Chapter I: Le Roi s'amuse--Criticism and censorship (2)

"In our opinion, the Government takes unfair advantage of
this disposition to repose, this fear of fresh revolutions.
It has come to petty tyranny. It does wrong towards itself
and towards us. If it thinks there is indifference now in
people's minds towards liberty of ideas, it is mistaken; it
is only lassitude. It will demand severe account some day of
all the illegal actions that have been accumulating for some
time past. What a dance it has led us! Two years ago, one
feared for order; now, one trembles for liberty! Questions
of free thought, of intellect and of art are imperiously
mowed down by the viziers of the King of the Barricades.
It is profoundly sad to see how the revolution of July has
ended, _mulier formosa supernè._

"No doubt, if one only considered the slight importance of
the work of the author now in question, the ministerial
measure which has smitten it down is not a great matter.
It is but a malicious little literary _coup d'état_ whose
only merit is that of not spoiling the series of arbitrary
acts of which it forms a part. But, if we look higher, we
see that this affair is not merely one that affects a drama
and a poet, but, as we said at first, both liberty and the
rights of ownership are involved in the question. Great and
serious interests are involved in it, and, although the
author be compelled to deal with this important affair by a
simple commercial lawsuit at the Théâtre-Français, not being
able to attack the Government directly, barricaded behind
the principles of non-receivers of State advice, he hopes
that his cause will be regarded as a great one in the eyes
of all when he takes it to the bar of the Consular tribunal,
with liberty in his right hand and proprietorship in his
left. He will himself speak of the need for the independence
of his art. He will plead his right resolutely with gravity
and simplicity, without personal animosity, and yet, at the
same time, fearlessly. He counts upon the concurrence of
all, upon the free and cordial support of the press, on the
justice of opinion and on the equity of the courts. He has
no doubt he will be successful. The state of siege will be
raised in literary precincts as in political.

"When that is done, and he has secured his liberty as poet
and as citizen intact, inviolable and sacred, he will
peaceably return to his life's work, from which he has been
violently torn away, which he would like never to have had
to leave. He has his duty to do, he knows, and nothing will
distract him from it. For the moment, the political rôle has
come to him: he has not sought it out, but he accepts it.
Surely the power which attacks us will not have gained much,
in forcing us who are artists to quit our conscientious,
tranquil, honest, serious task, our sacred task, a task
which belongs to the past and to the future, in order to
mix ourselves indignant and angry with the irreverent and
scoffing audience which, for the last fifteen years, has
watched the various poor devils of political bunglers as
they pass by hooting and whistling, thinking they are
building up a social edifice because they go daily, at great
trouble to themselves, sweating and panting, to cart heaps
of legal schemes from the Tuileries to the Palais-Bourbon
and from the Palais-Bourbon to the Luxembourg!

30 _November_ 1832."

On 19 December 1832, the matter came before the Tribunal de Commerce. All the artist world of Paris gathered together in the Salle de la Bourse, surprised to find itself in such good company. After his barrister had spoken, Victor Hugo rose and made the following speech:--

"Gentlemen, after the eloquent orator[6] who so generously
lends me the powerful assistance of his speech, I should
have nothing to say if I did not believe it my duty not
to let pass the daring, culpable act which has violated
our public rights through my person without a solemn and
serious protest. This is not an ordinary cause, gentlemen.
It seems to some persons, at the first glance, to be only
a simple commercial action, a claim for indemnity for the
non-execution of a private contract--in a word, simply the
lawsuit of an author against a theatre. No, gentlemen, it
is more than that, it is the lawsuit of a citizen against
a government. The basis of this matter is a play forbidden
_by order_; now, a play forbidden by order is censorship and
the Charter abolished censorship; a play forbidden by order
is confiscation. Your sentence, if favourable to me, and,
it seems to me, I do you wrong to doubt it, will be to lay
the blame manifestly, although indirectly, at the door of
censorship and confiscation.

