New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1862-06-10
VICTOR HUGOS NEW York.

am come to send peace on earth-l am not come
IN and peace, but o sword" is, in spirit, the
proem and the challenge Of every earnest, unre-
carved utterance from the thinkers heart. VINO
ever looks straight through all usages, draperies'
parnitures conventionalities, and procalms WHAT
he sees with that Divine pity for suffering Hu-
manity which cannot accommodate itseh 10 the
most venerable of outwOrn traditions, to the nost
convenient hypOcrises. must seem not merely
radical but destructye--not only morose but pitt
less. The truths which the next century viii ac-
cept as the most obvious as well as the most In
portant, are precisely those for which tho ias1
century stoned to death its prophets, deemhs
them the blacklist and most perilous fasehoods'
Az the weeds, the garbage the refuse, OF one sea.
son fertilize the soil they hde for the vegetation Vi
the next. go the errors and crimes OF one age De-
ing perceived and apprehended, become inc les
sons. the admonitions, of the succeeding. Inc
tdemarks of Progress are the wrecks winch the
sea abandoned, unable to devOur.
Victor Hugo is an exile these ten years from
hi. native land, because he is a republican and
Will not grunge ~ tuc OCePotsih siAV"6"
perfdy, usurpation, treason, and murder, clutched
and still grasps her tightly by the throat. An au-
thor who early won distinction in the field OF ina
gnaiive literature, he has kept silence, OF broken
it only in poetry for the last quarter OF century.
At length, he speaks and the intellectual world
bends forward and strains its ear to catch his first
breathings. 1t well may.
He discusses the old but ever new question
Legal Justice, does it right more than it wrongs
Your prisons and penalties, do they tend to induce
penitence and reformation, or to harden offenders
int rufians7 Your austere and frowning Virtue,
does it WOO the erring to forsake the way OF ev',
or scare and drive them into caous and irret 1ev-
able depravity7 Such are the problems which
this poet and exile discusses with memorable reso-
luton. His indictment of Society is the broadcast,
the blacklist the most unsparing that has ever
vet been drawn. Briefly, he says to the bearers
of the purse and the sword of Civilization, "You
suffer children TO grow up Ignorant idle, sur
rounded by all depraving influences, the slaves OF
hunger and want; and, when they have become
what your neglect and their surroundings have
tended to make them, you thrust them into dun
geOns and doom them to the cOmpanlonshp OF the
most debased and hardened felons: For the wo-
man who-scarcey yet more than a child, and
never taught what virtue is nor why she should
regard its laws--has yielded to temptation, you
have no charity, no mercy; you thrust her out
from all chaste companionship, refuse her work or
shelter, and compel her to choose between infamy
and suicide. In short, you who esteem yourselves
moral, respectable, exemplary, and pious, are
dupes Of self.righteousness, so that pubcans and
hsrlOts are nearer than you to the kingdom OF
heaven"
That this is quite too sweeping nearly all who
read viii agree; but is there not enough OF truth
in it to command and reward our careful consid-
eratonl All of us are familiar with the other side
of the story: We have been hearing 1t oil our
lives The thief, the drunkard, the yagant, the
outcast, are socety's recognized enemies: our
children are corrupted our possessions endan-
gered by them. They cost US good money in locks
and bolts and other defensive preparations they
tax us heavily for police and prisons and poor
houses: it is expensive even to hang them with
due Formally. And we have tried kindness upon
them to no purpose: The sOt promised never to
drink again if we would help him out OF his pres
emit distress, yet got blind drunk the very first
chance; and the discharged convict whom we well
coined to our table, cheered and set to work,
stole all he could lay hands on and vanished in the
gloom of the following night. 1t is all very fine,
this idea of loving and cOssetng rogues and vaga.
bonds into virtue and decency, but We know by
sad experience that it won't work.
No, says Hugo, you do not, for you never
half tried it You did not love them nor trust
them You never entered into the spirit Of the
SaviOr's "Until seventy times SEVEN" You
tried to transform the wolf into dog thinking
that he would thus be more useful and less
dangerous to yourself, not because you pitied
his hunted condition or sought his well-being
Your miracle remains unwrought because Of
your unbelief.
The machinery Of "Les M.serables " is
very simple. 1t is not a nOyel-t is hardly
more than parable. An angelic bishop, whose
charity never faeth;" hunted, hardened
convict, who has passed nineteen years in the
galleys for stealing loaf Of bread to feed a
starving family Of orphaned children, ard for
repeated attempts to escape from his doom-a
man thoroughly brutalzed, ruliianized. almost
denounced, yet whom the invincible charity OF
the bishop converts at last to virtue, useful
ness, and love; q poor young woman who is
mised into frailty, and at length driven by mis-
fortune, by want, by intense love for her only