Part 65 (1/2)
MERCIER then gives the fragment by FONTENELLE, on the police of Paris and on M. D'ARGENSON, of which I shall select only what may be necessary for elucidating the main subject.
”The inhabitants of a well-governed city,” says FONTENELLE, ”enjoy the good order which is there established, without considering what trouble it costs those who establish or preserve it, much in the same manner as all mankind enjoy the regularity of the motions of celestial bodies, without having any knowledge of them, and even the more the good order of a police resembles by its uniformity that of the celestial bodies, the more is it imperceptible, and, consequently, the more it is unknown, the greater is its perfection.
But he who would wish to know it and fathom it, would be terrified.
To keep up perpetually in a city, like Paris, an immense consumption, some sources of which may always be dried up by a variety of accidents; to repress the tyranny of shop-keepers in regard to the public, and at the same time animate their commerce; to prevent the mutual usurpations of the one over the other, often difficult to discriminate; to distinguish in a vast crowd all those who may easily conceal there a hurtful industry; to purge society of them, or tolerate them only as far as they can be useful to it by employments which no others but themselves would undertake, or discharge so well; to keep necessary abuses within the precise limits of necessity which they are always ready to over-leap; to envelop them in the obscurity to which they ought to be condemned, and not even draw them from it by chastis.e.m.e.nt too notorious; to be ignorant of what it is better to be ignorant of than to punish, and to punish but seldom and usefully; to penetrate by subterraneous avenues into the bosom of families, and keep for them the secrets which they have not confided, as long as it is not necessary to make use of them; to be present every where without being seen; in short, to move or stop at pleasure an immense mult.i.tude, and be the soul ever-acting, and almost unknown, of this great body: these are, in general, the functions of the chief magistrate of the police. It should seem that one man alone could not be equal to them, either on account of the quant.i.ty of things of which he must be informed, or of that of the views which he must follow, or of the application which he must exert, or of the variety of conduct which he most observe, and of the characters which he must a.s.sume: but the public voice will answer whether M. D'ARGENSON has been equal to them.
”Under him, cleanliness, tranquillity, plenty, and safety were brought to the highest degree of perfection in this city. And, indeed, the late king (Lewis XIV) relied entirely on his care respecting Paris. He could have given an account of a person unknown who should have stolen into it in the dark; this person, whatever ingenuity he exerted in concealing himself, was always under his eye; and if, at last, any one escaped him, at least what produced almost the same effect, no one would have dared to think himself well-concealed.
”Surrounded and overwhelmed in his audiences by a crowd of people chiefly of the lower cla.s.s, little informed themselves of what brought them, warmly agitated by interests very trifling, and frequently very ill understood, accustomed to supply the place of discourse by senseless clamour, he neither betrayed the inattention nor the disdain which such persons or such subjects might have occasioned.”
”FONTENELLE has not,” continues MERCIER, ”spoken of the severity of M. D'ARGENSON, of his inclination to punish, which was rather a sign of weakness than of strength. Alas! human laws, imperfect and rude, cannot dive to the bottom of the human heart, and there discover the causes of the delinquencies which they have to punis.h.!.+ They judge only from the surface: they would acquit, perhaps, those whom they condemn; they would strike him whom they suffer to escape. But they cannot, I confess, do otherwise. Nevertheless, they ought to neglect nothing that serves to disclose the heart of man. They ought to estimate the strength of natural and indestructible pa.s.sions, not in their effects, but in their principles; to pay attention to the age, the s.e.x, the time, the day; these are nice rules, which could not be found in the brain of the legislator, but which ought to be met with in that of a Minister of the Police.”
”There are also epidemical errors in which the mult.i.tude of those who go astray, seems to lessen the fault; in which a sort of circ.u.mspection is necessary, in order that punishment may not be in opposition to public interest, because punishment would then appear absurd or barbarous, and indignation might recoil on the law, as well as on the magistrate.”
”What a life has a Minister of Police! He has not a moment that he can call his own; he is every day obliged to punish; he is afraid to give way to indulgence, because he does not know that he may not one day have to reproach himself with it. He is under the necessity of being severe, and of acting contrary to the inclination of his heart; not a crime is committed but he receives the shameful or cruel account: he hears of nothing but vicious men and vices; every instant he is told: 'there's a murder! a suicide! a rape!' Not an accident happens but he must prescribe the remedy, and hastily; he has but a moment to deliberate and act, and he must be equally fearful to abuse the power intrusted to him, and not to use it opportunely. Popular rumours, flighty conversations, theatrical factions, false alarms, every thing concerns him.
”Is he gone to rest? A fire rouses him from his bed. He must be answerable for every thing; he must trace the robber, and the lurking a.s.sa.s.sin who has committed a crime; for the magistrate appears blameable, if he has not found means to deliver him up quickly to justice. The time that his agents have employed in this capture will be calculated, and his honour requires that the interval between the crime and the imprisonment should be the shortest possible. What dreadful duties! What a laborious life! And yet this place is coveted!
”On some occasions, it is necessary for the Minister of Police to demean himself like a true _Greek_, as was the case in the following instance:
”A person, being on the point of making a journey, had in his possession a sum of twenty thousand livres which embarra.s.sed him; he had only one servant, whom he mistrusted, and the sum was tempting.
He accordingly requested a friend to be so obliging as to take care of it for him till his return.
”A fortnight after, the friend denied the circ.u.mstance. As there was no proof, the civil law could not p.r.o.nounce in this affair. Recourse was had to the Minister of Police, who pondered a moment, and sent for the receiver, making the accuser retire into an adjoining room:
”The friend arrives, and maintains that he has not received the twenty thousand livres. 'Well,' said the magistrate, 'I believe you; and as you are innocent you run no, risk in writing to your wife the note that I am going to dictate. Write.
”'”My dear wife, all is discovered. I shall be punished if I do not restore you know what. Bring the sum: your coming quickly to my relief is the only way for me to get out of trouble and obtain my pardon.”
”'This note,' added the magistrate, 'will fully justify you. Your wife can bring nothing since you have received nothing, and your accuser will be foiled.'
”The note was dispatched; the wife, terrified, ran with the twenty thousand livres.
”Thus the Minister of Police can daily make up for the imperfection and tardiness of our civil laws; but he ought to use this rare and splendid privilege with extreme circ.u.mspection.
”The chief magistrate of the police is become a minister of importance; he has a secret and prodigious influence; he knows so many things, that he can do much mischief or much good, because he has in hand a mult.i.tude of threads which he can entangle or disentangle at his pleasure; he strikes or he saves; he spreads darkness or light: his authority is as delicate as it is extensive.
”The Minister of Police exercises a despotic sway over the _mouchards_ who are found disobedient, or who make false reports: as for these fellows, they are of a cla.s.s so vile and so base, that the authority to which they have sold themselves, has necessarily an absolute right over their persons.
”This is not the case with those who are apprehended in the name of the police; they may have committed trifling faults: they may have enemies in that crowd of _exempts_, spies, and satellites, who are believed on their word. The eye of the magistrate may be incessantly deceived, and the punishment of these crimes ought to be submitted to a more deliberate investigation; but the house of correction ingulfs a vast number of men who there become still more perverted, and who, on coming out, are still more wicked than when they went in. Being degraded in their own eyes, they afterwards plunge themselves headlong into all sorts of irregularities.
”These different imprisonments are sometimes rendered necessary by imperious circ.u.mstances; yet it were always to be wished that the detention of a citizen should not depend on a single magistrate, but that there should be a sort of tribunal to examine when this great act of authority, withdrawn from the eye of the law, ceases to be illegal.
”A few real advantages compensate for these irregular forms, and there are, in fact, an infinite number of irregularities which the slow and grave process of our tribunals can neither take cognizance of, nor put a stop to, nor foresee, nor punish. The audacious or subtle delinquent would triumph in the winding labyrinth of our civil laws. The laws of the police, more direct, watch him, press him, and surround him mose closely. The abuse, is contiguous to the benefit, I admit; but a great many private acts of violence, base and shameful crimes, are repressed by this vigilant and active force which ought, nevertheless, to publish its code and submit it to the inspection of enlightened citizens.”
”Could the Minister of Police communicate to the philosopher all he knows, all he learns, all he sees, and likewise impart to him certain secret things, of which he alone is well-informed, there would be nothing so curious and so instructive under the pen of the philosopher; for he would astonish all his brethren. But this magistrate is like the great penitentiary; he hears every thing, relates nothing, and is not astonished at certain delinquencies in the same degree as another man. By dint of seeing the tricks of roguery, the crimes of vice, secret treachery, and all the filth of human actions, he has necessarily a little difficulty in giving credit to the integrity and virtue of honest people. He is in a perpetual state of mistrust; and, in the main, he ought to possess such a character; for, he ought to think nothing impossible, after the extraordinary lessons which he receives from men and from things.
In a word, his place commands a continual, and scrutinizing suspicion.”
_February 22, in continuation._