"You see, gentlemen, how the horizon of this cause lifts
and widens. I plead here for something higher than my own
interest, I plead for my rights in general, for my right to
think, and to possess, that is to say, for the common right
due to all. Mine is a general cause, as is absolute equity
yours. The minor details of the case are lost sight of
before the question thus put. I am not simply a writer, you
are not merely consular judges. Your conscience confronts
mine. At this tribunal, you represent a great idea, and I,
at the bar, stand for another. Your seat is justice; mine,
liberty. Now, justice and liberty are made to be heard.
Liberty is right, and justice is free.

"This is not the first time that M. Odilon Barrot has told
you before me, gentlemen, that the Tribunal of Commerce has
been called upon to condemn, without departing from its
jurisdiction, the arbitrary acts of those in authority. The
first tribunal to declare the ordinances of 25 July 1830
illegal has been forgotten by no one, it was the Tribunal
of Commerce. You, gentlemen, will follow that memorable
precedent, and, although the question is much smaller, you
will uphold right to-day as you upheld it then; you will,
I hope, listen to what I have to say to you with sympathy;
you will warn the Government by your sentence, that it is
on a bad path, and is wrong to degrade art and thought; you
will give me back my rights and property; you will brand
the police and censorship on the brow, who came by night to
steal my liberty and my property from me by breaking the
Charter.

"What I say here I say without anger, the reparation I
demand of you I ask with due gravity and moderation. God
forbid I should spoil the beauty and rectitude of my cause
by violent words! He who has right on his side has strength,
and the strong scorn violence.

"Yes, gentlemen, right is on my side. M. Odilon Barrot's
admirable argument has victoriously proved to you that
the ministerial act which has forbidden _Le Roi s'amuse,_
is arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional. It is in vain
for them to attempt to revive a law of the Reign of Terror
by attributing the censorship to authority, a law which
commands in clear terms the theatres to play the tragedies
of _Brutus_ and of _Wilhelm Tell_ three times per week, only
to give republican plays, and to stop representations of
all work which tends, I quote word for word, '_to deprave
the public mind and to awaken the shameful superstition of
royalty._' Gentlemen, dare the actual supporters of the new
royalty indeed invoke such a law, and invoke it against _Le
Roi s'amuse_? Is it not evidently abrogated in its text
as in its spirit? Made for the Terror, it died with the
Terror. Is it not the same with all imperious decrees by
which, forsooth, officials will have the right not merely to
censure theatrical works, but the power of sending an author
to prison according to its own good pleasure without trial?
Do such things exist nowadays? Was not all this irregular
and haphazard legislation solemnly done away with by the
Charter of 1830? We appeal to the solemn oath of 9 August.
The France of July did not reckon for either conventional or
imperial despotism. The Charter of 1830 did not allow itself
to be gagged either by 1807 or by '93.

"Liberty of thought in all its various methods of
expression, at the theatre as in the press, in the pulpit
as in the tribune, there, gentlemen, lies one of the
fundamental principles of our public rights. No doubt each
of these modes of expression needs an organic law in accord
with the fundamental law, a law of good faith, repressive
but not preventive, which, leaving each career at liberty,
shall imprison licence under strict penal laws. The
theatre in particular as a public place, we are anxious to
declare, does not know how to protect itself from the legal
surveillance of the municipal authority. Well, gentlemen,
this law, easier to make, probably, than is commonly
supposed, which each of us dramatic poets has probably
constructed in his own mind more than once, is wanting, and
is not created. Our ministers, who produce year in year out
from seventy to eighty laws per session, have not deemed it
fitting to make such a one as this. A law for theatres did
not seem urgently needed. Not urgent, when it concerns the
liberty of thought, the progress of civilisation, public
morality, the reputation of families, the tranquillity
of Paris, which means that of France, and, indeed, the
tranquillity of Europe itself!

