The queen of the age is the Press. Lately dethroned and somewhat shorn
of her majesty, but still a queen. It is in vain that the press has
sometimes degraded itself in the eyes of honest men by stooping to
applaud and approve of crimes and excesses, that journalists have done
what they can to lower it; still the august offspring of the human
mind, the press, has really lost neither its power nor its fascination.
Misunderstood, misapplied, it may have done some harm, but no one can
question the signal service which it has been able to render, or the
nobility of its mission. If it has sometimes been the organ of false
prophets, its voice has also been often raised to instruct and
encourage.
When last night you went secretly, in a manner worthy of the act, to
seize on the printing presses of the _Journal des Débats_, the _Paris
Journal_, and the _Constitutionnel_, were you aware of what you were
doing? You imagined, perhaps, this act would have no other result than
that of suppressing violently a private concern—which is one kind of
robbery—and of reducing to a state of beggary—which is a crime—the
numerous individuals, journalists, printers, compositors, and others
who are employed on the journal, and who live by its means. You have
done worse than this. You have stopped, as far as it was in your power,
the current of human progress. You have suppressed man’s noblest.
right—the right of expressing his opinions to the world; you are no
better than the pickpocket who appropriates your handkerchief. You have
taken our freedom of thought by the throat, and said, “It is in my way,
I will strangle it.” Wherefore have you acted thus? To shut the mouths
of those who contradict you, is to admit that you are not so very sure
of being in the right. To suppress the journals is to confess your fear
of them; to avoid the light is to excite our suspicion concerning the
deeds you are perpetrating in the darkness. We shut our windows when we
do not desire to be seen. Little confidence is inspired by closed
doors. Your councils at the Hôtel de Ville are secret as the
proceedings of certain legal cases, the details of which might be
hurtful to public morality. Again I say, wherefore this mystery? What
strange projects have you on foot? Do you discuss among you,
propositions of a nature which your modesty declines to make known to
the world? This fear of publicity, of opposition, you have proved
afresh, by the nocturnal visits of your National Guards to the printing
offices, wherein they forced an entrance like housebreakers. Shall we
be reduced to judge of your acts, and of the bloody incidents of the
civil war, only by your own asseverations and those of your
accomplices? You must be very determined to act guiltily and to be
obliged to tell lies, as you take so much trouble to get rid of those,
who might pass sentence on you, and who might convict you of falsehood.
Therefore you have not only committed a crime in so doing, but made a
great mistake as well. No one can meddle with the liberty of the press
with impunity. The persecution of the press always brings with it its
own punishment. Look back to the many years of the Imperial Government,
to the few months of the Government of the 4th of September; of all the
crimes perpetrated by the former, of all the errors committed by the
latter, those crimes and errors which most particularly hastened the
end were those that were levelled against the freedom of the press. The
most valable excuse in favour of the revolt of the 18th of March was
certainly the suppression of several journals by General Vinoy, with
the consent of M. Thiers. How can you be so rash as to make the very
same mistakes which have been the destruction of former governments,
and also so unmindful of your own honour as to commit the very crime
which reduces you to the same level as your enemies?
Ah I truly those who were ready to judge you with patience and
impartiality, those who at first were perhaps, on the whole, favourable
to you, because it seemed to them that you represented some of the
legitimate aspirations of Paris, even those, seeing you act like
thoughtless tyrants, will feel it quite impossible to blind themselves
any longer to your faults; those who having wished to esteem you for
the sake of liberty, will for the sake of liberty, be obliged to
despise you!