"And for what are we to wait and hope, for which we have not already in vain waited and hoped the past ten years?" asked Marrast.

"The true hour to strike!" was the firm answer.

"And that hour, when will it come?"

"It may come quickly, as it will come surely, soon or late! It cannot be that the Revolution of July should continue much longer to result in the solemn mockery it has. It cannot be that its friends should much longer be withheld from those by whom it was achieved, only to aggrandize one old man and his sons. It cannot be that the unmitigated and disgusting selfism of Louis Philippe, and his efforts to ally himself with every crowned head in Europe--not for the glory of France, but for his own--will much longer be overlooked or their perils masked. The appanages grasped by himself--the dotation and bridal outfit of the Duke of Orléans--the dotation sought for the Duke of Nemours, and his appointment as Regent during the minority of the Count of Paris--the Governorship of Algeria bestowed on the youthful and inexperienced Aumale, to the insult of so many brave and victorious generals--the naval supremacy, to which has been exalted the ambitious Joinville, and his union to the opulent Brazilian Princess--the effort to unite the young Montpensier with the Infanta of Spain--the environment of Paris with Bastilles, with the avowed purpose of fortifying order by turning the ordnance which should protect into enginery of destruction--an immense standing army--the notorious corruption of officials, and the audacious dabbling of Ministers in the stocks, if not the King himself, by means of information obtained by the Government telegraph, and withheld from the people, or of information manufactured by the telegraph designed to affect the Bourse--the unprecedented number of placemen occupying seats in the Chamber of Deputies, yet receiving exorbitant salaries as incumbents of civil offices, one man being often in receipt of the salaries of several offices, though performing the duties of none--the fact that Ministers have maintained majorities by unblushing bribery in elections--that hardly one man in two hundred is an elector--the profligate arts of corruption by which every able man is bought by the Court--the disgraceful censorship of the press and the drama--the enormous appropriations for the civil list, wrung out by grinding taxes from the toil and sweat of millions--the absurd assumption, yet the monstrous power, over the press and its conductors, of that conclave of hoary dotards called the Chamber of Peers--the utter and most impious disregard of the deprivation and misery of the operative and laborer, although arrayed side by side with the insolence and wealth pampered by the taxes torn from themselves--the total forgetfulness of the self-evident truth of the right of all men to labor, unrestricted by the baleful influences of the competition of capitalists--these facts, properly urged and set forth by the press, from the tribune and in the clubs, in connection with due enlightenment of the masses upon their rights as to labor and its reward and the duty of government thereupon could not fail to prepare the popular mind, all over France, and all over Europe, for reform--for revolution."




Most Popular