Honore Muraire

Honore Muraire , character of the French revolution and magistrate French, had been born with Draguignan the November 5th 1750, and it is seen, in a register of the deliberations of this city, qualified title of lord of Favas, small borough of the surroundings.

Biography

Receipt lawyer following excellent studies, the Muraire young person is established in his birthplace. Soon its reputation of skill and prudence was made. Named in 1785 mayor and first consul of Draguignan, it was a prelude to with great employment which it was to occupy later, by deploying a judicious activity which, into few years, transformed the city that it managed. With the expiry of its mandate, it made print a report with its fellow-citizens, being inspired, on a modest theater, example given before by Necker and which had had a so great repercussion. Twice, in 1785 and 1786, it had been named appointed with the states of Provence.

When the movement of 1789 began, Honore Muraire was charged by the municipality with Draguignan with preparing a plan of reform of the courts and a draft Regulation concerning the middle-class militia. One year later, in 1790, its fellow-citizens entrusted an important mission to him. The National Assembly dealt with the organization of the departments, and the noise had been spread in the Var that the town of Toulon, although located on the littoral and at the one of the ends of the new administrative unit, claimed to be the chief town about it.

The mission of Muraire was to light the National Assembly and to prevent all at the same time an injustice with regard to the populations which claimed against this claim and an serious error from the administrative point of view. In a report that it composed on this subject and which is a model of reasoning and of good sense, Muraire proved that the true chief town, the chief town indicated, obliged, of the department of the VAr, was the town of Draguignan, and which one could not place it elsewhere without violating the manifest rights of the three quarters of the population of the district.

In the six years space, Muraire had been elected in turn mayor, deputy with the states of Provence, chair district, member of all the local commissions, and everywhere it had made. proof of a right direction, of a great moderation, one skill to which each one paid homage; firm besides and knowing to resist the wishes of its fellow-citizens when their claims did not appear founded to him.

In 1791, the voters of the district, Draguignan had to send a deputy to the legislative assembled . Muraire obtained their votes, came to Paris, was named little time after member of the committee of legislation and made at the assembly, the February 15th a report/ratio relating to the mode of observation of the civil statue of the citizens which classified it among the men intended to exert a legitimate influence on the businesses of their country.

It estimated moreover that to the civil legislation only it belonged to determine the cases of preventions to the marriages in the same family. In addition, the faculty which the committee proposed to give to the children to marry as of the age of twenty and one years without the assent of their parents Only one vote raised with energy in the legislative assembly against the conclusions of the rapporteur: it was that of François de Neufchâteau. But its opinions were not listened; Muraire itself fought them and involved the assembly.

The new law on the civil statue was thus voted, but perhaps a little prematurely. An annoying page meets here in the life of Muraire. Charged with making with national a report/ratio assembles on the control of the mayor of Paris, Pétion, in the day of the June 20th, it concludes so that the suspension whose directory of the department had struck Pétion for its obvious disobedience was raised. This proposal, where justice was sacrificed to a at the very least excessive indulgence, was approved, but the Monitor notes that part of the assembly did not take share with the deliberation.

But, if these facts were not known still, one had been able to see Pétion congratulating publicly, in spite of the insults made by lapopulace in his irruption with the Tuileries, the citizens and citizens of the suburbs to have exerted with moderation and dignity their right of petition. Including/understanding finally, but too late, that the royalty was pushed towards the abyss, the general Lafayette was run to Paris after the June 20th, had presented himself to the bar of the assembly, and there, in a firm and categorical language, he had asked, “ in the name of all the decent people”, that the authors and instigators of the last events be severely punished. The of Gironde ones, to which Pétion owed its rehabilitation, required on their side that the Lafayette general was put in charge to have left the army without leave and addressed to the assembly, as military chief, of the petitions relative to interests apart from his attributions. The business envenima, and the Lafayette general was shown to have, following the events of June, was expressed the intention to walk on Paris.

