Public outcry

“ Some to plot deeds of private revenge, private cruelty—some to arrange their schemes of public insurrection—some to dally in secret corners with the fair patricians—some to drain mightier draughts than they had yet partaken, some to gamble for desperate stakes, all to drown care and the anguish of conscious guilt, in the fierce pleasure of excitement. ”

“ For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause,—disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. ”

“ While we regret that the necessary for such scenes should have existed, we are proud of the public spirit and indignation against offenders displayed by the citizens, and congratulate them on having at length banished a class of individuals, whose shameless vices and daring outrages have long poisoned the springs of morality, and interrupted the relations of society. ”

“ With the natural instinct of the spirit of mischief they hit upon the poison which, if injected into the body of the public service at large, would mot unfailingly kill every reform that has been accomplished in it. ”

“ In the press, at public meetings, in the streets and even in the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies there was such an explosion of wrath that the government grew alarmed and strove by every possible means to allay the public excitement. ”

“ Were we, however, if only from an abstract point of view, to venture an opinion on the vexed question as to why so many have a leaning towards the seamy and sinister side of life, we should be disposed to consider that, apart from the allurement of the abnormal and the inclination to indulge a morbid curiosity, perhaps [298] the chief influence serving to stimulate the mind of the public when a great crime has been perpetrated in a genuine concern that a serious outrage has been made on society, constituting a veritable menace to its security. ”

“ Governments which derive their institutions from the existence of circumstances of barbarism and violence, with some rare exceptions perhaps, are bloody in proportion as they are despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to a sympathy with their own spirit.
The spectators who feel no abhorrence at a public execution, but rather a self-applauding superiority, and a sense of gratified indignation, are surely excited to the most inauspicious emotions. ”

“ We who, rightly or wrongly, have fought our way into public notice, have all, at one time or another, been made to run the gauntlet of abuse, or to swim the dead sea of indifference. The public knows little of our lives. ”

“ To men and women who had learned from childhood to find a certain brutish titillation in beholding the public humiliation and physical anguish of their acquaintances and fellow-townsmen, the prospect of seeing the scourge actually applied to the backs of envied and hated social superiors, could not be otherwise than delightfully agitating. ”

“ For thus the cause of individuals is made a public concern, and the general indignation which their wrongs excite, forms at once one of the severest punishments which can be inflicted on the oppressor, and one of the strongest bulwarks that can be raised in defence of the unprotected. ”

“ Declining higher objects, therefore, my only one must be to show that suggestion and fact are different things, and that public misfortune may be produced as well by public poverty and private disobedience to the laws, as by the misconduct of public servants. ”

“ When public order breaks down; when men, women and children fear for their safety in the streets and in their homes; when contempt and mistrust characterize citizens' attitudes toward lawful authority, then we all -- young and old, rich and poor -- are victimized. ”

“ Or will he defy those in power by maintaining all his former professions, by standing by what he has said and done, and thereby forfeit the last claim to a mitigation of his awful lot?” The grievously suffering man would probably have been forgiven by public opinion had he by a yielding attitude sought an alleviation of his misery. ”

“ More especially those who have been discharging public and administrative duties, and have abandoned their posts even when there was no danger. Those cowards who did not go where their functions called them, giving all kind of pretexts or excuses, and prudently [88] locking themselves up in their houses. Those cowards who, having the greatest duties of civic courage to fulfil, have tried to blame others' courage and valor in order to retain the respect of the public. ”

“ By a natural process minorities of agitators cast cowardly and selfish members out of their ranks; in other words, they weed out the useless, the feeble, the derogatory elements, and the elements which, being dependent upon the favour of the public, or susceptible to public criticism, flinch if subjected to unfavourable judgment. ”

“ And those, I apprehend, expose themselves to grievous disappointment, who still think that by dinning again and again in the ears of the people the old battlecries of the civil war, they can befog the popular mind as to the true requirements of the times, and overawe and terrorize the public sentiment of the country. ”

“ If such are the men with whom bitter quarrels are waged, and upon whom unstinted contumely and contempt are poured out, shall we not all, upon every side, pause and reflect that to blow mere party fires to fury, and to trample personal character in the mire of angry political dispute, is to disgrace ourselves and the cause that we would serve, and the country whose good name depends upon us? ”

“ The stormy passions of the fury-driven mob, reckless and headstrong, show this; and the most terrible moment in all political convulsions is when the people feel, or even suspect, that they have been tricked. ”

