THE COLTON PAPERS. 109 



even before it could be said to have existed at all ; and, as a kind of 

 rider to this awful announcement, an electoral Ordinance followed, 

 in which a total contempt of all the laborious classes was carried to 

 such an excess of insolence on the part of the rulers, that it must be 

 clear that they had calculated on the grossest insensibility on the 

 part of the people. . Subsequent events will show how lamentably 

 the framers of these documents were deceived, and their discomfiture 

 only adds another example to that very trite and hacknied quotation 

 *' Quern Deus vult perdere, priusquam dementat" But we now return 

 to the efforts of the gendarmerie in dispersing the people in their 

 various points of assemblage, for in such efforts was the principal 

 part of Tuesday consumed. These struggles between the people 

 and their oppressors, up to this particular moment, had not yet pro- 

 duced the loss of life or the shedding of blood ; and, by three o'clock 

 on the afternoon of Tuesday, it might be said that most, if not all, of 

 the places of public resort had been cleared, and the various 

 entrances to them guarded and closed. There was one circumstance 

 on this day that contributed, more perhaps than any other that 

 occurred, to exasperate the multitude, and, by the atrocities that 

 accompanied it, confirmed even the most wavering and timid, as to 

 the line of conduct it would hereafter be their bounden duty to pur- 

 sue ; detachments of gendarmes, under the sanction of the police, 

 presented themselves at the establishments of two of the liberal 

 journals, Le National and Le Temps, which had appeared on Tues- 

 day, in defiance alike of the royal Ordinance and the prohibition of 

 the police, and immediately proceeded to the greatest violence and 

 outrage. In these instances the premises were forcibly entered, the 

 types were scattered about in all directions, the presses broken, and 

 the whole machinery of the establishments rendered unavailable and 

 useless; with such a reckless eagerness for destruction did these 

 instruments of oppression effect the arbitrary designs of their 

 superiors. 



We cannot refrain from giving a circumstantial account of one of 

 these acts of despotism, as recorded in the glowing language of those 

 who were its victims. The outrage is thus detailed by the editor of 

 Le Temps : 



" At half-past eleven this morning a commencement was made, 

 in the name of the illegal Ordinances, by violating the residence of 

 a citizen protected by the law. Some men made their appearance 

 whom we did not know, sallow, pale, and downcast, and looking as 

 wretched as if they had already committed a burglarious robbery. 

 One of them, it is true, was decorated with a magisterial scarf. 

 This Jmust have been an imposition, for no magistrate would have 

 presented himself, or presumed to act, but in the name of the law. 

 Other men, dressed in that which is always respectable, the uniform 

 of a French soldier, were rather present than acting in a business so 

 entirely new to them. They appeared as afflicted as ourselves. 

 Having fasted from an early hour in the morning, they suffered less 

 from their privation than their employment. We offered them some 

 refreshment. Let us however render them this justice ; they pre- 



