Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
History
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
No sooner had the Government suppressed the formidable insurrection,
which was finally stamped out in its last retreat at the corner of the
Rue Saint-Méry, than, as if to assert the authority it had gained, it
commenced proceedings against the Saint-Simonians, a noble-minded,
highly moral body of men, who were accused, nevertheless, of spreading
immoral doctrines. In his defence, Le Père Enfantin admitted, while
rejecting with indignation the charge of immoral teaching, that one
of the main objects of Saint-Simonianism was the reorganisation of
property. "The misery," he said, "of the working classes and the wealth
of idle men are the main causes of the evils we seek to remedy. But
when we say that there ought to be an end to that hereditary misery and
hereditary idleness which are the results of the existing constitution
of property, founded, as it is, on the right of birth, our opponents
charge us with an intention of overturning the State.
"It is of no use for us to urge that this transformation of property
can only be effected progressively, pacifically, voluntarily: that it
can be effected much better than was the destruction of feudal rights,
with every imaginable system of indemnity, and with even greater
deliberation than you apply to the expropriations which you now effect
for purposes of public utility: we are not listened to; we are condemned
off-hand as reckless disturbers of order. Unweariedly we seek to show
you that this transformation is called for by all the present and future
wants of society: that its actual progress is marked out in the most
palpable manner by the creation of the code of commerce, by all the
habits of industry which have sprung up on every side, encouraging the
mobilisation of property, its transference from the idle and incapable
to the laborious and capable hand; we show you all this, but still you
cry out, shutting your eyes, 'Your association is dangerous!'"
In the end Enfantin, Duveyrier, and Michel Chevalier were condemned to
a year's imprisonment and a fine of a hundred francs each, other less
prominent members being let off with smaller degrees of punishment.
Simonianism, as an organised thing, was now extinct, but its principles
did not die with the organisation, and in the best forms of socialism
and of democracy were soon to show themselves anew.
The Rue Marivaux, another of the most interesting outlets from this part
of the Boulevards, commemorates the witty and agreeable comedy writer
who invented the half bantering, half complimentary style of dialogue to
which the name of "marivaudage" is given.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE 6TH OF JUNE: THE LAST OF THE INSURRECTION.]
CHAPTER XII.
THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_).
La Maison Dorée--Librairie Nouvelle--Catherine II. and the
Encyclopædia--The House of Madeleine Guimard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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