BABEUF (François-Noël Babeuf known as Gracchus).... - Lot 1 - Osenat

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BABEUF (François-Noël Babeuf known as Gracchus).... - Lot 1 - Osenat
BABEUF (François-Noël Babeuf known as Gracchus). Autograph letter signed "G. Babeuf" to the public prosecutor at the criminal court of Saint-Omer, Henri Joseph Aimé Gosse de Gorre. [Prison des Baudets] in Arras, 13 floréal year III [2 May 1795]. 4 pp. 1/2 in-4 in a tight writing. RARE AND BEAUTIFUL LETTER FROM PRISON. A reader of Rousseau, Mably or Morelly, Gracchus Babeuf was a precursor of communism by his theories advocating perfect equality between citizens, based among other things on the suppression of private property. Arrested in February 1795 for his daring articles in his newspaper Le Tribun du peuple, he was imprisoned in Paris, transferred to Arras and then brought back to the capital before being released on October 18. IT WAS DURING HIS IMPRISONMENT IN ARRAS THAT GRACCHUS BABEUF MEDITATED HIS CELEBRATED "MANIFESTO OF THE PLEBEIANS", which he published on November 30, 1795. In the winter of 1795-1796, he participated in the foundation of the Conjuration des Égaux, with personalities such as Philippe Buonarroti, Sylvain Maréchal and Louis Taffoureau, most of whom were members of the Pantheon Club. GRACCHUS BABEUF EVOKES FIRST THE DISCUSSIONS MADE AT THE CONVENTION TO DRAW UP A NEW CONSTITUTION, which had been underway since March 1795 and would end in September, instituting the regime of the Directory: "... I did not have the occasion to see you one moment, but I believe you made to consider this letter. It does not have for object to ask anything for me... I don't even think that I am in this case with the Government either, even though it is they who have accommodated me here. Here are the reasons. Our differences in time revolved around a point which I see ready to be decided in my views, and it is what I expressed last, in these terms, in a letter which I addressed TO A MEMBER OF THE GOVERNMENT: "WE DISPUTE IN TIME FOR THE DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION OF 1793. I AND MY SUPPORTERS WANTED IT, I BELIEVED THAT YOU AND YOURS DID NOT WANT IT. IT SEEMS TO ME ALMOST TODAY THAT YOU ARE INCLINED TO AGREE WITH US. The last speech of Cambaceres, on the organic laws, seems to affirm it to me. If, by chance, we were in agreement, to dispute what would we need? The Convention invited all those who would have views on the substance and on the whole of the organic laws, to address them to the members of the commission charged to prepare these laws. I am contemplating a work on this subject, which I promise to finish within a few days, and it is through you that I propose to present it. What do we know? I have known you to be a patriot in good faith, and I like to think that you can still be one. I don't consider it impossible that we will get along together again to do good, and you know that this is what I have always been striving for. You also know what universal influence on the people I have managed to obtain in recent times..." HE SPEAKS THEN IN FAVOR OF A "COMRADE OF MISFORTUNE", LOUIS TAFFOUREAU, OF WHICH HE MADE THE ACQUAINTANCE TO THE BAUDETS, AND WHICH WOULD ENTER WITH HIM IN THE CONSPIRACY OF THE EQUALS: "... You will admit, citizen, that there is more than arbitrariness and a certain research of persecution in such a rigorous treatment. Any rigor that is not necessary to ensure the person of a defendant is a crime. This is the maxim that has been included in all the declarations of rights, and its consecration has been considered as a great victory won for humanity by philosophy... It is especially not the case to let commit vexations, abuses of authority, towards men that one pursues only as accused of having committed them, because it is to give them a right of recrimination which attenuates the reproaches that one makes to them... Greetings and fraternity... " A former lawyer at the Parliament of Arras, Henri Joseph Aimé Gosse de Gorre (1760-1851) began a career as a magistrate during the Revolution, as a judge at the civil court of Arras and then, after an imprisonment under the Terror, as a public accuser at the criminal court of Saint-Omer. Dismissed after the events of Fructidor year V, he resumed his career under the Consulate, but interrupted it again in 1816, to resume it only under the July monarchy. He was also a deputy from 1803 to 1808, during the Hundred Days, and from 1831 to 1834.
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