LAMENNAIS (Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais). Born in Saint-Malo. 1782-1854. Philosopher. Ordained priest in 1816. Founded with Montalembert and Lacordaire the newspaper L'Avenir. Opposed to the pope Grégoire XVI, he saw his newspaper condemned in 1832. L.A. [to Victor Schœlcher]. Paris, 25 March 1853. 4 pp. in-8. MAGNIFICENT LETTER ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN FRANCE TO HIS FRIEND SCHOELCHER, REFUGEE IN ENGLAND AFTER LOUIS-NAPOLÉON BONAPARTE'S COUP D'ÉTAT. Lamennais had just received the book sent by Schoelcher, which he considered essential reading for future generations to understand the events ...There are horrible moments in the history of peoples, the memory of which pierces like a stiletto (sic). Even so, it is essential that the facts are recorded, because great lessons can be learned from them, and it is the duty of contemporaries not to let them be lost. I can therefore only applaud your work, full of fair assessments and generous sentiments, which adds a new value to the documents you have collected, and which will take their place in the general investigation that will be carried out when the light ceases to be stifled and the time for justice has come... However, the ultramontane thinker did not share Schœlcher's leniency ...I must admit that I find you too indulgent towards the people. He betrayed, and betrayed himself stupidly and cowardly, and the worst of it is that he showed a vice new to him, hypocrisy; which made me define him, Father Roothaan in a smock (Jean Philip Roothaan, a Dutch Jesuit father)... Lamennais believed that corruption had spread right down to the associations and guilds, which were also under the control of the imperial police. In agreement with Schœlcher, he advocated ...the union of the bourgeoisie and the people: salvation lay there. United, they can do anything; separated, they can do nothing; together, they form the nation, and what is a nation split in two, half a nation? There is no real attachment to tyranny anywhere, on the contrary; but, according to the different positions, many heads are still filled, some with illusions and mad hopes, others with mad fears. As a radical negation of the law, which is the very life of society, Power will fall all the faster for having stifled this life. It has against it all the spiritual forces, the real forces, those that always triumph. It relies on three things, the priest, the soldier and the informer; I'm not talking about the magistracy, which is only a branch of the police. This is a great and important lesson for the future. May it not be lost, as other lessons have been! Lamennais' observation is simple: the bourgeoisie seeks to preserve its interests, while the people arm themselves with patience...national feeling has not been awakened; we have, in truth, sunk very low. Orleanism dominates in the middle class, and in general among men of money... It calls for the re-establishment of the Republic ... the only possible government... I do not think that the empire could, in finance, go beyond 1855, without resorting to extreme measures, and prodigiously dangerous from then on. As for the more or less rapid progress of hostile opinions, and as for external events, the counter-blow of which could be powerful, nothing can be foreseen; that depends on too many causes, and on causes that are too uncertain. That, very roughly speaking, is our state of affairs, at least as I see it. I'm indicating more than I'm explaining, and above all more than I'm explaining; that's all one can do in a letter. My heart goes out to you, my friend: courage and faith. Thank God we lack neither... Victor Schœlcher's republican commitment is well known. Like Victor Hugo, he was exiled after Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's coup d'état in December 1851. He spent nineteen years in exile in England. An abolitionist of slavery and opposed to the death penalty, Victor Schœlcher was a great visionary and defender of all just and democratic causes. A Christian philosopher, Lamennais is regarded as the precursor of liberal and social Catholicism. Through his newspaper L'Avenir, he argued for freedom of education and the separation of Church and State. In 1848, he was elected as a member of the Constituent Assembly, but following the coup d'état of 2 December 1851, he retired to his native Brittany.