Dantès, Edmond (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; France -- History -- February Revolution, 1848
"It may come quickly, as it will come surely, soon or late! It cannot be
that the Revolution of July should continue much longer to result in the
solemn mockery it has. It cannot be that its friends should much longer
be withheld from those by whom it was achieved, only to aggrandize one
old man and his sons. It cannot be that the unmitigated and disgusting
selfism of Louis Philippe, and his efforts to ally himself with every
crowned head in Europe--not for the glory of France, but for his
own--will much longer be overlooked or their perils masked. The
appanages grasped by himself--the dotation and bridal outfit of the Duke
of Orleans--the dotation sought for the Duke of Nemours, and his
appointment as Regent during the minority of the Count of Paris--the
Governorship of Algeria bestowed on the youthful and inexperienced
Aumale, to the insult of so many brave and victorious generals--the
naval supremacy, to which has been exalted the ambitious Joinville, and
his union to the opulent Brazilian Princess--the effort to unite the
young Montpensier with the Infanta of Spain--the environment of Paris
with Bastilles, with the avowed purpose of fortifying order by turning
the ordnance which should protect into enginery of destruction--an
immense standing army--the notorious corruption of officials, and the
audacious dabbling of Ministers in the stocks, if not the King himself,
by means of information obtained by the Government telegraph, and
withheld from the people, or of information manufactured by the
telegraph designed to affect the Bourse--the unprecedented number of
placemen occupying seats in the Chamber of Deputies, yet receiving
exorbitant salaries as incumbents of civil offices, one man being often
in receipt of the salaries of several offices, though performing the
duties of none--the fact that Ministers have maintained majorities by
unblushing bribery in elections--that hardly one man in two hundred is
an elector--the profligate arts of corruption by which every able man is
bought by the Court--the disgraceful censorship of the press and the
drama--the enormous appropriations for the civil list, wrung out by
grinding taxes from the toil and sweat of millions--the absurd
assumption, yet the monstrous power, over the press and its conductors,
of that conclave of hoary dotards called the Chamber of Peers--the utter
and most impious disregard of the deprivation and misery of the
operative and laborer, although arrayed side by side with the insolence
and wealth pampered by the taxes torn from themselves--the total
forgetfulness of the self-evident truth of the right of all men to
labor, unrestricted by the baleful influences of the competition of
capitalists--these facts, properly urged and set forth by the press,
from the tribune and in the clubs, in connection with due enlightenment
of the masses upon their rights as to labor and its reward and the duty
of government thereupon could not fail to prepare the popular mind, all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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