triumph of the press, that it was able to so promptly stop the mischief which the police had made.
I must here blame the conduct of certain people who by no means belonged to the lower class, yet who were so carried away by their prejudices as to publicly accuse the Carlists of poisoning. Passion should never carry us so far, and I should hesitate a long time ere I would accuse my most venomous foes of such horrible intentions.[1] The Carlists were quite right in complaining of this, and it is only the bitter manner in which they cursed and railed over it which could excite suspicion. That is certainly not the language of innocence. But according to the conviction of those best informed, there had been no poisoning. It may be that sham poisonings were contrived, or that a few wretches were really induced to sprinkle harmless powders on provisions in order to irritate and rouse the people; and if this was indeed the case, the people should not be too severely blamed for their riotous conduct, since it sprang not from private hate, "but in the interest of the commonweal, quite according to the theory of terrorism." Yes, the Carlists would themselves have perished in the pit dug for the Republicans, but the poisoning was not gene-
- ↑ All which follows, to the word Constitutional, is omitted in the French version, that is, twenty-seven lines of the German text, and it is little to our author's credit that it is found in German.
