174 Travels in France 



From Strasbourg hither, I have not been able to see a newspaper. 

 Here I asked for the Cabinet Literaire. None. The gazettes? 

 At the coffee-house. Very easily replied, but not so easily 

 found. Nothing but the Gazette de France, for which, at this 

 period, a man of common sense would not give one sol. To 

 four other coffee-houses; at some no paper at all, not even the 

 Mercure; at the Caffe Militaire, the Courier de V Europe a fort- 

 night old; and well-dressed people are now talking of the news 

 of two or three weeks past, and plainly by their discourse know 

 nothing of what is passing. The whole town of Besan9on has 

 not been able to afford me a sight of the Journal de Paris, nor 

 of any paper that gives a detail of the transactions of the states ; 

 yet it is the capital of a province, large as half a dozen English 

 counties, and containing 25,000 souls, — with, strange to say! 

 the post coming in but three times a week. At this eventful 

 moment, with no licence, nor even the least restraint on the 

 press, not one paper established at Paris for circulation in the 

 provinces with the necessary steps taken by affiche, or placard, 

 to inform the people in all the towns of its establishment. For 

 what the countr}^ knows to the contrary, their deputies are in 

 the Bastile, instead of the Bastile being rased; so the mob 

 plunder, bum, and destroy in complete ignorance: and yet, 

 with all these shades of darkness, these clouds of tenebrity, this 

 universal mass of ignorance, there are men every day in the states 

 who are puffing themselves off for the first nation in Europe ! 

 the GREATEST PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE ! as if the political juntos 

 or literary circles of a capital constituted a people; instead of the 

 universal illumination of knowledge, acting bj- rapid intelligence 

 on minds prepared by habitual energy of reasoning to receive, 

 combine, and comprehend it. That this dreadful ignorance of 

 the mass of the people of the events that most intimately 

 concern them is owning to the old government no one can doubt; 

 it is however curious to remark that if the nobility of other 

 provinces are hunted like those of Franche Compte, of which 

 there is little reason to doubt, that whole order of men undergo a 

 proscription, and suffer like sheep, without making the least effort 

 to resist the attack. This appears marvellous, with a body that 

 have an army of 150,000 men in their hands; for though a part 

 of those troops would certainly disobey their leaders, yet let it 

 be remembered that, out of the 40,000, or possibly 100,000 

 noblesse of France, they might, if they had intelligence and union 

 amongst themselves, fill half the ranks of more than half the 

 regiments of the kingdom with men who have fellow-feelings 



