M. John Lemoinne, the eminent journalist, of the Daub, was
admitted, on Thursday, to the honour of a seat among the members of the French Institute. In his inaugural address, which was a panegyric on his predecessor, also a journalist, M. Jules Janin, he made an allusion to the political situation :—" My predecessor said, when they asked of him materials for his bio- graphy, ' I am like the happy nations ; I have no history.' I demand that that proverb shall not be accepted on the part of the nations. I say, on the contrary, ' Unfortunate are the people who have no history.' The most celebrated poet of Germany said, He who has not eaten his bread in tears—who has not passed nights of sorrow sitting on his bed weeping—that one does not know you, 0 celestial powers 1' Thus the peoples who have not suffered, wept, and bled are not worthy of liberty,—have not merited it, known it, loved it, or served it. Agitation is not always sterile ; it is also a sign of life. The peoples in movement are like the molten, surging metal from which the statue emerges. Whatever name it bears, it will be always inextinguishable,—immortal and eternal France." M. Lemoinne is not only a man of great wit, but a man of great courage. The President, M. Cuvillier-Fleury, in welcoming him into the Institute, reminded his new colleague of two of his re- plies to the Committee of the Commune's threats. " You said one day, The Committee that calls itself a Government threatens us. We know of no penalty more dishonourable than that of obeying it. We refuse.—John Lemoinne.' The day after the massacre in the Place Vendome you said, The Committee of the Hotel de Ville menaces us with its justice. The Committee is no longer a tribunal, any more than a gun or a knife is a reason.—John Lemoinne.' " That was the true courage of a confident intellect, which cannot shame itself by assenting to what it is wholly outside its nature to concur in. It is not often that the journalist, who, as M. Lemoinne says, has to live from hand to mouth, feels so keenly the connection between false logic and bad character.
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