I acted at the risk of my freedom and my life.
Well, gentlemen, there are no longer any criminals to judge, only the causes of crime to destroy. In creating the articles of the Code, the legislators forgot that they were not addressing the causes but merely the effects, and thus they did nothing to eliminate crime. Indeed, as long as the causes exist, the effects will inevitably follow.
There will always be criminals, for today you destroy one, and tomorrow ten more will arise. So, what is needed? To destroy poverty, the breeding ground of crime, by ensuring that everyone’s needs are met! And how easy this would be to achieve! It would suffice to reorganize society on new foundations where everything is held in common, and where each person, producing according to their abilities and strengths, could consume according to their needs.
Then we would no longer see people like the hermit of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and others reduced to begging for a metal that enslaves and victimizes them! We would no longer see women selling their charms, like a vulgar commodity, in exchange for that same metal, which so often prevents us from knowing whether affection is truly sincere. We would no longer see men like Pranzini, Prado, Berland, Anastay, and others who, always in pursuit of that metal, end up taking lives! This clearly demonstrates that the cause of all crimes is always the same, and one would have to be truly blind not to see it.
Yes, I repeat: it is society that creates criminals, and you, jurors, instead of punishing them, should use your intelligence and strength to transform society. By doing so, you would eliminate all crimes; and your work, by addressing the causes, would be greater and more fruitful than your justice, which diminishes itself by punishing only the effects.
I am only an uneducated worker; but because I have lived the life of the wretched, I feel the injustice of your repressive laws more deeply than any wealthy bourgeois. Where do you get the right to kill or imprison a man who, brought into this world with the necessity to live, found himself forced to take what he lacked in order to feed himself? I worked to live and to provide for my family; as long as neither I nor mine suffered too much, I remained what you call honest. But then work became scarce, and with unemployment came hunger. It was then that the great law of nature, that imperative voice that brooks no reply—the instinct for survival—drove me to commit some of the crimes and offenses you accuse me of, and which I admit to having committed.
Judge me, gentlemen of the jury, but if you have understood me, in judging me, judge all the unfortunate ones whose poverty, combined with their natural pride, has made criminals, and whose wealth, or even mere comfort, would have made them honest people!
An intelligent society would have turned them into ordinary citizens.
