John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[67] attention to the subject, and seemed to feel the need of doing something effective, to make the lot of the laborers more tolerable and their life more like the life of human beings.

... “Still,” the writer adds, “there is a long way between such transient emotions and the perception of the fact that the emancipation of labor is the present especial duty and destiny of this nation, and that it depends on the wealthy to say whether it is to be done peacefully and with benefit to all, or whether by refusing to do it they will bring on a new and more desperate phase of the revolution.”

No one can read this letter without perceiving that the French people were deeply moved by the disarrangement of economic conditions which everywhere prevailed. That Dana was full of sympathy for them, and greatly interested not only in the actual condition of affairs, but in the provisions of the new constitution which were then under discussion, is apparent in every line. He attended the daily session of the Assembly, and listened with the closest attention to the debates in which such men as Victor Hugo and Felix Pyat, General Cavaignac and General Baraguay d'hilliers took part. His analysis of the questions and the discussions which followed is most searching. It constitutes an excellent bit of reporting, but in the progress of later years it has lost its significance for the present generation, and must therefore be omitted from this narrative.

Much of a later letter is taken up with an account of the proceedings of the committee on the constitution, the organization of the legislature, the right to labor, religious freedom, the formation of clubs and secret societies, the debate between M. Thiers and M. Proudhon, the proposed intervention in Italy, the condition of trade, and the alarming increase of beggary in Paris. In regard to the last-mentioned subject, I quote as follows: