Texts by Ozanam

Representatives of the people, Do not plead want of money. If the ordinary resources should come to fail you, if there should be nothing more to hope for from credit and reserve funds, hope everything still from the generosity of France. Openly announce the measures...

Representatives of the people, Do not say that you lack time. Under the shootings of the insurrection, the National Assembly asked the night for the hours denied by the day. I saw you on all the barricades, haranguing the factious, encouraging the defenders of order,...

Representatives of the people, Do not say that you lack inspiration. [...] We do not ignore the obstacles or the rivalries, nor the imperfections that stop each project and that perpetuate the debates. But we have never seen that great powers were instituted by easy...

Representatives of the people, We respect the magnitude and the difficulty of your task. We are not those who, by the temerity of their accusations, have the misfortune to weaken the last power capable of saving society. You continue, with just slowness, your work, by...

Rich men, He who taught us to pray for our daily bread nowhere advises us to secure to ourselves ten years of luxury. We live in days without examples, in which it may be wise to sacrifice the future to the present and the economy to necessity. [...] Give the alms of...

Priests, do not be offended at the freedom of speech which a layman uses in appealing to your zeal. [...] Mistrust yourselves, mistrust the habits and customs of a more peaceful period, and have less doubt of the power of your ministry and its popularity. It is true,...

[If so are now] the evils, not of a single district, but of several districts of Paris; not only in Paris but in Lyon, in Rouan, and in all the manufacturing cities of the North, [...] imagine what winter will bring, when the hardness of the station suspends the...

One is terrified, and rightly, by that multitude of children growing up for disorder and for crime, with no other education than the examples of the theatre and the temptations of the public square. It is not well known that in district 12, four thousand boys and...

In these foul cellars and garrets, sometimes next door to sloth and vice we have often come upon the loveliest domestic virtues, on a refinement and intelligence that one does not always meet with under gilded ceilings; a poor cooper, of past seventy years of age,...