"A law affecting the liberty of theatres ought to have been
proclaimed since 1830, in the spirit of the new Charter,
but it is still wanting, I repeat, through the fault of the
Government. Past legislation has evidently fallen away, and
all the sophistries with which they plaster its ruins will
not build it up again. So, between a law which no longer
exists and one which is still needed, the authorities do
not possess the right to stop a play at a theatre. I will
not linger over what M. Odilon Barrot has demonstrated so
supremely well.

"Here an objection of secondary importance arises which
I am, however, going to discuss. True, such a law is
needed, people will say, but in the absence of legislation,
ought authority to be completely defenceless? Might there
not appear suddenly on the stage one of those infamous
pieces--evidently made on purpose to make money and
scandal--where all that is sacred in religion and morality
and in the heart of man is insolently scoffed at and
ridiculed; where all that goes to make the peace of family
life and of citizenship is held up to question; where even
living personages are pilloried on the stage amidst the
hootings of the multitude? Do not State reasons lay upon the
Government the duty of closing the theatre to such monstrous
work, in spite of the silence of law? I do not know,
gentlemen, if such a type of work has even been produced,
and I do not wish to know, or to believe it, and I will not
accept here, in any degree whatever, the task of denouncing
them; but, even in such a case, I declare, whilst deploring
the scandal caused, and realising that others would advise
the State to stop works of this kind immediately, and at
once to demand the Chambers for a bill of indemnity, I would
not relax the strictness of the principle. I would say to
the Government: See the consequences of your negligence
to create a law so pressingly needed as a law affecting
theatrical liberty! You have done this wrong, repair it
and hasten to ask the Chambers for penal legislation,
and, meantime, pursue the guilty drama with the code of
the press, which, until special laws be made will, in my
opinion, rule all public fashions. I say, in my opinion, for
this is but my own personal view. My illustrious defender
would, I know, only allow liberty to theatres with greater
restrictions than I should; I speak here not with the
opinion of a lawyer, but with the simple common sense of
the citizen; if I am wrong, do not let my words be laid to
the account of my defender, but at my own door solely. I
repeat it, gentlemen, I would not relax the strictness of
the principle; I would not grant the ruling authorities the
power to confiscate liberty even in a case, apparently,
where it was legitimate, for fear a day would come when it
would confiscate it in all cases; I think that to repress
scandal by arbitration is to create two scandals in place of
one, and I say with an eloquent and serious-minded man who
must shudder to-day at the way in which his disciples apply
his doctrines: '_Il n'y a pas de droit au-dessus du droit_'
('There is no right over right').

"Now, gentlemen, if such an abuse of power, exercised even
upon a licentious, impudent or defamatory work would have
been inexcusable, how much more so when it fastens upon a
work of pure art, when it picks out for proscription among
all the plays which have been produced for the last two
years, a serious composition, strict in its morality? And
that is precisely what the left-handed power which governs
us has done in stopping _Le Roi s'amuse._ M. Odilon Barrot
has proved to you that it has acted without justice; I will
prove that it has acted without reason.

"The motives that those who are in with the police have been
whispering abroad for some days to explain the prohibition
of this play are of three kinds: there is the moral reason,
the political reason and--we must say the words though
they be laughable--the literary reason. Vergil relates
that several ingredients went to make up the thunder which
Vulcan made for Jupiter. The petty ministerial thunder
which has struck my play, which the censorship had forged
for the police, is made up of three bad reasons rolled up,
intermingled and united, _très imbris torti radios._

"There is, first of all, or, rather, there was, the moral
reason. Yes, gentlemen, I swear it, because it seems
incredible, the police made out at first that _Le Roi
s'amuse_ was, I quote the actual expression, 'an _immoral
play._' I have already silenced the police on that point.
In publishing _Le Roi s'amuse,_ I declared openly, not
for the benefit of the police, but for those honourable
men who wished to read me, that the drama was profoundly
and strictly moral. No one has disbelieved me and no one
will, it is my profound conviction as an honest man. All
the precautions the police for a time succeeded in raising
against the morality of this work have disappeared at the
time I am now speaking. Four thousand copies of the book
issued to the public have pleaded this trial in their own
way, and these four thousand advocates have won their cause.
In such a matter, also, an affirmative is sufficient; I
shall not, therefore, enter upon a superfluous discussion.
Only, for the sake of the future as well as the past, I
would have the police to know, once for all, that I do not
write immoral works. Let this be taken as conclusive, for I
shall not return to it again.