On these entrefaites, one lute at the assembly a letter that he had written to the marshal Luckner and which contained passages not very suitable to reconcile with its author the sympathy of the clubs. Muraire, to which it extraordinary commission of the Twelve had entrusted the report/ratio on the objections charged to the Lafayette general, put any sound addresses to attenuate them. It was well obliged to recognize that it was dangerous to see generals to formulate petitions which could become orders for the authorities to which they was addressed. But, he says, neither the constitution nor the law had put of limit at the exercise of the right of petition. In addition, the Déclaration of the human rights carried expressly that no citizen could be condemned only under the terms of one law former to the offense of which it was marked. In accordance with this principle, the commission had not seen anything in the control of the Lafayette general who was contrary with the laws in force. Following long and violent discussions, the assembly rejected the decree of committal for trial against the general, in the majority of 406 votes against 224.

Solved with the establishment of the divorce, gathered the principle in the discussion relating to the observation of the acts of the civil statue had adopted some. It was however necessary to make on this important subject a formal decision. Also the committee of legislation, of which Muraire formed part, was often invited to formulate it. The August 30th 1792, a deputy exposed on the divorce a theory which was accommodated by the assembly with a great favor. After having qualified the simple separation authorized by the old code of barbarian law, dedicating, without reciprocity, a virtuous woman with misfortune or ordering adultery to him, Aubert-Dubayet says that the contract which bound the husbands was to be common. According to him, they could be truly happy only as much as the law would allow them the divorce. Noisy and reiterated applause accommodated this strange plea.

Muraire spoke to explain why if the committee of legislation had not annexed to the law on the civil statue a provision concerning the divorce, it is that he had thought that it was to make a distinct object. He believed besides that the divorce was in conformity with morals, the policy, the Déclaration of the human rights , and he was of opinion that the committee was invited to formulate a bill on this subject. Without awaiting new explanations, the assembly, impatient to bring back the golden age in all the households where the marital bonds could have been badly assured, declared that the marriage was a dissolvable contract by the divorce. The legislative assembly separated little from time afterwards.

Muraire represented a primarily religious department there. In the South of France, as of the surplus in all the other provinces, the majority of the populations thought that legal faculty to dissolve the marital bonds would carry to the family and manners an irrevocable attack. These fundamental disagreements undoubtedly harmed Muraire, which was not re-elected by its compatriots. It also probably had with this retirement forced of the political scene to cross the mode of terror without paying its life its attachment real for the friendly freedom of the order.

He had however been imprisoned with Holy-Pelagie, and he was going to be translated in front of the revolutionary tribunal, when the reaction of Thermidor saved it of an unquestionable death. Named in September 1795 appointed with the Conseil of Old the by the department of the the Seine, Muraire made its profession of faith in a report/ratio relating to the payment of the Institute, that the government had just reconstituted. “France, says it, groaned on long misfortunes of a too long tyranny; philosophy terror tee gave up a ground on which the berté top spin seemed not to have been able to be established; the sciences and the arts, persecuted by vandalism, fled in front of him; the most advisable men by their lights, their knowledge, their talents, were proscribed and immolés universal Moniteur 21 germinal year 4 (April 10th 1796). ” This generous indignation again inspired Muraire in the discussion of an important measurement that the Conseil of the Five hundred had approved and returned, in accordance with the constitution, with the Conseil of Old the. It was a question of obliging the fathers, mothers and other ascending of the emigrants to make the division of their goods, in order to be able to seize and put under the sequestration, with the profit of the State, those of these goods which would have fallen to emigrants.

Convinced according to the provisions of his/her colleagues whom the proposal would be adopted, Muraire fought it nevertheless with energy, by calling upon the most crowned social principles. Its protest remained without success and the proposal relating to the goods of the emigrants was adopted by 108 votes against 94. A law of the national Convention had granted to the newborns except marriage the right to succeed their father and mother as well as the legitimate children, Muraire supported her word and the Conseil of Old the adopted the proposal which had ridge the council of the Five hundreds to modify this antisocial legislation. It was the starting point of the provisions since inserted in the Civil code. Another law of national convention, that of the brumaire year 4, to some extent had divided France into two categories and had declared unable of all functions legislative, administrative, municipal and legal, non-seulement all those which would have caused measurements seditious and contrary with the laws, but still the fathers, wire and grandsons, brothers and brothers-in-law, allies, uncles and nephews of the individuals included/understood in the lists of emigrants and not definitively striped these lists.

