Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo
translated by Norman Denny
The 1830 July Revolution and Right over Fact
The July Revolution at once found friends and enemiees throughout the world. The former greeted it with enthusiasm and rejoicing, the latter averted their gaze, each according to his nature. The princes of Europe, like owls in the dawn, at first shut their eyes in wounded amazement, and opened them onlyyto utter threats. Their fear was understandable, their wrath excusable. That strange revolution had been scarcely a conflict; it had not even done royalty the honur of treating it as an enemy and shedding its blood. In the eyes of despotism, always anxious for liberty to defame itself by its own acts, the grave defects of the July Revolution was that it was both formidable and gentle. [...]
The July Revolution was the triumph of Right over Fact, a thing of splendour. Right overthrowing the accepted Fact. Hence the brilliance of the July Revolution, and its clemency. Right triumphant has no need of violence. Right is justice and truth.
It is the quality of Right that it remains eternally beautiful and unsullied. However necessary Fact may appear to be, however acquiesced in at a given time, if it exists as Fact alone, embodying too little Right or none at all, it must inevitably, with the passing of time, become distorted and unnatural, even monstrous. If we wish to measure the degree of ugliness by which Fact can be overtaken, seen in the perspective of centuries, we have only to consider Machiavelli. Machiavelli was not an evil genius, a demon, or a wretched and cowardly writer; he was simply Fact. And not merely Italian Fact but European Fact, sixteenth-century Fact. Nevertheless he appears hideous, and is so, in the light of nineteenth-century morality.
The conflict between Right and Fact goes back to the dawn of human society. To bring it to an end, uniting the pure thought with human reality, peacefully causing Right to pervade Fact and Fact to be embedded in Right, this is the task of wise men.
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