“ We know how great waves of feeling spread over a town, city, or county, sweeping people off their feet, and causing them to lose their balance. Great waves of political enthusiasm, or war-spirit or prejudice for or against certain people, or groups of people, sweep over places and cause men to act in a manner which they afterward often regret when they come to themselves and consider the matter in the light of cold reason. People are swayed by demagogues or magnetic leaders who wish to capture their votes or patronage ”

“ They bring with them many incidental evils.—They lead into collision adverse parties, and produce impassioned controversies; they create evils which no man can be right in abetting, even indirectly, but with a view to ward off others which are more injurious to the public welfare. ”

“ In private life, I am contented with men's virtues only, without seeking for opportunities of blame. In a publick character, when national grievances cry aloud for inquiry and justice, it is our duty to pursue all the footsteps of guilt; and the loud, the pathetick appeal of my constituents, is more forcibly persuasive than any motive of private tenderness. This appeal is not the clamour of faction, artfully raised to disturb the operation of government, violent for a while, and soon to be appeased. ”

“ When I go to the city and perceive what creatures wield the power there, when I watch the trickery, the iniquity, the audacious infamy, of the cliques that control the machinery of that great government, and when I look, as I do sometimes, into the faces of those who are thus leagued for plunder and power, only to see there vulgarity, ignorance, vice and general moral filthiness, my soul is made sick. ”

“ But there is another and more important reason why this cry will be distrusted now. The people are asking themselves—and well they may—whether the very policy which is followed professedly to prevent such outrages is not in itself well calculated to serve as the cause for more. ”

“ "Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is so prodigal of its favours to those that are called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it could not subsist? But after the public has reaped all the advantage of their service, and they come to be oppressed with age, sickness, and want, all their labours and the good they have done is forgotten, and all the recompense given them is that they are left to die in great misery. ”

“ As a rule, it has slumbered peacefully until some flagrant outrage on decency and the health of the community aroused it to noisy but ephemeral indignation, or until a dreaded epidemic knocked at our door. ”

“ In these meetings of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring and violent and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to the public. ”

“ The public mind was wrought up to a high degree of indignation at these attempts to ruin some of the most worthy and talented men in the community. While the public was still under the influence of the sympathetic feelings excited in behalf of those against whom such gross accusations had been made, Mr. ”

“ This denunciation is eagerly caught up by the public: away they fling to propagate the distress; sell out at one place, buy in at another, grumble at their governors, shout in mobs, and when they have thus for some time behaved like fools, sit down coolly to argue and talk wisdom, to puzzle each other with syllogism, and prepare for the next report that prevails, which is always attended with the same success. ”

“ but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if, by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions—in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty; ”

“ It is an absurdity to suppose that there can be any better criterion of national grievances, or the proper remedies for them, than the aggregate amount of the actual, dear-bought experience, the honest feelings, and heartfelt wishes of a whole people, informed and directed by the greatest power of understanding in the community, unbiassed by any sinister motive. ”

“ "Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; ”

“ History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same
"troublous storms that toss
The private state, and render life unsweet."
These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts. ”

“ But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled distress: the perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings, tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people, into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families, and the community. ”

“ Wherever this impulse of social or political reform darts up its rill through the crusts of selfishness, scoff and dread also arise, and hang like a heavy mist above it. But the voice of the rill penetrates far enough for those who have ears to hear. ”

“ What a vast concourse is here!—men without conscience, with hearts like the cold and rugged rock, vain, stern, uncompromising; political agitators; promoters of turbulence and war; extortioners, hypocrites, systematic liars, swindlers, and those who could see no pleasure in forgiveness or in paying debts. What deep misery is their portion! How they must weep sometimes and gnash their teeth! ”

“ The contempt, the indignation, the abhorrence of the community shall be our weapons of offence. Wherever he moves, he shall find no house to receive him, no table spread to nourish him, no welcome to cheer him. ”

“ Their incessant and impertinent intermeddling with the most delicate question in our social relations is creating the most indignant feelings in the community. The fiery discussions they are exciting are calculated to provoke the very riots which they deprecate. ”

“ It did indeed seem as though the strong feeling of popular indignation was about to be manifested in an outbreak of a serious character, and that the unhappy object of their dislikes was about to realize that there is in this land, a power above all law, whose mandates would—when the arm of justice 130became paralysed and insufficient, and was daringly sneered at by those who depend upon their ill-earned wealth, and certain peculiar influences for impunity from the just reward of crime—be suddenly executed in violence and confusion. ”

“ Knowledge, writing, the press was found to be the great engine that governed public opinion; and the scheme therefore was, to make it recoil upon itself, and act in a retrograde direction to its natural one. Prejudice and power had a provocation to this extreme and desperate mode of defence, in their instinctive jealousy of any opposition to their sentiments or will. ”