The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1899-08-23
ARTHUR ROPES. General Hditor.
Frances Eclipse.

The French Revolution was the saw
age recoil of a people released from
ages of oppression and cruel injustice
The barbarities of the Revolution were
far beyond the limits of possible justifi-
cation, under any code of morality in
the abstract, but the barbarities Of
rank and wealth that preceded the afro
cities of the bloody mobs of Paris ex-
plain, if they do not justify or extenu-
ate, the crimes of the followers of Ro.
bespierre and Marat. The ancient no.
blity of France sowed to the wind /;
they reaped to the whirlwind. They
reduced the peasantry of France to the
level of wild beasts, and the lion or the
tiger is not more cruel and unheedng
OF the precepts of mercy than were the
monsters who reared and fed the gull
lotine. The revolutionists, the rank
and file, are judged the more teuderly
by posterity from the circumstances of
their long period Of brutal and merci-
less oppression and degradation.
There is much in the circumstances
and incidents of the Dreyfus affair,
from the beginning to the present hour,
that is constant reminder of the Reign
of Terror. The army replaces the
nobility as the breeding-bed of outrage
and crime, and Dreyfus exemplifies
the long suffering victims of merciless
persecution and beastly degradation.
The present evil is not 80 widespread
and all pervading as in the time of CEN
fury and longer ago, but the malicious
fury that is concentrated upon Dreyfus,
the spirit that leads to forgery, perjury,
and all the dark devices that were en-
ployed to insure his conviction at his
first trial, that were resorted to render
DEVILS Island his grave as we'll as his
prison, that have been practiced to pre-
vent his exhonoration at the pending
retrial, ending in the attempted assas-
sination of his leading defender in
court and deprivation of the means of
making clear his innocence before his
judges-these are all part and parcel of
the internal times of the old Bourbon
regime of the Louises.
The assassination of Labori was cum
ningly timed to remove him from court
on the eve of his cross examination of
Mercier, the black demon of the prose-
cution, whose fabric of wicked sur
misses and false testimony was thus
aid, unchallenged, before the judges of
he.,accused. The testimony of his
military confederates in the conspiracy
against Dreyfus, who followed him in
the,witness chair, also went before the
court'without the light Labori's search
ing inquiries would have thrown upon
its truth and character, and they were
hastily excused from further attend
ance upon the court. The court was
adjourned on Tuesday because of some
church holiday, but when Dreyfus'
counsel asked on Wednesday that pro-
ceedings should be adjourned, pending
Labori's recovery or the provision of
substitute for the senior counsel, the
request was summarily refused. The
assault On Labor was made at place
and an hour of the day where and
when no spectators, in the natural
course of things, would be present; but
when the assassin's shot was fred a
dozen or more people were in the i'm
mediate proximity, who were officious
in their efforts to help the wounded
man. They tried to relieve him of his
wallet containing the papers to be used
in the trial, but with presence of mind
Labor retained the important parcel,
making it the cushion for his head.
His pockets, however, were rifed of
letters and other articles. These were
of no special importance, but the wal
let which the victims heroism and
presence of mind saved till real
friends were at hand, contained docu-
ments the enemies of Dreyfus would
like to have secured and destroyed.
Thus the depth and extent of the
black conspiracy are sounded. What
will be it's next development, and what
will be the end, Heaven only knows
May the better part of France, the part
with which Lafayette is inseparably
linked in the mind of Americans, tri
umph.