The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-09-28 00:00:00

M. VICTOR HUGO ON REPUBLICS.

A banquet, in honour of the Republic, at which 150
guests were to have been present, was to have lawn
held on Sunday in a covered room of the Boulevard
Beaumarchais, but it was prohibited at the last
moment. A private dinner was, however, given by
Robiner, at which there were present :30 guests,
and to them letters declining to be present at the ban-
quet were read from Victor Lingo and Louis Blanc.
The former wrote :
"Mo. ohm Concitoyens,—Yon sire my presence at your
banquet. My presence is my thought. Allow me therefore
to speak in the midst of you. Friends, let us have confidence
we are not no vanquished as people suppose. To three
Emperors let Bs oppose three dates—the 11th of July demo-
lished the Belittle, fend means Liberty; the 10th of August
uncrowned the Tuileries, and sigultio s Equality ; and
the 21st of September proclainied the Republic, and
mem a Fraternity. These three ideas can triumph over
three armies. They are string enough to collar all
the monsters ; they may be resumed In the word
Revoluti.m. The Revolution is a great tamer, and if
the Monarchy has its lions and its tigers, we have
the watchdog. As enumerations are about to be male, let
us make out own. There is on one side three men, on the
other three nations ; it Is true, all three omnipotent. They
possess ail that characterizes divine right; they possess the
sa ord, the auoptre, the writtrit law ; they have their God and
their priests. They have their judges, executioners, the
power to punish, and the art of founding slavery by the
powers of slaves themselves. Ilave you real the frightful
Military Code of Prussia? Then these all-powerful per-
sons are gods: we are but men. To the ancient
.. . . . .

Monarchy which is the living past and living the
terrible life of the dead, to spectral kings, to the
old despotism which can with & gesture make four mil-
lions of swords spring from their scabbards, which declares
that power Is above law, which restores the ancient crime
called conquest, which strangles, massacres, pillages, exter-
minated, drives innumerable masses to the slaughter-house,
and abstains from no profitable Infamy, which steals a pro-
vince from a country and a timepiece from a private house
—to this formidable coalition of darkness, to this compact,
nocturnal, enornious power, what have we to oppose? A
ray of dawn. And who will be the conqueror? The light.
Friends, do not doubt It. Yes: France will conquer. A
trinity of Emperors may be a trinity ; but it is not unity.
All which is not one divides. One chance is that they will
devour each other. There is a second—it is that the earth
will shake. To make the earth tremble under the Kings
some thundering voices will suffice. These voices are
among us ; they are called Voltaire, Rousseau, and
Miraheau. No ! the great continent successively enlightened
by Greece, Italy, and France will m I fall back into the
night. No an offensive return of Vandalism against civi-
lization is not possible. To protect the world one town in
enough, and that town we have. The butcher-shepherds of
nations having as their means barbarism and their object
savagery, the visitations of fate, the blind leaders of blind
multitudes, tile invasion., the deluge. of armies submerging
nations—all that belongs to the past, not to the future.
To renew Cambyses a Nintrod is absurd. To resuscitate
phantoms is impossible. To place the universe once mom
at the mercy of the sword is an insane attempt. We are
the nineteenth century, the offspring of the eighteenth ; and
either by mind or by the sword the Paris of Denton will
have the mastery over the Europe of Attila. 1 affirm it, and
no doubt you agree with me. Now, I shall propose a toast.
Let our rulers for the time being not forget that the proof of
the Monarchy is to be found In Siberia, Shiellterg, Spandau,
Lambessa, and Cayenne; the proof of the Republic in an
amnesty. The toast I propose Is the Amnesty, which will
make all Frenchmen hr them, and the Republic, which will
make a brotherhood of nations."

The Figaro says that M. Louis Blanc's letter was in
a different vein. Proceeding by affirmations it declared
that the Republic was born immortal; that it is the
regenerating Gavernment par excellence, &c.