Armand Carrel would have favored the fortification of the capital."Le National" has said, again and again, placing the name of its old editor by the side of the names of Napoleon and Vauban.What signifies this exhumation of an anti-popular politician? It signifies that Armand Carrel wished to make government an individual and irremovable, but elective, property, and that he wished this property to be elected, not by the people, but by the army.The political system of Carrel was simply a reorganization of the pretorian guards.Carrel also hated the _pequins_.That which he deplored in the revolution of July was not, they say, the insurrection of the people, but the victory of the people over the soldiers.That is the reason why Carrel, after 1830, would never support the patriots."Do you answer me with a few regiments?" he asked.Armand Carrel regarded the army--the military power--as the basis of law and government.This man undoubtedly had a moral sense within him, but he surely had no sense of justice.Were he still in this world, I declare it boldly, liberty would have no greater enemy than Carrel.
It is said that on this question of the fortification of Paris the staff of "Le National" are not agreed.This would prove, if proof were needed, that a journal may blunder and falsify, without entitling any one to accuse its editors.A journal is a metaphysical being, for which no one is really responsible, and which owes its existence solely to mutual concessions.This idea ought to frighten those worthy citizens who, because they borrow their opinions from a journal, imagine that they belong to a political party, and who have not the faintest suspicion that they are really without a head.
For this reason, sir, I have enlisted in a desperate war against every form of authority over the multitude.Advance sentinel of the proletariat, I cross bayonets with the celebrities of the day, as well as with spies and charlatans.Well, when I am fighting with an illustrious adversary, must I stop at the end of every phrase, like an orator in the tribune, to say "the learned author," "the eloquent writer," "the profound publicist," and a hundred other platitudes with which it is fashionable to mock people? These civilities seem to me no less insulting to the man attacked than dishonorable to the aggressor.But when, rebuking an author, I say to him, "Citizen, your doctrine is absurd, and, if to prove my assertion is an offence against you, I am guilty of it," immediately the listener opens his ears; he is all attention; and, if I do not succeed in convincing him, at least Igive his thought an impulse, and set him the wholesome example of doubt and free examination.
Then do not think, sir, that, in tripping up the philosophy of your very learned and very estimable confrere, M.Troplong, Ifail to appreciate his talent as a writer (in my opinion, he has too much for a jurist); nor his knowledge, though it is too closely confined to the letter of the law, and the reading of old books.In these particulars, M.Troplong offends on the side of excess rather than deficiency.Further, do not believe that I am actuated by any personal animosity towards him, or that I have the slightest desire to wound his self-love.I know M.Troplong only by his "Treatise on Prescription," which I wish he had not written; and as for my critics, neither M.Troplong, nor any of those whose opinion I value, will ever read me.Once more, my only object is to prove, as far as I am able, to this unhappy French nation, that those who make the laws, as well as those who interpret them, are not infallible organs of general, impersonal, and absolute reason.
I had resolved to submit to a systematic criticism the semi-official defence of the right of property recently put forth by M.Wolowski, your colleague at the Conservatory.With this view, I had commenced to collect the documents necessary for each of his lectures, but, soon perceiving that the ideas of the professor were incoherent, that his arguments contradicted each other, that one affirmation was sure to be overthrown by another, and that in M.Wolowski's lucubrations the good was always mingled with the bad, and being by nature a little suspicious, it suddenly occurred to me that M.Wolowski was an advocate of equality in disguise, thrown in spite of himself into the position in which the patriarch Jacob pictures one of his sons,--_inter duas clitellas_, between two stools, as the proverb says.
In more parliamentary language, I saw clearly that M.Wolowski was placed between his profound convictions on the one hand and his official duties on the other, and that, in order to maintain his position, he had to assume a certain slant.Then Iexperienced great pain at seeing the reserve, the circumlocution, the figures, and the irony to which a professor of legislation, whose duty it is to teach dogmas with clearness and precision, was forced to resort; and I fell to cursing the society in which an honest man is not allowed to say frankly what he thinks.
Never, sir, have you conceived of such torture: I seemed to be witnessing the martyrdom of a mind.I am going to give you an idea of these astonishing meetings, or rather of these scenes of sorrow.
Monday, Nov.20, 1840.--The professor declares, in brief,--1.
That the right of property is not founded upon occupation, but upon the impress of man; 2.That every man has a natural and inalienable right to the use of matter.
Now, if matter can be appropriated, and if, notwithstanding, all men retain an inalienable right to the use of this matter, what is property?--and if matter can be appropriated only by labor, how long is this appropriation to continue?--questions that will confuse and confound all jurists whatsoever.
