1850.

Rights of others not respected.

513

for the rights and possessions of their fellow-citizens, than any autocrat in Asia would have dared to manifest. They plundered alike the rich and the poor; they abolished titles, and robbed the Savings' Bank. They did not even profess to allow the French nation (out of Paris) freedom or fair play in the exercise of the universal suffrage they had just proclaimed. They sent out emissaries to the provinces with authority to displace any functionaries who held opinions adverse to the governing clique at Paris, and to use every means to secure the election of such representatives, and such only, as should be thorough republicans. Louis Philippe, among all his oppressions, never ventured upon any attack on the freedom of suffrage half so barefaced. The government, so far from wishing fairly to ascertain the will of the whole nation, evidently feared the expression of that will, and were anxious to control it. Most of the active parties in the Parisian movement shared this feeling; they fancied (right or wrong) that the majority of the French nation were not on their side, were not favourable to republican institutions; and they were resolved-so ill had they learned the first principles of liberty - that the voice of the majority should be silenced or coerced. When the regiments of the National Guard assembled to choose their officers, the pledge exacted from the candidates was this: that in the event of the new Convention declaring against a Republic, they would march against them and put 'them down!' What was this, but to make public profession of military despotism? What was this, but a declaration on the part of certain classes of the population of Paris,-' If the votes of the great majority of French citizens, honestly ascertained, should decide against our views, we will unscrupulously trample upon that majority, and carry out our views by force?' Accordingly when the Convention met, the members were compelled to appear upon the balcony in presence of the armed mob of the metropolis, and cry Vive la République, without having even a decent interval allowed them for going through the form of a deliberation. How could free institutions work among a people who showed themselves so utterly insensible to the commonest dictates of justice between man and man?

The same regardlessness of the rights of others, thus early pronounced by the Provisional Government and the National Guard, pervaded every class, and every individual, both in Paris and the other great towns. No one had the slightest scruple about imposing his own will upon others by force. In all discussions, the minority were ready to appeal to arms. If out-voted, they would fight for it. However small the number who held their opinions, however conscious they were that the vast mass of the

nation was opposed to them, they still held themselves entitled to compel obedience to their wishes. Every man maintained his right to coerce the whole nation. Every vote of the Assembly was a signal for some party or other who were offended at it, to descend into the streets,' as the phrase was. Hence the six months succeeding February witnessed a scarcely interrupted succession of actual or attempted émeutes. How could a representative system flourish and bear fruit, when the very foundation on which it rests, submission to the decision of the electors, unequivocally and constitutionally expressed, — was not merely overlooked or overborne, but openly denied and scouted?

A similar spirit has animated the course pursued by all parties even to the date at which we write. The President and the Assembly preserve an attitude of mutual and indecorous hostility, instead of mutual forbearance and respect. The malcontent minority rail at the triumphant majority, i. e. the Assembly; and the Assembly, forgetting that angry criticism is the inalienable right of the minority, endeavours to punish and gag the press. The defeated Socialists seem incessantly occupied with plots against the government, and the alarmed authorities retaliate by a new electoral law which disfranchises half the constituency of France. Encroachment is retorted by encroachment; and tyranny on the one side, and conspiracy on the other, indicate too plainly how little either party understand the duties of citizens or the rights of man. Partout (says M. Guizot) les libertés individuelles des citoyens 'seules en présence de la volonté unique de la majorité 'numérique de la nation. Partout le principe du despotisme en face du droit de l'insurrection!'

Again, a general regard for truth is the bond, the tacit postulate, which lies at the very root of every social relation. In all the daily and hourly transactions of life we assume that a man will do what he swears to do, and has done what he affirms that he has done. We could not get on without this assumption; all society would be brought to a dead-lock in a single day, were we compelled to forego it. No concerns, least of all those in which the citizens take a direct share, as in the administration of justice or in municipal government, could be carried on, were this postulate once proved and felt to be a false one. The effect upon the operation of free institutions, of an habitual disregard of the obligations of truth and justice, is well illustrated by the working of trial by jury in Ireland in a certain class of cases in recent times.

This institution is based upon the assumption that witnesses will give true evidence, and that jurymen will a true verdict

1850.

Regard for Truth essential.

-

515

find according to the evidence, both parties swearing that they will do so. If this assumption be correct, trial by jury is the most invaluable of free institutions; if the assumption be false, it is of all institutions the most noxious and treacherous. Where the assumption is correct, trial by jury is the safeguard of liberty and the protection of the community; where the assumption is incorrect, then trial by jury is the shield of the wrong-doer, the peril of the good citizena delusion, 'a mockery, and a snare;'-it becomes an institution, not for discovering, but for concealing truth-not for administering, but for evading justice- for compromising, dishonouring, and endangering society. Now the assumption has long been not correct in Ireland; and it is notorious that it has not been not So. In that country it is well known that frequently where party feeling, religious hostility, or class sympathies intervene, neither the statement of a witness, nor the oath of jurymen, can be relied on. One instance will suffice. The statement was Mr. O'Connell's, and was made, we believe, in the House of Commons. On one occasion,' said the great agitator, 'I 'was counsel for a man on his trial for murder. I called only one witness for the defence; but that one, anywhere save in • Ireland, would have been sufficient. I put the murdered man into the witness-box to prove that he was still alive. No question 'was raised as to his identity, but my client was found guilty.' The State Trials in Ireland in 1848 brought out the same truth with the most painful and instructive clearness. Three men were severally put on their trial for treason and sedition. About their guilt there was not a doubt: it was notorious and avowed. They did not even plead that they had not committed treason; they simply argued, after the pattern of the French émeutiers, that they had a right to commit it. Yet so doubtful was the decision of an Irish jury felt to be, that the whole struggle took place, not on the question as to the value or relevancy of the evidence, but on the striking of the panel. In the two first cases the prisoners escaped because unanimity was required, and two of the jurymen were partisans: in the third case a conviction was obtained because the prisoner chanced to have no friends in the jury-box. So completely was this acknowledged, that in all the angry discussions which subsequently took place, the only question argued on either side

