Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/340

 298 OPJGIN OF THE WAK OF 1S53 C h a P. this, that those who are charged have made away AIV - with the means by which the truth might be best established. In this stress, Justice is not so dull and helpless as to submit to be baffled. Wisely deviating in such a case from her common path, she listens for a moment to incomplete testimony against the concealer, and then, by requiring that he who hid away the truth shall restore it to light, or abide the consequence of his default, she shifts the duty of giving strict proof from the accuser to the accused. Because Prince Louis and his associates closed up the accustomed approaches to truth, therefore it is cast upon them either to remain under the charge which Paris brings against them, or else to labour and show, as best they may, that they did not cause batches of French citizens to be shot by platoons of infantry in the night of the 4th and the night of the 5th of December.* « tiou,' lias been recorded as a proved fact by a gentleman who was in Paris at the time of the coup d'ttcd, who was gifted more than most men with the power of seeking for truth in an im- partial spirit, ami who enjoyed great opportunities of informing himself concerning the events which had been passing in the French capital. His narrative asserts, in plain unqualified terms, that ' hundreds ' were 'put to death in the courtyards ' of the barracks, or in the subterraneous passages of the 'Tuileries.' Still, the writer did not seethe prisoners shot with his own eyes, and I persist in my inclination to treat it as a 'question,' whether these alleged executions did or did not take place in the nights of the 4th and 5th of December. —Note i>) ith Edition.
 * I find tint what T, in my caution, thus speak of as a ' ques-