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Special pages :
Symptoms of the Revival of France's Internal Life
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 9 November 1858 |
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 16
This unfinished draft of the article "Symptoms of the Revival of France's Internal Life" shows what great attention Marx paid to the growth of opposition sentiments in Bonaparte's empire and supplements his articles on the mounting financial, economic and political crisis in France published in the New-York Daily Tribune in 1858. Though Marx himself put only the day and month on the manuscript, the facts contained in the draft allow it to be dated 1858. The passages crossed out in the manuscript are not reproduced in this volume.
Paris, November 9
People in this city are generally so much bored with the progress of liberty abroad that they almost forget minding the progress of servitude at home. Still, now and then, symptoms of returning internal life appear on the surface of the social body.
Take for instance M. Berryer’s vigorous denunciation of the decay of the barreau[1] and of the growing servility of the French Courts of Justice. Another instance is the efforts made by liberals of every shade of opinion to rally and make a literary stand at least against the streams of turpitude daily poured over the country through the floodgates of the Decembrist press. Thus at Paris Messrs. d’Haussonville, Jules Simon, Barthélemy-St.-Hilaire, Odilon Barrot, Duvergier de Hauranne, Barni, Hauréau and others, are trying their best in this direction. In the department de la Meurthe a cluster of independent writers have started a periodical publication under the title of Varia with a view to combat the monster centralisation that envelops France in its deadly embrace, as the serpents did the body of Laocoon; and similar undertakings are set on foot in Alsace. The Courrier du Dimanche, however, a weekly Paris paper, now evidently takes the lead of the new liberal opposition. On casting a glance on its sheets, one becomes at once aware of the enormous difficulties its way is beset with, and, moreover, its writers appear more or less tainted with the exhalations of the corrupt medium they breathe in. Still there is a great effort made to emerge and, consequently, I propose giving a summary of their recent strictures on the Bonapartist pamphlet literature.[2]