Mr. Lover, in his 'Rory O' More,' mentions a similar instance. Mr. Foster (Letters on Ireland, p. 409.) states, having had the curiosity to count, that in 1000 instances the statements made before Lord Devon's Commission on oath, have been flatly contradicted on oath.

turned on the constitution of the jury; - for on the great issue, that of guilt or innocence, there was no difference of opinion. The complaint of the seditious was that their virtual accomplices were excluded from the jury-box: the defence of the authorities was, that this was indispensable in order to obtain an honest verdict. Both parties were right. But how can trial by jury work in a country where oaths are of so little cogency, and where party feeling is so universal, so vehement, and so unscrupulous, that, to speak plainly, a prisoner's only choice often lies between a jury of antagonists or a jury of partisans ?

The second national requisite for the successful working of self-government is an habitual respect for established law. Before a people can be trusted either to make the laws or to enforce them, they must have learned the first great lesson of yielding them a cheerful and reverential obedience. Without the wide diffusion of this virtue through all ranks, the law can have no permanence, the administrators of the law no authority. Without this, what hold could judges and officers have over the people, by whom they were appointed, by whom they were removable, and from the will of whom they derived their mission to control that will? Where the great majority of the nation venerate and uphold the law, the judge and the sheriff act against the malefactors and the turbulent with the whole power of the community; where it is otherwise, their task is the hopeless one of casting out Satan by Satan's agency. Conceive the consequences in Ireland, were legislators, judges, and officers the direct creatures of the people's choice! Who would dare to make a just law or enforce a stringent one? In America, the great body of the people still retains much of their ancestral reverence for the laws what Carlyle calls an inveterate and ' inborn reverence for the constable's staff,' and a wholesome education is contending manfully in the same direction. Yet even there, we see occasionally alarming indications of the difficulties which are felt by popularly elected officers, in cases where the law-makers and the law-breakers are identical. The exceptions are few indeed; but enough to make us at times afraid that the apprehensions of Jefferson on the probable euthanasia of democracy in the United States may be a proof of his foresight as well as of his sensitiveness. In France, the despotic and anomalous power of the police to which Frenchmen have been long accustomed to submit, and the extensive ramifications of the bureaucratic system, which scarcely leaves full freedom of action in any of the ordinary transactions of life, have hitherto in some degree replaced that respect for law which is so sadly

1850.

Right of Revolt.

517

wanting there; but as these wear out, or are cast off, the consequences cannot fail to develope themselves.

The French have a significant phrase in common use, le droit d'insurrection the right of revolt. The expression, at least the ordinary use of it, speaks volumes. The right of rising in arms against the government is with them one of the most precious of the rights of man,'—a right, too, which they take care shall not be lost non utendo,—a right not, as with us, kept in the background, in secrecy and silence, disused and forgotten till oppression has driven wise men mad, but kept bright and burnished as a daily weapon, constantly flourished in the face of rulers, and ready to be acted upon on the most trivial occasions. To repeat a simile which has become a common-place with us, what in England is considered the extreme medicine of the constitution, is made in France its daily bread. In the code of French constitutional law, every man whom the rulers may have injured or displeased - every man who deems any decisions of the Chamber unpatriotic or unwise every man who thinks the proceedings of the government oppressive, or its form impolitic, has the sacred and inalienable right of insurrection to fall back upon, and may at once set up the standard of revolt, and try what fiery and foolish spirits are rash enough to join him. An Englishman would shrink back from any similar enterprise, as being black with the guilt, and terrible with the penalties, of treason. A Frenchman has no such feeling with him it is no question of right or wrong, but simply of the chance of failure or success. The right of

cashiering' his rulers, if they will not do his bidding- if they persist in doing the bidding of the great mass of his countrymen instead he considers to be as indisputably and inherently vested in him as the right of choosing his representative, and one to be exercised with almost as little consideration. In England we look upon the matter very differently. We appeal to the great precedents of our history: and, without denying that cases may occur in which the oppressions of a government justify a general outbreak on the part of the people, we are accustomed to regard such an outbreak as an extreme measure. The right of resistance depends upon the sympathy and support of the nation; personal opinion or individual injury can never warrant it. And it is one of the inestimable advantages of liberty of speech and suffrage, that they provide the means of readily ascertaining what is the amount of injury sustained in any case by the public, and what is the opinion of the public concerning it.

A further illustration may be gathered from comparing the whole tone of proceedings in State Trials for libel, treason, and

VOL. XCII. NO. CLXXXVIII.

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