"It is not necessary to write a thick volume against arbitrary arrests. When one has said, it is an arbitrary act, one may, without any difficulty, infer every possible consequence. But all captions are not equally unjust: there are a multitude of secret and dangerous crimes which it would be impossible for the ordinary course of the law to take cognizance of, to put a stop to, and punish. When the minister is neither seduced nor deceived, when he yields not to private passion, to blind prepossession, to misplaced severity, his object is frequently to get rid of a disturber of the public peace; and the police, in the manner in which the machine is set up, could not proceed, at the present day, without this quick, active, and repressive power.
"It were only to be wished that there should be afterwards a particular tribunal, which should weigh in an exact scale the motives of each caption, in order that imprudence and guilt, the pen and the poniard, the book and the libel, might not be confounded.
"The inspectors of police determine on their part a great many subaltern captions; as they are generally believed on their word, and as they strike only the lowest class of the people, the chief readily concedes to them the details of this authority.
"Some yield to their peevishness; others, to their caprice: but who knows whether avarice has not also a share in their proceedings, and whether they do not often favour him who pays at the expense of him who does not pay? Thus the liberty of the distressed and lowest citizens would have a tarif; and this strange tax would bear hard on the very numerous portion of prostitutes, professed gamblers, quacks, hawkers, swindlers, and adventurers, all people who do mischief, and whom it is necessary to punish; but who do more mischief when they are obliged to pay, and purchase, during a certain time, the privilege of their irregularities.
"We have imitated from the English their Vauxhall, their Ranelagh, their whist, their punch, their hats, their horse-races, their jockies, their betting; but," concludes MERCIER, "when shall we copy from them something more important, for instance, that bulwark of liberty, the law of habeas corpus?"
[Footnote 1]: The office of Minister of the Police has since been abolished. M. FOUCHÉ is now a Senator, and the machine of which he was said to be so expert a manager, is confided to the direction of the Prefect of Police, who exercises his functions under the immediate authority of the Ministers, and corresponds with them concerning matters which relate to their respective departments. The higher duties of the Police are at present vested in the Grand Juge, who is also Minister of Justice. The former office is of recent creation. [Return to text]
[Footnote 2]: Voltaire thought otherwise; and he was not mistaken. [Return to text]
[Footnote 3]: I shall exemplify this truth by two remarkable facts. About the year 1775, when M. DE SARTINE was Minister of the Police, several forgeries were committed on the Bank of Vienna; Count DE MERCY, then Austrian ambassador at Paris, was directed to make a formal application for the delinquent to be delivered up to justice. What was his astonishment on receiving, a few hours after, a note from M. DE SARTINE, informing him that the author of the said forgeries had never been in Paris; but resided in Vienna, at the same time mentioning the street, the number of the house, and other interesting particulars!
A circumstance which occurred in 1796, proves that, since the revolution, the system of the Parisian police continues to extend to foreign countries. The English Commissary for prisoners of war was requested by a friend to make inquiry, on his arrival in Paris, whether a French lady of the name of BEAUFORT was living, and in what part of France she resided. He did so; and the following day, the card, on which he had written the lady's name, was returned to him, with this addition: "She lives at No. 47, East-street, Manchester-square, London." [a]Return to text]
[Footnote 4]: The same principle holds good in politics. [Return to text]