If a priest had uttered these words, which seem more befitting the lips
of an Italian than of a Frenchman, he would be charged with hypocrisy and mental reservation. It would be said that he is playing saint; that he is concealing his game by not revealing his innermost thoughts. But everything is forbidden to the cleric, while to the radical any and everything is allowed. This everybody knows. I confine myself to merely quoting this first sentence, without further dwelling on its merits; and I pass on to a second one, which gives me a right, not only to suspect you, as in the case of the former one, but to make a direct attack on you; its tenor is as follows:
“What I have done in the past is the true pledge of what I will do in the future, toward definitively establishing the republic.”
It is here, sir, that I must challenge you.
In the first place, I have to express my amazement that, having to account to your country, under so grave a responsibility, and for misdeeds for which you might have been rendered far more seriously liable, you can be so ready to accuse others and to glorify yourself, that you go so far as to dare to say: “What I have done in the past is the true pledge of what I will do in the future.”
What have you done in the past?
You were a young lawyer, and were turned all of a sudden, and in consequence of a tumultuous lawsuit, into a political character. The audacity of your revolutionary opinions enabled you to become a candidate for the Corps Législatif, and in the next place to take your seat as a deputy by the side of your friends Blanqui, Raspail, and Rochefort.
On the 4th September, you seized upon the governing power, and, without consulting with your colleagues, you assigned to yourself the Ministry
of the Interior. Did you, as soon as you got into the ministry, extend to all good citizens those arms which you seem now to be opening so widely? Not at all. In the Hôtel de Ville,[162] you installed such men as Etienne Arago, Ferry, and Rochefort; in the mairie, such characters as Delescluze, Mottu, Bonvalet, Clémenceau; in the préfectures, such as Duportal, Engelhard, and Jacobins of all sorts. You filled these places with your friends—your friends only, and these of the most excitable kind. Afterward, when your colleagues, in order to get rid of you, were so signally weak as to give you the entire realm to operate upon, when, through a fortunate contingency, you had suddenly entrusted to you that magnificent part which, to a heroic and truly patriotic heart, would have been unsurpassable, what did you do? You sought rather to force the republic—your republic—on the country than to save France. It is well for you to talk about universal suffrage. You have treated it as naught. By a first decree, you broke up the conseils-généraux, and did not re-establish them. By a second decree, you adjourned the elections. By a third decree, you abridged the legal qualifications for election. What have you, sole ruler everywhere obeyed, done with the treasure, the men, and the blood of her children which the nation lavished upon you? Was it not a republican who called your fatal rule the dictatorship of incompetency?
Though only three months in power, you had become almost a greater burden upon us than the late Imperial Government; and when you assert that the National Assembly