Letter signed.
4to. ½ p. on bifolium.
€ 500.00
To Jules Léonard Louis de Cambacérès, prefect of the Basses-Pyrénées department, denouncing a road maintenance worker as "agent voyer" for promulgating socialist propaganda: "Monsieur le Préfet; le Sr. Etchevers, agent voyer à Cibits Laceveau [Larceveau], m'est signalé comme faisant de la propagande socialiste. J'appelle votre attention sur sa conduite [...]".
After the "June Days uprising" of 1848, when the army of the only five-months old Second Republic suppressed a rebellion of Parisian workers and killed some 3000 insurgents, the liberal institutions of the French state closely observed and tried to prohibit any political organization on the left. Karl Marx interpreted the events as the birth of an independent workers' movement in France. The uprising triggered presidential elections with François-Vincent Raspail as the first socialist candidate in a general election. In 1849 Raspail was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison for the participation in manifestations. The denouncement of a low-level state employee in a community of a few hundred inhabitants by a high ranking member of the administration has to be seen in light of these developments. From 1860 Napoleon III adopted more liberal positions towards the socialist movement and in 1864 French workers were granted the right to strike. Only in 1884, under the liberal Minister of Interior Pierre Waldeck-Rosseau, were trade unions legalized.
Before his appointment as Under-Secretary of State in the Ministery of Interior in 1849 Hugues-Iéna Darcy was the prefect of various departments, lastly Rhône. He served under six Ministers of the Interior in quick succession until he was finally removed from the post one month after the coup d'état of Napoleon III, as he was suspected of being an Orléanist. In 1852 Darcy joined the board of directors of a steel company and from 1857 he administered railway developments.
On stationery with printed letterhead of the "Ministère de l'Intérieur". Folded. With ms. pencil notes.
