FRANCE, THE PRESS OF, IN 1868. 



287 



the caution-money or into the rules accompanying its 

 payment. You will have, as formerly, to place the 

 declarants in a position to deposit at the office of _ the 

 Treasurer-General of your department the caution- 

 money to which they are subjected, and you will 

 transmit the receipt of the payment to the Finance 

 Minister. PINARD, Minister of the Interior. 



No sooner had the new press law been pro- 

 mulgated, than a great many new papers were 

 started both in Paris and in the departments. 

 Up to the 1st of July, 1868, sixty-four new 

 journals, mostly weeklies, had been established 

 in the departments, and seven new dailies and 

 twenty-three new weekly papers in Paris. 

 A very noteworthy fact was, that most of these 

 new papers were organs of the most advanced 

 wing of the Liberal party. Public opinion in 

 France was evidently awakening from its long 

 torpor, and not a few of the newly-established 

 papers used a more defiant language toward 

 the Government than had been heard for long 

 years past. These audacious sheets were so 

 eagerly read by the people, that some of them 

 obtained in the course of a few days a truly 

 enormous circulation. Especially was this the 

 case with La Lanterne, a weekly politico-satir- 

 ical paper, whose wonderful success marks an 

 era in the history of French journalism, and 

 which immediately found a great many rivals 

 and imitators, none of which, however, were 

 able to gain an equal degree of popularity. 

 La Lanterne, issued every week in pamphlet 

 form, consisted entirely of spicy little para- 

 graphs written by Henri Rochefort, a young 

 journalist of strongly democratic views, whose 

 satirical attacks and mots upon all the " dark 

 spots" of the Second Empire were greatly 

 relished by vast numbers of French readers. 

 The first nine issues of La Lanterne reached 

 the enormous aggregate circulation of 1,155,- 

 000 copies, and its subscription list was rapidly 

 increasing when the heavy sentences imposed 

 upon the editor and proprietor by the Sixth 

 Chamber of the Correctional Tribunal of Paris 

 caused M. Henri Rochefort to remove the of- 

 fice of the paper from Paris to Brussels, and 

 Aix-la-Chapelle, where it is now issued alter- 

 nately, and where every week upward of one 

 hundred thousand copies of the Lanterne, 

 printed on very thin letter-paper, are sent in 

 sealed envelopes to the subscribers of the 

 paper in Paris. 



Of the numerous imitators which La Lan- 

 terne found among the other newly-established 

 Paris papers, La Cloche, edited by Ferrayus 

 (Louis Ulbach), and Le Liable a Quatre, edited 

 by Yillemessant, Lockroy, and other eminent 

 journalists, were the most successful ; La 

 Cloche reaching a circulation of eighty thou- 

 sand copies, and Le DiaUe a Quatre selling 

 about sixty thousand copies. 



The increasing boldness with which the 

 organs of the opposition criticised many acts 

 of the Government, led to a large number of 

 prosecutions of liberal papers. Especially 

 numerous were the press trials which took 

 place before the Sixth Chamber of the Cor- 



rectional Tribunal of Paris. The worst fears 

 of the opposition, in regard to the servility of 

 these correctional judges, were more than 

 verified. A prosecution of a newspaper be- 

 fore them, with very rare exceptions, was 

 equivalent to a condemnation, and the sen- 

 tences, as a general thing, were so severe as 

 to create the most marked dissatisfaction in 

 the minds of the people. Despite the fines 

 and imprisonments imposed upon editors and 

 printers, the tone of the Liberal papers grew 

 daily more independent; and at the beginning 

 of November, when the Government tried to 

 prevent them from advertising subscriptions 

 for the erection of a monument in honor of 

 Baudin, one of the illustrious victims of the 

 coup cPetat, whose humble grave, until then 

 unknown, had been recently discovered, the 

 whole independent press of Paris, with one 

 accord, bade defiance to the Government and 

 refused to obey its behests. The prosecutions 

 which were instituted in consequence of this 

 bold attitude against the JKeveil, the Temps, 

 the Journal de Paris, the Avenir National, 

 and other leading journals, resulted in severe 

 sentences against their editors and publishers ; 

 but these sentences had been wrung from the 

 correctional tribunal only by the peculiar 

 construction of the old Law of General Secu- 

 rity ; and in several other cities of France, 

 especially in Clermont and Castres, editors 

 were acquitted on the same charges on which 

 their Parisian colleagues had been convicted. 

 Besides, the language which the counsel of the 

 prosecuted journalists used at these trials in 

 criticising the coup (Petat and Bonapartism in 

 general, was so scathing and bitter that public 

 opinion became greatly exasperated, and when 

 M. Pinard, the Minister of the Interior, who 

 had been the soul of these press prosecutions, 

 made himself and the Government an object 

 of ridicule by the vast display of military 

 precautions on the 3d of December, in order, 

 as he pretended, to nip in the bud a contem- 

 plated rising of the revolutionists, the Emper- 

 or dismissed him on the 18th of December in 

 a somewhat abrupt manner, and appointed in 

 his stead M. de Forcade, who is generally be- 

 lieved to be in favor of a more liberal and 

 moderate course toward the press. 



Among the other noteworthy events which 

 took place in the affairs of French journalism 

 in 1868 is the change which the Moniteur Uni- 

 versel underwent toward the close of the year. 

 Already in the early part of 1868 the Emperor 

 Napoleon had ordered his Minister of State to 

 take steps for severing the connection of the 

 Government with the Moniteur, which had 

 been its official organ, as well as that of all the 

 preceding regimes, and for establishing a new 

 official journal. M. Rouher and his colleagues 

 vainly tried to dissuade the Emperor from his 

 purpose, and the efforts of M. Dalloz on the 

 part of the proprietors of the Moniteur re- 

 mained equally unsuccessful. In the autumn 

 of 1868 active preparations were made for 



