has completed its work, which was to put an end to the war, you forget that the Assembly had received from France not one mandate only, but three. The Assembly had, and has still, given it the charge to rid our country of the Prussians, of demagoguism, and of yourself.
After the dreadful catastrophes in which the Empire sank to ruin, do you know, sir, what proved to be France’s greatest misfortune?
It was that just then, in that so terrible a crisis, you stood the absolute master of France. I make no reference to the two aged men who were at Tours with you. It was from you, a lawyer, that our generals received their orders; it was you who dictated plans for campaigns; it was you who scattered our forces, and blindly hurled our armies right and left, multiplying your lying bulletins, and at the same time and to the same extent as our reverses.—But I must turn away my thoughts from those disasters, as also from the remembrance of those poor soldiers, without clothes, without shoes, without food, without ammunition! How great an organizer, my dear sir, you proved yourself to be! How fortunate you turned out to have been in the selection of your contractors for supplies!
Nevertheless, the nation, ever generous, might have measurably accepted, as an offset to this, your personal activity, and your efforts, although unsuccessful; it had given you credit for having withdrawn yourself momentarily; but you reappeared too quickly, only a short time before the day when the Commune of Paris was putting forward your friends, your lieutenants, your teachers, or your disciples, such as Delescluze and Millière, Rigault and Ranc, Cavalier and Mottu, all those fellows who have made themselves as
ignominious and ridiculous as possible, some of whom are still around you; in fine, all that party which you have never, even to the extent of a single word, disavowed, and the members of which you called upon to give evidence of their morality, their political worth, and their aptitude for the business of government! That evidence has been given, and really, sir, you rely too much on the frivolity, the folly, or the credulity of the public. You preach to it about a debonair republic, but that public has not forgotten the grotesque, ruinous republic, accompanied with bloodshed, which during six months was fastened on France.
You have avoided with prudent care to call your republic social as well as democratic; and why? In order to enjoy the happiness of a fleeting hour of dictatorship, I suppose it is worth your while to run the risk of more calamities. Alas! unfortunate land, fated to be thus perpetually the dupe and the victim of most guilty ambition!
No, in spite of all that you may say or leave unsaid, your promises are contradicted by our memories. We need, in order to be persuaded, something else than sonorous words. It is true that, in one point only, you depart from the vague style of your programme. You declare that you seek, above all things, to lay the foundation of the future of democracy on a reform, to wit, in education; and with this idea, you proclaim that you and your friends are alone capable, alone worthy, to bring up youth. You seek to turn out just, free, strong-minded and able men. This is very fine. But how? By means of a national education given after a truly modern and truly democratic manner.
And here you dare to affirm that the church and preceding governments
have done nothing for public instruction, that they view every person who knows how to read as an enemy, and you claim to reform the world with your schools.
Allow me to reply that in this matter you are taking advantage of ignorance instead of combating it. For it argues a singular reliance on the ignorance of an audience to attempt to make it swallow at one and the same time, and in the same sentence, calumny and nonsense.