nge period before his exile, the frightful phantom
of the past was all-powerful with men. Every kind of question was
debated--national independence, individual liberty, liberty of
conscience, of thought, of speech, and of the Press; questions of
marriage, of education, of the right to work, of the right to one's
fatherland as against exile, of the right to life as against penal law,
of the separation of Church and state, of the federation of Europe, of
frontiers to be wiped out, and of custom-houses to be done away--all
these questions were proposed, debated, and sometimes settled.

In these debates the author of this memoir took his part and did his
duty, and was repaid with insults. He remembers interjecting, when they
were insisting on parental rights, that the children had rights, too. He
astounded the assembly by asserting that it was possible to do away with
misery. On July 17, 1851, he denounced the conspiracy of Louis
Bonaparte, unveiling the project of the president to become emperor. On
another day he pronounced from the tribune a phrase which had never yet
been uttered--"The United States of Europe." Contempt and calumny were
poured upon him, but what of that? They called George Washington a
pickpocket.

These men of the old majority, who were doing all the evil that they
could--did they mean to do evil? Not a bit of it. They deceived
themselves, thinking that they had the truth, and they lied in the
service of the truth. Their pity for society was pitiless for the
people, whence arose so many laws, so many actions, that were blindly
ferocious. They were rather a mob than a senate, and were led by the
worst of their number. Let us be indulgent, and let night hide the men
of night.

What do our labours and our troubles and our exiles matter if they have
been for the general good; if the human race be indeed passing from
December to its April; if the winter of tyrannies and of wars indeed be
finished; if superstitions and prejudices no longer fall on our heads
like snow; and if, after so many clouds of empire and of carnage have
rolled away, we at last descry upon the horizon the rosy dawn of
universal peace?

O my brothers, let us be reconciled! Let us set out on the immense
highway of peace. Surely there has been enough of hatred. When will you
understand that we are all together on the same ship, and that the
immense menace of the sea is for all of us together? Our solidarity is
terrible, but brotherhoo