which least divides us: it is also the only one which can save us. Any other form of government upon which Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists could well meet on common ground, would end in our destruction. If it should happen that one of these parties succeeds in placing its prince upon the throne, the next day all the others would unite and overthrow it; and the Germans, taking advantage of our division, would seize upon the Franche Comté and Champagne.
The Deputies of the Eight ought to reflect well upon this. It is to reinstate the country, not a party, that they are at Versailles; it is to restore harmony to our distracted country, and not to sow fresh dissensions. I appeal to their patriotism, and, if this is not enough, to their prudence. New coups d'état would precipitate us into fresh revolutions more and more terrible. The nation, whose desire is for peace, labor, order, liberty, education, and justice for all, is weary of seeing itself torn to pieces by Emperors and Kings; the nation might become exasperated against these anglers after Kings in troubled waters, and the consequences might become terrible indeed.
Let them ponder well; it is their duty to do so.
And all these princes, too—all these shameless pretenders, who make no scruple of coming to divide us at the crisis when union alone can save us—when the German is occupying all the strong places on the frontier, and is watching the opportunity to rend away another portion of our country! These men who slip into the army through favor; whose disaffected newspapers impede the revival of trade, in the hope of disgusting the people with the Republic! These princes who one day pledge their word of honor, and the day after withdraw it, and who are not ashamed to claim millions in the midst of the general ruin. Yes, these men must conduct themselves differently, if they don't wish to call to remembrance their father Louis Philippe, intriguing with the Bonapartists to dethrone his benefactor Charles X.; and their grandfather, Philippe Egalité, intriguing with the Jacobins and voting the death of Louis XVI. to save his fortune, whilst his son was intriguing in the army of the North with the traitor Dumouriez to march upon Paris and overthrow the established laws.
But the day of intrigues has passed by!