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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 226.: FRENCH NEWS [81] EXAMINER, 29 DEC., 1833, P. 824 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

226.: FRENCH NEWS [81] EXAMINER, 29 DEC., 1833, P. 824 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


226.

FRENCH NEWS [81]

EXAMINER, 29 DEC., 1833, P. 824

As Mill noted in his letter to Carlyle of 12 Jan., 1834 (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 209), he had resumed his comments on French affairs; again his attention is focused on the French legislature, which opened on 23 Dec. The item is headed “London, December 29, 1833.” This group of Mill’s French news reports is described in his bibliography as “The summary of the French news in the Exam. from 29th December 1833 to 16 February 1834” (MacMinn, p. 36). The next mention of these summaries is of that for 30 Mar., 1834 (see No. 245); however, three articles on 2, 9, and 23 Mar. are identified as his in the Somerville College set of the Examiner (see Nos. 238, 241, and 242). The present article, his last in 1833, is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets.

the speech of louis-philippe, at the opening of the Session, may be regarded, even among Kings’ speeches, as remarkable for its emptiness.1 His Citizen Majesty (we beg his pardon, for the days are gone by when even words of revolutionary sound had the honour of his countenance) doubtless shares the opinion next to universal among his supporters as well as enemies, that what is said or done in, to, or by the Chambers, is of the completest insignificance. There are few things more striking in the present state of France, than the contemptuous neglect into which the national legislature has fallen.

Another trial for a conspiracy to overthrow the Government has just terminated by the acquittal of all the accused.2 The prosecution had first broken down so completely, that the Advocate-General, in his concluding speech, was forced to admit that there was not sufficient evidence against the two persons whom he had represented as being at the head of the conspiracy.3 But the best purpose of the persecutors is answered; the detestable Code d’Instruction Criminelle, framed by Napoleon as an instrument for his despotism, gives power to the Government in all such cases of keeping the accused in prison for months before bringing them to trial;4 this power has been exerted towards the present accused, who have been in prison for five months untried, and numbers of others are now in confinement who will as surely as these be acquitted by the jury, and perhaps sent to prison immediately afterwards on a fresh charge. The French Government, by suborning false or frivolous charges, or even by lending an ear to the denunciations which their police spies are never unprepared with, have the power of converting any man, however innocent, into a prisoner for life. The only person of any note who was implicated in the present trial, Raspail, a young chemist of great eminence, has for three years past been seldom out of prison, though almost all the charges against him have been scouted by the various juries before whom he has successively been brought.

During the present trial, one of the witnesses, by name Vignerte, on hearing the Society of the Rights of Man, of which society he is a member and officer, accused by the Advocate-General of designing confiscation of property and an agrarian law, could not contain his indignation, and gave the Crown lawyer the lie direct in open Court. For this, and for calling the Judges, what they richly deserved to be called, un tas de valets,5 the Court sentenced him on the spot to three years’ imprisonment. It is monstrous that a tribunal should thus have the power of judging in its own cause, under the influence, too, of momentary irritation, and inflicting sentences of vindictive severity. A Court of Justice should have the command of adequate physical force to preserve order during its proceedings, but the punishment of words or acts disrespectful to it should be left to another time and to other men.

Three of the counsel of the accused, men who are among the principal of the rising ornaments of the French bar, have been, for pretended disrespect to the Court, suspended by the Court from the practice of their profession, one of them for a year, the other two for six months each.6 Is not this also monstrous?

[1 ]On 23 Dec. (Moniteur, 1833, p. 2487).

[2 ]On 11 Dec., 1833, François Vincent Raspail (for his earlier trial,see No. 137) and twenty-six young men, members of the Société des Droits de l’Homme, were brought before the Cour d’Assises de la Seine on charges of conspiracy. Each session was reported in the Moniteur, the opening one on pp. 2436-8, and the closing one pp. 2484-6. The Société des Droits de l’Homme was a regrouping of the Société des Amis du Peuple, which had been broken up at the end of 1832. The new society, modelled on Robespierre’s Société des Jacobins, was secret, republican, and carefully organized into cells covering nearly all areas of France, and was especially strong in Paris and Lyons. Its newspaper was La Tribune until it was banned, and then the Réformateur.

[3 ]In his concluding speech on 21 Dec. (Moniteur, 1833, p. 2481), Emile Delapalme (1793-1868), the avocat-général, did not admit there was insufficient evidence against Raspail and Joachim René Théophile Guillard de Kersausie (1798-1874), another liberal activist and former Carbonaro. The admission had come earlier; see the account of the trial in La Tribune, 14 Dec., 1833, p. 3.

[4 ]Bull. 214 bis (17 Nov.-16 Dec., 1808), Livre I, Chap. viii, Art. 113.

[5 ]Jean Jacques Vignerte (1806-70), one of the Society’s principal organizers among the working class, made his insulting remark in a speech of 19 Dec. (Moniteur, 1833, p. 2473).

[6 ]Jacques François Dupont de Bussac (1803-73) was suspended for a year, and Louis Chrysostome Michel (1798-1853) and Marie Oscar Pinard (1801-67) were both suspended for six months.