Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/170

154 part of the territory of the Mexican empire, and request me to specify any French officers who might be nominated chief commandants in the departments or districts placed in the above-named state of siege.

As your majesty remarks, the question is a very important one, and affects the most serious interests.

A state of siege is in fact a transitory state in which all the powers are combined in the hands of the military authority; a state which extraordinarily modifies the administrative and judicial machinery, and places the citizens in an abnormal and unnatural position.

It is likewise only in the public interests and at some great unforeseen crisis, that the sovereign authority should resort to these extreme means to point out that force is the only argument which is left for it to employ.

Is it necessary at the present time to apply this measure to the Mexican empire? I do not think so; and I ask the emperor's permission to prove to him that this measure is a useless one.

The normal state, so to speak, of this country for the last fifty years, has been a state of war, which will not be altered for a long time yet. Does not this afford all the facilities which could be wished for obtaining by force that which neither persuasion nor the efforts of a regular administration have been able to effect?

The substitution of one sole authority, and of one sole power instead of all those which before ruled the community, could only give more unity to the proceedings of government, so far as the authorities temporarily suspended (for, as I repeat, the state of siege can only be transitory), may be simultaneously and everywhere replaced by others on whose valour and good faith dependence may be placed.

Does it not seem more natural to act than to issue edicts? and, in the unquestionable state of war in which the country now is, is not the gradual transition to a state of siege both simple and easy? There are generals and chief commandants close to all the points where their actions would be indispensable.

Courts-martial are now at work over the whole extent of the empire. Would a state of siege give more force, more