The Sun.
London, England, 1822-10-03 00:00:00

M. BENJAMIN CONSTANT.

The following is the letter addressed by this
gentleman to the Procureur-General of the Royal
Court of Poitiers :
➢lonsieur 1e Procureur-General—While you merely confined
yourself to introducing my name, and that of several of my
colleagues, in an act of accusation happily unexampled in our
judicial annals, and which I hope, for the honour of the French
courts, will also be left without imitators, I was, and was bound
to be, silent. I was silent, because it was proper that the pro-
ceedings should show how far your indictment was, as your
apologists asserted, the faithful mirror of the factk of the case ;
--I was bound to be silent, because in a cause which involved
the lives of a great 'lumber of citizens, I should have reproach-
ed myself had I attached importance to what had interest for
me alone. .

Your speech of the sth of this month authorises me, or rather
compels me, to emancipate myself from this reserve. In that
speech you no longer confined yourself to pretended extracts
from depositions of the witnesses or of the prisoners. You
were not merely satisfied with bringing up my name in question,
which had no relation to the case you were employed to con-
duct, but in justification of which you may allege the latitude
granted in discussions to a public officer. You formally ac-
cused me, while you declared that you were destitute of any
thing like substantive-proof. With events which took place at
Saumur in 1822, you connect my passage through that town in
1820—you pervert all the facts—you appeal to witnesses which
no longer exist. All this part of your speech assumes an affir-
mative form, which leaves no room for explanation, and is
equally destitute of truth and of moderation.
I shall, however, endeavour to reply to it calmly, and with•
out passion.
You are so melancholy an example of the errors into which
passion precipitates those of whom it takes possession, that you
will serve me, I apprehend, as a preservative ; and to your
violence I shall be indebted for my moderation.
This is not a justification which I am about to address to
you. Impressed as lam with respect for regular forms, sanc-
tioned by the laws, I should consider myself wanting in what
I owe to my functions, my colleagues, and the whole Chamber,
were Ito descend to play the part of a person accused, when you
yourself have stripped your assertions of the only character,
which could render them legitimate—that of legal accusation.
By the single circumstance of declaring yourself incompetent
you are placed with respect to me in the situation of a man who
attacks uncommissioned, who inculpates without proofs, and
who is no longer a public officer, but an individual who may,
if he deserves it, he confounded, without any deviation from till t
respect which every citizen owes to the judicial magistracy of
his country.

My chief object will therefore be, to explain to the public
and to you the course which you have pursued since the origin
of this affair, which you have rendered as singular as it was
deplorable. France, and you yourself, on your conscience, will
judge whether I am wrong.

The object of your indictment was to compromise as many
of the members of the opposition as you could. You have ac-
cordingly sought after, or made most of the opportunities on
which you seized for introducing their names. I shall here-
after supply the proofs, and I shall show how you have for
this object misrepresented every fact. I confine myself at pre-
sent to pointing out your object, and to enumerating the means
of reaching it, of which you imagine you are possessed.
The first of these means is the formation of a pretended pro-
visional government, a fact which you would establish on the
authority of a person absent by contumacy ; an inexhaustible
source which may be drawn on without restraint, for there is
no fear of contradiction. But this fable has in the course of
the proceedings been rendered so incoherent by the multiplicity
of names and variations, that, in spite of all your efforts to pre-
serve for it some character of unity, you have been obliged to
retreat under the infliction of ridicule. Your own apologists in
the Chamber of Deputies had settled the business before you.
It would indeed be an easy way of inculpating men to insert
their names without their knowledge on a list of which they
could know nothing.
You hoped for more success from your second means. I
mean the letter which according to your assertion was written
by me to M. Goy:A de la Sarthe. This means, however, failed
you, for the very simple reason that this letter never was writ-
ten, and never could be written by me, as I never knew of the
affair of Saumur until the news was circulated in. Paris. Never-
theless, you laid it down as a fact that I wrote that letter—you
laid it down as a fact, in speaking to a prisoner ; you said that
he knew it. You have. Sir, affirmed what is false, and you are
now in the situation in which your defenders in the Chamber •
laboured to place you ; for if I wrote that letter, and if you
knew that I had so done, it was your duty to accuse me.
Your excuse, derived from the existence of two plots, does
not apply here. According to your assertion, I had written the
later to M. Goyet during the first plot ; I must therefore have
had something to do with that plot. You were competent to
the prosecution of the first plot. My accusation was your duty.
Is your assertion true ? You have then failed in your duty.
Is it false ? Then you have violated truth.
It is, indeed, well known, for we have it from your own
mouth, that you often make affirmations without proofs. On
the 2d of September you said to a witness—" We know that
you were the messenger from Saumur to Paris." When he
exclaimed—" Where are your proofs ?" you replied—" If we
had proofs, you would be among the accused." Thus you de-
clared that you knew the fact, and yet you admit that you had
no proof !
It was then necessary to renounce the invention of a pretended
letter which never was written.

Two means still remained for you ; and I must say that you
did not neglect the first.
The first was the soliciting against me and my colleagues, by
questions for which no ground was laid, depositions from the
prisoners or the witnesses—the repeating our names when mine
of the deponents-had any reason for pronouncing them (which
was called "putting them on the way" in the sitting of the
28th of September)—the inviting with an affected delicacy every
witness and every prisoner to give us a place in 'his declaration
—the officiously prompting. the recollection of those who did
not name us; by reminding the refractory of your valuable right
of recommending incarceration—the impressing on rebel con-
sciences the terrors of dungeons, in order, doubtless, to render
their testimony' More conformable to truth.
I must do you justice. In this way you have done all that
could be done. Hope, fear, insinuation of favour and of pu-
nishment—nothing was wanting on your part. You are not to
blame if so much address has produced nothing.
Finally, you had a last means, and on it you doubtless greatly
relied. 111. Grandmenil, to whose existence, never having seen
him in my life, I gave no credit until I saw from the proceed-
ings that it was certified by the prisoners—M. Grandmenil was
in contumacy. An absentee of this description is extremely
useful. You have accordingly bestowed particular care on the
drawing of that part of the indictment which relates to the
words attributed to Omndmenil.

You said—" It results^
from the declarations of Grandmenil,
that he was presented to MM. Lafitte, Benjamin Constant,