"If the sums levied each year on the inhabitants generally are employed for unproductive purposes, such as creating _useless places, raising sterile monuments, and maintaining in the midst of profound peace a more expensive army than that which conquered at Austerlitz_, taxation becomes in such case an overwhelming burden; it exhausts the country, it takes without any return."[1] [1] _Extinction of Pauperism_, page 10. With reference to this word budget an observation occurs to us. In this present year 1852, the bishops and the judges of the _Cour de Cassation_,[2] have 50 francs per diem; the archbishops, the councillors of state, the first presidents, and the procureurs-general, have each 69 francs per diem; the senators, the prefects, and the generals of division receive 83 francs each per diem; the presidents of sections of the Council of State 222 francs per diem; the ministers 252 francs per diem; Monseigneur the Prince-President, comprising of course, in his salary, the sum for maintenance of the royal residences, receives per diem 44,444 francs, 44 centimes. The revolution of the 2nd of December was made against the Twenty-five Francs! [2] Court of Appeal. V THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS We have now seen what the legislature is, what the administration, and what the budget. And the courts! What was formerly called the _Cour de Cassation_ is no longer anything more than a record office of councils of war. A soldier steps out of the guard-house and writes in the margin of the book of the law, _I will_, or _I will not_. In all directions the corporal gives the order, and the magistrate countersigns it. Come! tuck up your gowns and begone, or else--Hence these abominable trials, sentences, and condemnations. What a sorry spectacle is that troop of judges, with hanging heads and bent backs, driven with the butt end of the musket into baseness and iniquity! And the liberty of the press! What shall we say of it? Is it not a mockery merely to pronounce the words? That free press, the honour of French intellect, a light thrown from all points at once upon all questions, the perpetual sentinel of the nation--where is it? What has M. Bonaparte done with it? It is where the public platform is. Twenty newspapers extinguished in Paris, eighty in the departments,--one hundred newspapers suppressed: that is to say, looking only to the material side of the question, innumerable families deprived of bread; that is to say, understand it, citizens, one hundred houses confiscated, one hundred farms taken from their proprietors, one hundred interest coupons stolen from the public funds. Marvellous identity of principles: freedom suppressed is property destroyed. Let the selfish idiots who applaud the _coup d'etat_ reflect upon this.