aversion for that which is powerful, unjust, and cruel. It seems to us that
to laugh at this is wrong. Nothing is more consoling than these feelings
innately of the multitude. Is it not evident that these salutary instincts
may become fixed principles in those unfortunate beings whom ignorance and
poverty expose to the subversive attacks of evil? Why not have every hope
of a people whose good moral sense is so invariably manifested? of a people
who, in spite of the fascinations of art, will never permit a dramatic work
to arrive at its denouement by the triumph of the wicked and the punishment
of the just? This fact, scorned and laughed at though it be, appears to us
of considerable importance on account of the tendencies which it proves,
and which are even often found (we repeat it) among beings the most
corrupt, when they are, so to speak, in repose, and sheltered from criminal
temptations or necessities. In a word, since men hardened in crime still
sometimes sympathize with the recital and expression of elevated
sentiments, ought we not to believe that all men have more or less in them
of the good, the well doing, the just, but that poverty and ignorance, in
falsifying, in stifling these Divine instincts, are the first causes of
human depravity?

Is it not evident that generally ones does not become wicked except through
misfortune, and that to snatch man from the terrible temptations of warn by
the equitable melioration of his material condition, is to make him capable
of the virtues of which he is conscious? The impression caused by the story
of Pique-Vinaigre will demonstrate, or rather display, we hope, some of the
ideas we have just set forth. Pique-Yinaigre then commenced his story in
these terms, in the midst of the profound silence of his audience. "It is
not very long since the events occurred which I am going to relate to this
honorable society. Little Poland was not then destroyed. Does the honorable
society know what was called Little Poland?"