Victor Hugo famously gave this speech to the National Legislative Assembly on July 9, 1849. Here is an English translation of the excerpt so skillfully performed on France2 and posted on Facebook. Find Hugo’s original French here.
Gentlemen: I am not among those who believe that suffering in this world can be wiped out–suffering is a divine law—but I do think, and I insist, that poverty can be done away with.
Please note, Gentlemen, that I am not saying reduce, shrink, limit, contain: I am saying destroy. Destitution is an illness of the social body just as leprosy was an illness of the human body, and it can vanish just as leprosy did. Yes, it is possible to wipe out poverty! Legislators and rulers should contemplate this unstintingly, for in a matter of this sort, when everything possible has not been done, our duty has not been carried out.
Poverty, gentlemen (and here I go to the heart of the question)—do you want to know how far it reaches? Do you want to know how far it can go and has gone, no, not in Ireland, not in the Middle Ages, but in France, in Paris, in our lifetimes? Do you want facts?
By heaven, I am ready to state the facts openly. They are saddening, but they must be revealed. Indeed, to be frank, I wish this Assembly would undertake a major formal investigation into the true situation of the working and suffering classes in France. If I have to, I shall submit an official proposal myself. I would like for every fact to be brought to light. How do we expect to perform cures if we are unwilling to probe wounds?
And so here are the facts to which I refer.
In Paris, in those Paris neighborhoods so easily stirred by the wind of insurrection not long ago, there are streets, houses, cesspools, where entire families live in a jumble of men, women, girls, and children. They have no beds, no covers, no clothing one is tempted to say, except filthy stacks of rotting rags, pulled out of the muck swept from the streets–urban manure piles where living creatures bury themselves alive to escape the winter cold.1
There’s a fact. Do you want more? Just recently, a man, Dear God, a miserable writer (for poverty does not spare the liberal professions any more than it does the trades), a miserable man died of hunger, and I mean that literally. It was discovered after his death that he had not eaten for six days.
Do you want something even more painful? Last month, when the cholera flared up, a mother and her four children were found foraging for food among the foul, plague-ridden refuse of the Cemetery of Montfaucon!2
Gentlemen, I say that these things should not exist. I say that society should apply all its strength, its caring, its intelligence, its will-power, to seeing to it that such things do not exist. I say that in a civilized country, such facts implicate the conscience of society as a whole. I say that even as I speak, I feel my complicity and solidarity with society, and I say such facts are not merely human wrongs but crimes against God.
That is why I am deeply convinced, that is why I wish to convince all who hear me, of the great importance of the proposal before you. It is only a first step, but it is decisive. I would have this assembly, whether members of the majority or of the minority–for I do not recognize a majority or a minority in such matters–march as a single soul toward the great, magnificent, sublime goal of abolishing poverty.
And, Gentlemen, I am not calling on your generosity alone. I am calling on the most serious political feelings that a legislative assembly can have.
And on this point, one final word.
Gentlemen, as I was saying, with the help of the National Guard, of the army, and of all the living powers of the nation, you have just now shored up a shaken State for yet another time.3 You have not retreated in the face of danger, you have not hesitated to do your duty. You have saved orderly society, legal government, institutions, peace, even civilization. You have done a notable thing . . . yet you have done nothing!
You have done nothing, I insist, until the restoration of the material order of things has been undergirded by solid moral order. You have done nothing, as long as the people are suffering. You have done nothing, as long as below you there is a segment of society that is desperate. You have done nothing, as long as adults in the prime of life are working and can have no bread, as long as those who are old and who once were working can have no shelter. Nothing, while usury ruins the countryside, while people are dying of hunger in the cities, while there are no brotherly, evangelical laws to bring widespread help to poor and decent families, to good peasants, to good workers, to people of good will. You have done nothing, as long as public suffering is there to lend support to the spirit of revolution. You have done nothing, nothing at all, as long as in this underground work of destruction and darkness, evil men’s inevitable collaborators are men in misery!
You see, gentleman, and in conclusion I repeat—I appeal not only to your generosity but also to your wisdom, and I beg you to reflect. Gentlemen, think about it: anarchy opens abysses, but poverty creates them. You’ve made laws against anarchy—now make laws against poverty!
Translated by Robert F. Cook
NOTES:
1Translator’s note: Near the end of this paragraph, the meaning of the expression coins des bornes is not obvious. It most likely refers to the cleared space around and behind the posts set up along the streets to prevent vehicles from running onto the sidewalk and hitting buildings. Borne may also be a hitching post. The image is clear enough: street sweepers shove everything into whatever open space is nearby, instead of picking it up. And “everything,” in the street in 1849, is a combination of wet horse manure, natural mud, old clothes thrown out the window, common garbage, and whatever has fallen off the fishmonger’s cart.
2Montfaucon was in the Middle Ages the place in Paris where people were executed and their bodies left to rot, hence both a gallows and “cemetery” at the same time. This Wikipedia page offers illustrations and shows you where it was in Paris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbet_of_Montfaucon). Montfaucon plays a grisly role in Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris.
3Hugo may be referring here to the government’s successfully resisting a Radical uprising on June 13, 1849 (see Bernard H. Moss, “June 13, 1849: The Abortive Uprising of French Radicalism,” French Historical Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Spring, 1984), pp. 390-414.