"After the moral argument there comes the political. Here,
gentlemen, as I can only express the same ideas in other
terms, allow me to quote you a page from the preface I put
to the drama ..." (We have ourselves laid that page of
preface before our readers.)[7]

"After moral and political reasons, come the literary.
A Government stopping a play for literary reasons is a
strange thing, but it is not, however, without foundation.
You remember--if by chance it was worth your trouble to
remember it--that, in 1829, at the period when the first
works called _romantic_ appeared upon the stage, about the
time when the Comédie-Française received _Marion Delorme,_
a petition signed by seven persons was presented to King
Charles X. to demand that the Théâtre-Français be closed by
the king, simply to the works of what was called the _New
School._ Charles took it laughingly, and replied wittily
that in literary questions he had only _his place_ in the
_pit of the theatre_ like the rest of us. The petition
collapsed beneath ridicule. Well, gentlemen, to-day many
of the signers of this petition are deputies, influential
deputies belonging to the majority, having a share in the
governmental powers and voting for the budget. What they
timidly petitioned for in 1829, they are able, all-powerful
as they are, to carry out in 1832.

"Public rumour, in fact, says that it was they who, the day
after the first performance, approached the minister at the
Chamber of Deputies and obtained a promise from him under
the most moral and politic excuses imaginable, that _Le Roi
s'amuse_ should be stopped. The minister, an ingenuous,
innocent and candid man, bravely took up the challenge; he
could not distinguish beneath all those wrappings the direct
and personal animosity; he believed he was performing a
political proscription. I am sorry for him, they made him
execute a literary proscription. I will not say more on
this point.... It inspires me with infinitely less anger
than pity; it is odd, that is all. The Government lending
assistance to the Academy in 1832! Aristotle become the law
of the State once more! An imperceptible literary revolution
being carried on at the brink of, and in the midst of,
our great political revolutions! The deputies who deposed
Charles X. working in a tiny corner to restore Boileau! How
despicable!...

"Gentlemen, I will sum up. By stopping my play, the
Government has not, on the one hand, an article of law to
quote from; on the other, not a single valuable reason to
give. This measure has two aspects, both equally bad: as
law, it is arbitrary; as reasoning, it is absurd. What,
then, can the power which has neither reason nor law on
its side allege as its motives? Its caprice, fancy, desire
--that is to say, nothing!

"You will do justice, gentlemen, to that desire, fancy,
caprice. Your sentence, by giving me the case, will inform
the country of this business--which is but small as compared
with the greatness of the ordinance of July--what _force
majeure_ there is in France besides that of the law, and
that at the basis of this trial there is an illegal order
which the Government did wrong to issue, and the theatre
was wrong to obey; your sentence will teach the powers
that its very friends blame it candidly on this occasion;
that the rights of every citizen are to be respected by
all Governments, that, given the conditions of order and
of general safety are fulfilled, the theatre ought to
be respected like other means of expression of public
thought, and that, whether it be the press, the tribune
or the theatre, none of the loopholes for the escape of
liberty of intellect can be closed without peril. I address
myself to you with profound faith in the worthiness of my
cause. I shall never be afraid under similar occasions of
grappling with a ministry hand to hand; the law courts are
the natural judges of honourable duels of pure right against
arbitrary dealings, duels less unequal than people think;
for if, on the one side, there is a whole Government, and,
on the other, only a simple citizen, that simple citizen
is, indeed, strong when he can bring an illegal act before
your bar, ashamed of being thus exposed to public view and
public scourging, and confronting it as I am doing with four
articles from the Charter!

