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

71.: FRENCH NEWS [8] EXAMINER, 26 DEC., 1830, PP. 826-7 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I [1822]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I, 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.


71.

FRENCH NEWS [8]

EXAMINER, 26 DEC., 1830, PP. 826-7

The implication of the division of the article into two parts (here signalled by a printer’s rule) is not clear; the initial two paragraphs of the second part are here included, as being presumably by Mill; the final two paragraphs of that part, dealing with Polish and Belgian news, are excluded. The article is headed “London, December 26.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55.

the french ex-ministers have been tried, convicted, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and the loss of all honours and distinctions. Polignac is, moreover, pronounced civilly dead. The legal consequence of this part of his sentence is, that his property is not confiscated—that punishment being formally abolished by the charter1 —but passes to his natural heirs.

Perpetual imprisonment would be a far heavier punishment than death, if it were enforced; but in practice, it is sure to amount, at least in cases of political delinquency, to confinement for two or three years at the farthest.

No disturbances had broken out when the last advices were received, and it was hoped that none would take place. We join most earnestly in this hope; but we have seen, with ineffable disgust, the Parisian populace—the populace of the three days—reproached with bloodthirstiness for demanding that great criminals shall be treated as mean ones have ever been, and as these very persons would have treated the most intelligent and patriotic men in France, if their criminal enterprise had been triumphant.

The greatest possible care was evidently taken by the Peers to avoid putting to the witnesses, during the trial, any question likely to elicit facts unfavourable to the accused.

The ministers have introduced into the Chamber of Peers a bill for the more effectual suppression of the slave-trade.2 No law could be more indispensable, as the connivance of the Bourbon Government has hitherto been the principal obstacle to the entire rooting out of that abominable traffic.

The ministry have, moreover, introduced a bill into the Chamber of Deputies, granting to the King a civil list of 18 millions a year—about £720,000 sterling. This, which is little more than half the amount of the civil list, which Charles X enjoyed (though he did not think fit to pay his creditors out of it), has given great, and just, dissatisfaction—considering the enormous private fortune of Louis Philippe, and the general wish that no unnecessary pomp should encircle the throne of a citizen king.3

From accounts received from Paris, up to Thursday evening, it appears that tranquillity was still maintained, chiefly by the temperance and excellent conduct of the National Guard, aided by the students of the Polytechnique School, and the Schools of Law and Medicine.

Polignac, and his fellow-culprits, are to be confined in the fortress of Ham, in Picardy.

[1 ]By Art. 57 of the Charter of 1830.

[2 ]Enacted as Bull. 22, No. 87 (4 Mar., 1831).

[3 ]Project de loi qui doit fixer la dotation de la couronne et la liste civile (Moniteur, 1830, p. 1733) was presented on 15 Dec.; a commission was appointed on 24 Dec., but the bill was withdrawn because of the outcry.