'
'We did not _choose_', I answered, 'to disbelieve any thing. We were
simply ignorant. _I_ knew all these facts, because I have passed a part
of every year since 1847 in Paris; because I walked along the Boulevards
on the 20th of December 1851, and saw the walls of every house, from the
Bastille to the Madeleine, covered with the marks of musket-balls;
because I heard in every society of the thousands who had been massacred,
and of the tens of thousands who had been _deportes_; but the untravelled
English, and even the travelled English, except the few who live in
France among the French, knew nothing of all this. Your press tells
nothing. The nine millions of votes given to Louis Napoleon seemed to
prove his popularity, and therefore the improbability of the tyranny of
which he was accused by his enemies. _I_ knew that those nine millions of
votes were extorted, or stolen by violence or fraud. But the English
people did not know it. They accepted his election as the will of the
nation, and though they might wonder at your choice, did not presume to
blame it.'
'The time,' they answered, 'at which light broke in upon you is
suspicious.
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