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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 269.: FRENCH NEWS [105] EXAMINER, 31 AUG., 1834, P. 552 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

269.: FRENCH NEWS [105] EXAMINER, 31 AUG., 1834, P. 552 - 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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269.

FRENCH NEWS [105]

EXAMINER, 31 AUG., 1834, P. 552

This item is headed “London, August 31, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry for this, his last summary of French news in the Examiner, see No. 266. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Paragraphs on France.”

the only event worthy of record which has occurred in France since our last publication, is the victory of M. Carrel over another attempt to crush him by the hands of the law. The prosecution was for a libel on the King, consisting in some disrespectful strictures on Louis-Philippe’s Speech to the Chambers.1 M. Carrel defended himself in person; and maintained that, if the King chuses to be his own Minister, he must be subject to the same freedom of censure as any other Minister—else he were a despot. The jury agreed with this view of the case, and M. Carrel was triumphantly acquitted.2

The Temps thus observes upon this victory:

The National, which during the last two years has been dragged from one tribunal to another, in consequence of a decision of exceptional justice, has at length been brought before a proper tribunal, that of the country, in the Court of Assizes held this day. The charge brought this time against the National by the public prosecutor3 was that of a direct attack on the person of the King, made on the occasion of the Royal speech, delivered at the opening of the Chambers. It pleaded “not guilty,” on the ground that the personal and active part taken by the King in the administration of the Government dispensed that paper from the observance of the law which prescribes that the Royal acts shall be free from censure when they are constitutional. The country has, through its organ, the jury, consecrated that doctrine for the tenth time on this occasion, and absolved the press, doubtless for the purpose of evincing in a striking manner its disapprobation of a violation of principles which the true friends of the constitution and the monarchy have every day cause to deplore.4

[1 ]Carrel’s attack on Louis Philippe’s Speech from the Throne is in “Ouverture de la session de 1834,” National de 1834, 1 Aug., p. 1. He was prosecuted under the provision of Bull. 13, No. 74 (29 Nov., 1830).

[2 ]Carrel’s speech in defence (23 Aug.) is in the Constitutionnel, 24 Aug., pp. 3-4. His acquittal on the same day is reported in Moniteur, 1834, p. 1743.

[3 ]The public prosecutor was Nicolas Ferdinand Marie Louis Joseph Martin (du Nord) (1790-1847), a legitimist lawyer who moved to support Louis Philippe, and who, in April 1834, had been appointed procureur général in the Cours d’Appel de Paris.

[4 ]Translated from “Bulletin” (23 Aug.), Le Temps, Journal des Progrès, 24 Aug., 1834, p. 1.