a dollar
in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to
spend a dollar in an opera-house.

Here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the struggles
of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three
decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and
intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you
shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only
let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in
these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory,
letters and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material
benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come,
in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and
suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a
willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of the law. This,
this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved
South a new heaven and a new earth.

The Guillotine

BY VICTOR HUGO.

(This is a part of the speech in defense of his son, under the
circumstances set forth in the oration.)

Gentlemen of the jury, if there is a culprit here, it is not my
son,--it is I!--I, who for these twenty-five years have opposed capital
punishment,--have contended for the inviolability of human life,--have
committed this crime for which my son is now arraigned. Here I denounce
my self, Mr. Advocate-General! I have committed it under all aggravated
circumstances; deliberately, repeatedly, tenaciously. Yes, this old and
absurd _lex taliones_--this law of blood for blood--I have combated all
my life--all my life, gentlemen of the jury! And, while I have breath,
I will continue to combat it, by all my efforts as a writer, by all
my words and all my votes as a legislator! I declare it before the
crucifix; before that Victim of the penalty of death, who sees and
hears us; before that gibbet, in which, two thousand years ago, for the
eternal instruction of the generations, the human law nailed the divine!

In all that my son has written on the subject of capital punishment and
for writing and publishing which he is now on trial--in all that he has
written, he has merely proclaimed the sentiments with which, from his
infancy, I have inspired him. Gentlemen jurors, the right to criticise
a law, and to criticise it severely--especi