discussion.  You are now asked to put down writing.  When that has been done, conversation will be attacked.  Paris will resemble Rome under the successors of Augustus.  Already this prosecution has produced a malaise which I never felt or observed before.  What will be the feelings of the nation when all that is around it is concealed, when every avenue by which light could penetrate is stopped; when we are exposed to all the undefined terrors and exaggerated dangers that accompany utter darkness?  The misfortune of France, a national defect which makes the happiness enjoyed by England unattainable by us, is, that she is always oscillating between extremes; that she is constantly swinging from universal conquest to la paix a tout prix, from the desire of nothing but glory to the desire of nothing but wealth, from the wildest democracy to the most abject servility.  Every new Government starts with a new principle.  Every Government in a few years perishes by carrying that principle to an extreme.  The First Republic was destroyed by the intemperance with which it trampled on every sort of tradition and authority, the First Empire by its abuse of victory and war, the Restoration by its exaggerated belief in divine right and legitimacy, the Royalty of July by its exaggerated reliance on purchased voters and Parliamentary majorities, the Second Republic by the conduct of its own Republicans.  The danger to the Second Empire—­its only internal danger, but I fear a fatal one—­is its abuse of authority.  With every phase of our sixty years’ long revolution, we have a new superstition, a new culte.  We are now required to become the worshippers of authority.  I lament that with the new religion we have not new priests.  Our public men would not be discredited by instantaneous apostasy from one political faith to another.  I am grieved, gentlemen, if I offend you; though many of you are older in years than I am, not one probably is so old in public life.  I may be addressing you for the last time, and I feel that my last words ought to contain all the warnings that I think will be useful to you.  This assembly will soon end, as all its predecessors have ended.  Its acts, its legislation, may perish with it, but its reputation, its fame, for good or for evil, will survive.  Within a few minutes you will do an act by which that reputation will be seriously affected; by which it may be raised, by which it may be deeply, perhaps irrevocably, sunk.  Your vote to-night will show whether you possess freedom, and whether you deserve it.  As for myself, I care but little.  A few months, or even years, of imprisonment are among the risks which every public man who does his duty in revolutionary times must encounter, and which the first men of the country have incurred, soit en sortant des affaires, soit avant d’y entrer.  But whatever may be the effect of your vote on my person, whatever it may be on your reputation, I trust that it is not in your power to inflict permanent