HISTORY OF EUROPE. [49 



extraordinary police, under the 

 name of commissary observator, 

 they had been dragged from one 

 dungeon to another, from tribu- 

 nals to military commissions, and 

 from these back again to their 

 dungeons. He insisted that they 

 fell under the law against emi- 

 grants who had returned after 

 emigration and banishment, with- 

 out permission. He suspended over 

 their heads the sword of death, but 

 was unable to bend either the civil 

 or military courts to a compliance 

 with his inhuman design. At the 

 epoch of the revolution of St. 

 Cloud, they had been transferred 

 from the citadel of Lisle to the 

 castle of Ham, in Picardy. The 

 minister of police was ordered to 

 make a report of the case of those 

 shipwrecked emigrants. His re- 

 port was this: " The emigrants 

 shipwrecked at Calais have often 

 suffered the punishment inflicted 

 on emigration. For death is, not 

 the blow that strikes and deprives us 

 of life, it consists in the agonies and 

 tortures that precede it. For four 

 years past, these individuals,thrown 

 by a tempest on the soil of their 

 country, have breathed there only 

 the air of the tombs. Whatever 

 then may have been their offence, 

 it is expiated by the shipwreck." 

 —If Fouche was, as represented, a 

 willing and active instrument in 

 the hands of terror, it appears that 

 he was not a less proper agent in 

 those of mercy. In consequence of 

 his report, prompted no doubt by 

 Buonaparte, the consuls decreed 

 that the emigrants shipwrecked at 

 Calais, and detained in the castle of 

 Ham, were in no case within the 

 contemplation of the laws against 

 emigrants, but that they should be 

 carried out of the territories of the 

 republic. I'hc consular govcrn- 

 VoL. XLII. 



raent carried its humanity towards 

 those unfortunate people so far, as 

 to grant many of them individual 

 passports, that they might not ex- 

 perience the disagreeable state of a 

 public and military escort. In the 

 number of the emigrants, and of 

 those thus favoured, were the dukes 

 of Montmorency and Choiseul, and 

 Vibraye. The other emigrants, be- 

 sides these, amounted to the number 

 of twenty-seven. The president of 

 the central bureau of Paris received 

 orders, from the minister of the ge- 

 neral police, immediately to repair 

 to all the prisons in Paris, and to 

 assemble all the persons in custody, 

 by a warrant of the police, or under 

 pretext of the general safety, to 

 procure and transmit to him full 

 information respecting their an-ests, 

 together with his opinion on the 

 case of each of those prisoners. He 

 was directed to particularize every 

 circumstance that might operate in 

 their favour, and all the considera- 

 tions arising from age, infirmity, or 

 misfortune. He was farther in- 

 structed to indicate to Fouche those 

 who ought to be set at liberty on 

 the instant; those who ought to be 

 placed merely under the superin- 

 tending eye of their respective 

 magistrates, without alarm to the 

 general tranquillity ; and also those 

 whose constant hatred to the repub- 

 lic, or whose antisocial principles 

 might induce him to consider them 

 as enemies to order, and the public 

 peace. All that justice required, 

 he said, should be forthwith done; 

 all that humanity solicited without 

 danger to the state, should be fa- 

 vourably listened to. It was his 

 intention to do prompt justice to 

 all ; that innocence might no longer 

 have any thing to dread, or guilt 

 any thing to hope. In consequence 

 of the report made by the bureau. 



