e result, than was nearly everywhere visible. A few shopkeepers
alone seemed troubled.

On the Pont Royal a little crowd was collected around one or two men of
the labouring classes, who were discussing the causes of the
disturbance. First questioning a respectable-looking by-stander as to
the rumours, I mingled with the throng, in order to get an idea of the
manner in which the _people_ regarded the matter. It would seem that a
collision had taken place between the troops and a portion of the
citizens, and that a charge had been made by a body of cavalry on some
of the latter, without having observed the formalities required by the
law. Some of the people had raised the cry "_aux arms_;" several _corps
de garde_ had been disarmed, and many thousands were rallying in defence
of their liberties. In short everything wore the appearance of the
commencement of another revolution. The point discussed by the crowd,
was the right of the dragoons to charge a body of citizens without
reading the riot act, or making what the French call, the
"_sommations_." I was struck with the plain common sense of one or two
of the speakers, who were of the class of artisans, and who uttered more
good reason, and displayed more right feeling, in the five minutes I
listened, than one is apt to meet with, on the same subjects, in a year,
in the salons of Paris. I was the more struck by this circumstance, in
consequence of the manner in which the same topic had been broached,
quite lately, in the Chamber of Deputies.

In one of the recent affairs in the east of France, the troops had fired
on a crowd, without the previous _sommations_, in consequence, as was
alleged, of some stones being hurled from the crowd against themselves.
Every one, who has the smallest knowledge of a government of laws,
understands its action in an affair of this sort. Ten thousand people
are in a street, in their own right, and half a dozen of them commit an
outrage. Military force becomes necessary, but before it is applied
certain forms are required, to notify the citizen that his ordinary
rights are suspended, in the interests of public order, and to warn him
to go away. This is a provision that the commonest intellect can
understand; and yet some of the leading administration men, _lawyers
too_, maintained that soldiers had the rights of other men, and if
stones were hurled at them from a crowd, they were perfectly justifiable
in using their arms against that crowd!