I. Opening Address to the Peace Congress (Paris, August
21, 1849)
A DAY
WILL COME when your arms will fall even from your hands! A day will
come when war will seem as absurd and impossible between Paris and London,
between Petersburg and Berlin, between Vienna and Turin, as it would be
impossible and would seem absurd today between Rouen and Amiens, between
Boston and Philadelphia. A day will come when you France, you Russia, you
Italy, you England, you Germany, you all, nations of the continent, without
losing your distinct qualities and your glorious individuality, will be
merged closely within a superior unit and you will form the European
brotherhood, just as Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace, all our
provinces are merged together in France. A day will come when the only
fields of battle will be markets opening up to trade and minds opening up to
ideas. A day will come when the bullets and the bombs will be replaced by
votes, by the universal suffrage of the peoples, by the venerable
arbitration of a great sovereign senate which will be to Europe what this
parliament is to England, what this diet is to Germany, what this
legislative assembly is to France. A day will come when we will display
cannon in museums just as we display instruments of torture today, and are
amazed that such things could ever have been possible. (…)
It is after all
a prodigious and admirable epoch, and the nineteenth century will be - let
us say it openly - the greatest page in history. As I reminded you just now,
all our advances are revealing and manifesting themselves together, in rapid
succession: the decline in international animosity, the disappearance of
frontiers from maps and of prejudices from hearts, a movement towards unity,
a softening of manners, an increase in the level of education and a drop in
the level of penalties, the dominance of the most literary, that is to say
the most humane, languages; everything is moving at once, political economy,
science, industry, philosophy, legislation, and is converging upon the same
end, the creation of well-being and benevolence, and that for me is the end
to which I shall always strive, the extinction of misery inside and of war
outside.