"I do not, however, disguise from myself that the present
time is not like the latter years of the Restoration, when
resistance to the encroachments of the Government was so
much applauded and so popular. The ideas of stability and
of authority are momentarily more in favour than those of
progress and of freedom. It is a natural reaction after
that rough revival of all our liberty at a rush styled the
Revolution of 1830. But this reaction will not last long.
Our ministers will some day be surprised by the implacable
memory with which the men even who compose their majority
then will recall all the grievances they seem to have
forgotten so quickly to-day; moreover, let that day be
late or soon in coming it will not matter: on that score I
neither look for applause nor fear invective; I have but
followed the strict monitions of my right and my duty.

"I ought to say here that I have strong reasons for
believing that the Government will take advantage of this
fleeting torpor of the public mind formally to reestablish
the censorship, and my affair is but a prelude, a
preparation, a step to a putting of all theatrical liberty
outside general laws. By not making a repressive law, by
purposely letting licence have free scope on the stage for
the past two years, the Government imagines it has created,
in the opinion of respectable men, who might be disgusted
with that licence, a prejudice in favour of dramatic
censorship. In my opinion it is mistaken, and the censorship
will never be anything else in France than an unpopular and
illegal proceeding. As far as I myself am concerned, whether
the censorship of the theatres he re-established by an
illegal decree or an unconstitutional law, I declare I will
never submit to such an act of authority without protesting;
and I make such a protest solemnly now and here both for the
present and for the future.

"Further, observe how wanting in greatness, openness and
courage the Government has been in the series of arbitrary
acts which have succeeded one another for some time past. It
has slowly, subterraneously, surreptitiously, indirectly,
tortuously undermined the beautiful though incomplete
edifice which the revolution of July had reared. It always
took us treacherously from behind when we least expected.
It dared not censure my play before the representation; it
stopped it the following day. It attacks our most vital
liberties; it cavils at our best attained efforts; it bases
its despotism on a heap of ancient worm-eaten and repealed
laws; it lies in wait to rob us of our rights in that Forest
of Bondy of imperial decrees, through which liberty never
passes without being stripped....

"I say it is for the probity of the law courts to stop its
course, which is as dangerous to it as to us. I say that
the ruling power is specially wanting in greatness and
courage by the underhand manner in which it has performed
this hazardous operation, which each Government in strange
blindness attempts in its turn, and which consists in
substituting, more or less rapidly, arbitrariness for the
constitution, despotism for liberty.[8] ... If it only
continues for some time longer in this way, if the proposed
laws are adopted, the confiscation of all our rights will
be complete. To-day, they take away my liberty as a poet
by censure: to-morrow, they will take away my liberty as
a citizen by a gendarme; to-day, they banish me from the
theatre: to-morrow, they will banish me from the country;
to-day, they stop my mouth: to-morrow, they will transport
me; to-day, the state of siege is in literature: to-morrow,
it will be in citizenship; in liberties, guarantees,
charters, public rights, in a word, annihilation!

"If the Government be not better advised by its own
interests to stop at the precipice while there is yet time,
before long we shall have all the despotism of 1807 without
its glory: we shall have the Empire without the Emperor. I
have only a word more to say, gentlemen, and I desire it may
be in your mind whilst you are deciding. There has been in
this century but one great man, Napoleon, and but one great
thing, liberty! The great man is no more with us, let us try
to have the great thing. V. HUGO."

Of course it goes without saying that the tribunal pronounced itself incompetent to deal with the case, and no justice at all was done to the poet.

[Footnote 1: The agent Léotaud who arrested M. de Chateaubriand in 1832.]

[Footnote 2: See Appendix.]

[Footnote 3: See Appendix.]

[Footnote 4: See Appendix.]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 6: M. Odilon Barrot.]

[Footnote 7: See Appendix.]

[Footnote 8: See Appendix.]