Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/356

 314 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 CHAP. XIV. lection of the things he reads of may haunt him and weigh upon his spirit till he longs and longs in vain to recover his ignorance of what, even in this his own time, has been done to Living men.* The Plebiscite. Causes rendering free elec- tion im- possible. XVIII. At length the time came for the operation of what was called the Plebiscite. The arrangements of the plotters had been of such a kind as to allow Prance no hope of escape from anarchy and utter chaos, except by submitting herself to the dictator- ship of Louis Bonaparte ; for although the Presi- dent in his Proclamation had declared that if the country did not like his Presidency they might choose some other in his place, no such alternative less sufferers further than to use the phrase, 'the two thousand 'men whose sufferings are the best known;' but the highly qualified writer referred to in the foot-note, p. 298, conceived himself warranted in venturing upon the following words : — ' All that is known is, that about three thousand two hundred ' have since disappeared from Paris ; the}' may have been killed ' in the Boulevards, and thrown into the large pits in which ' those who fell on that day were promiscuously interred ; they ' may have been among the hundreds who were put to death in ' the courtyards of the barracks, or in the subterraneous pas- ' Bicetre, or in the bagnes of Rochefort, or they may be at sea ' on their way to Cayenne We have already ' stated that the number of persons undergoing or sentenced by ' these cruelties is believed to exceed ten thousand. A lain- ' dred thousand more are supposed to be in the vaults and case- ' mates which the French dignify with the name of prisons, ' often piled, crammed, and wedged together so closely that • they can scarcely change their positions.' ' Edinburgh Re« ' view,' vol. xcv. p. 319. — Note to 4th Edition.
 * I have not ventured to speak of the numbers of these hap-
 * sages of the Tuileries ; they may be in the casemates of Fort