r," or "my cousin." This crime no one disputes, not
even those who profit by it and live by it; they say simply that it was
necessary; not even he who committed it, who says merely that he, the
criminal, has been "absolved." This crime contains within itself all
crimes, treachery in the conception, perjury in the execution, murder
and assassination in the struggle, spoliation, swindling, and robbery
in the triumph; this crime draws after it as integral parts of itself,
suppression of the laws, violation of constitutional inviolabilities,
arbitrary sequestration, confiscation of property, midnight massacres,
secret military executions, commissions superseding tribunals, ten
thousand citizens banished, forty thousand citizens proscribed, sixty
thousand families ruined and despairing. These things are patent. Even
so! it is painful to say it, but there is silence concerning this
crime; it is there, men see it, touch it, and pass on to their
business; shops are opened, the stock jobbers job, Commerce, seated on
her packages, rubs her hands, and the moment is close at hand when
everybody will regard all that has taken place as a matter of course.
He who measures cloth does not hear the yard-stick in his hand speak to
him and say: "'Tis a false measure that governs." He who weighs out a
commodity does not hear his scales raise their voice and say: "'Tis a
false weight that reigns." A strange order of things surely, that has
for its base supreme disorder, the negation of all law! equilibrium
resting on iniquity!

Let us add,--what, for that matter is self-evident,--that the author of
this crime is a malefactor of the most cynical and lowest description.

At this moment, let all who wear a robe, a scarf, or a uniform; let all
those who serve this man, know, if they think themselves the agents of
a power, that they deceive themselves; they are the shipmates of a
pirate. Ever since the 2nd of December there have been no
office-holders in France, there have been only accomplices. The moment
has come when every one must take careful account of what he has done,
of what he is continuing to do. The gendarmes who arrested those whom
the man of Strasburg and Boulogne called "insurgents," arrested the
guardians of the Constitution. The judge who tried the combatants of
Paris or the provinces, placed in the dock the mainstays of the law.
The officer who confined in the hulks the "condemned men," confined the
defenders of the Republic an