Curious state of mind

Some people who are instinctively enemies of just causes and jealous by temperament of those who ennoble themselves by their courage in defending them have blamed us for having exaggerated the Ponpon affair.
According to them, chasing small merchants from the beach is quite natural. A mayor has the right to take such measures as he pleases and the public has only to bow.
There is an unfortunate state of mind here at the same time as a regrettable ignorance. A state of mind inherited, no doubt, from those of our ancestors who bowed to tyranny. (The serfs prostrated themselves before the despots, thanking them for the honor they did them by taking care of them). Ignorance originating in the lack of education and legal sense because a gap in education allows the citizen in training to be inspired by bad examples and bad principles; he becomes rather the slave and admirer of the "fait du prince" than the defender and servant of the law of nations and democratic laws. The Revolution has passed over this old heritage of servility like a storm upsetting the surface of the seas. Nothing has changed too much in the depths.

Neither La Petite Gironde nor La France had followed us in opening their columns to the affair that concerns us. These newspapers did not realize how interesting and popular it was; they were determined not to offer us any support.

But the invasion of the Justice of the Peace hall on October 30 by a crowd enthusiastic to hear the defender of the little people, Me Auschitzky, plead, opened the eyes of the most incredulous; La Petite Gironde and La France have spoken.

Only their articles, under a patelin exterior, tend to cover up the mistakes committed; they spare the authors of the municipal decree that we are fighting; they excuse those who have forced its meaning to the point of making it an infringement of two of our fundamental freedoms: freedom of movement and freedom of trade; they are careful not to highlight the important distinction between regulation consisting of suppressing abuse, which is legal, and prohibition which, under the pretext of putting an end to this abuse, dares to go so far as to prohibit use and thus commit an excess of power.

By other errors or omissions, which are perhaps not the effect of chance, the Petite Gironde makes Me Auschitzky say in particular that the indictment of his clients Cledière and Dacharay is fundamentally correct. The defender maintained the opposite; he demonstrated that it is void in form and without foundation.

The Petite Gironde and even democratic France are burning with the desire to see the Public Prosecutor triumph and condemn poor "Ponpon". Why? ...

Albert de RICAUDY.

P. S.- MM. Dacharry and Cledière sent to the above newspapers, on November 4, corrections which, on the 7th, had not yet appeared.