incurred the severity of courts-martial in refusing to fight against the Bagaudes. But enough of this, let us talk no more of the justice of these gentlemen of the sword, who will perish one day according to the prophecy of the Son of God; let us return to our civil magistrates. “Judges search not the reins, neither do they read the heart of man, and their justest justice is rude and superficial. All the more then must they cling to this coarse skin of the law on which the codes are inscribed. They are men—that is to say weak and corruptible, gentle to the strong, and pitiless to the weak. They sanction, by their judgments, the cruellest social iniquities, and it is difficult to distinguish, in this partiality, what comes from their personal baseness from what is imposed on them by their duty to their profession; which duty is, in reality, to uphold the State in what is evil as well as in what is good; to see that public morality remains unaltered, whether excellent or detestable; and to assure the rights of citizens along with the tyrannical desires of the prince, to say nothing of the ridiculous and cruel superstitions which find an inviolable shelter under the lilies of France. “The most austere magistrate may be brought, by his integrity itself, to decrees as revolting, and perhaps even more inhuman, than those of one who fails in his duty, and I do not know myself, which of the two I should dread the most, the judge who has made a soul for himself out of the text of the law, or he who makes use of a remnant of sentiment to twist the text. The one would sacrifice me to his interests or his passions, the other would immolate me coldly for the written word. “Again, we must notice that the magistrate is the defender, through his office, not of new prejudices to which we are all more or less submissive, but of old prejudices which are preserved in our laws while they are fading from our minds and our manners. And there is no one of a thinking and liberal turn of mind who does not feel how much of the barbarous there is in law, whereas the judge has not the right to feel this.