Frightened this Draconian legislation, the council of the Five hundreds had proposed, while waiting better, to bring back the article 1st law relating to the provocation to seditious measurements, which left with the authority a discrétionnaire capacity whose bad passions could misuse so easily. Muraire, recently elected president of the council of Old, supported with most creditable insistence the resolution of the Five hundreds. It stated that to reject it revive the law of the 3 brumaire would be to make, that a speaker had qualified so well by saying that it ressuscitait the mode of Robespierre under that of the constitution.

Little time afterwards, in charge of a report/ratio on the question of knowing which was to be the qualification of the sorrow applied for sale and purchase of votes as regards election, Muraire lined up, by the best reasons, based mainly on the dignity of the citizens and the public utility, in the opinion of the Five hundreds, which had declared this sorrow defamatory. However of annoying rumors again started to circulate. One provided that the Directoire, worried with the excess of some royalist meetings and obviously overflowed by the faction Jacobin E with which they were used as pretext for its intentions, would be let dominate, like had made all the capacities since 1789, by the extreme parties.

Muraire was, and it knew it extremely well, of the number of those which the so-called friends threatened of the revolution. Justice should be returned to him: it followed the line which was traced to him by its duty with a firmness of most honourable. He had called upon with eloquence the principle and the crowned right of the property to prevent that the fathers, mothers and other ascending of the emigrants, were not forced to lay out, alive, of all their goods. The qualification of Chouan, that this act of courage had been worth to him on behalf of one of his/her colleagues, did not intimidate it in another discussion having, from the political point of view, of the analogy avea the first. Towards the end of August, the council of Old had to examine a resolution taken by the council of the Five hundreds, with an aim of bringing back all the criminal laws returned against the not sworn in priests. These laws indeed required a reform become urgent, if one did not want to alienate the populations deeply.

Muraire posed initially in theory that the independence of the opinion, the thought, of the conscience, was to be absolute near the legislators. The constitution recognizing only citizens, it would thus avoid utilizing the religion in an exclusively political discussion. It summarized then, in energetic terms, the laws which it was a question of reporting. It was, following him, of the laws of exile and of dead related against men in mass, without distinction, without judgment, to the denunciation of six people and the certificate of two witnesses, that is to say for facts which were not declared criminal and which could not the being by their nature, because the service and the retractation of an oath had always been of the perfectly free acts; maybe against people whose single crime was to have given hospitality to ecclesiastics or to have withdrawn them from persecution.

Its speech undoubtedly produced a major impression, because the council of Old made it distribute to three specimens. However, fears of the influential part of the directory, for some time, had become very sharp. Ten days after the recall of the law on the priests, the 18 fructidor year 5 (September 4th 1797) the noise was spread in Paris that a great number of members of the council of the Five hundreds and council of Old had been seized and deportees. Muraire was reproduced with Portalis, Siméon, Pastoret, Camille Jordan, Boissy d' Anglas, Bored-Marbois, on the list of the victims: it even had, like the majority of them, off-set being with Cayenne. It found initially the means of hiding and then obtained to spend the time of its detention to the island of Oléron, where it remained more than two years, with the expiry of which a special decree on 5 nivôse year VIII authorized it, like his/her companions in exile, to go to Paris and remaining there under the monitoring of the Minister for the general police force.

The advent of a government, that everyone took with the serious one, was to necessarily give in obviousness all those, legislators or administrators, whose capacity had appeared in debates and fights of the revolution. Muraire was not long in being carried, by the force of the things, with an eminent position. Appointed initially police chief with the parquet floor of Paris, it entered shortly after with the court of cassation. The president Tronchet having been appointed senator, the court of cassation unanimously chooses Muraire to chair it.

Never, one can it say, more flattering election. Muraire had in heart to prove that it included/understood some all the price. “Penetrated of this conviction, of him a valuer of most qualified said, that the authority of the magistrate is only the tender with the authority of the law, Mr. Muraire did not put in the deliberations neither amour^propre, nor obstinacy. He fought with regards the adverse opinions with his; he accepted them with respect if they lit it and brought back it: pleasant besides all that approached it, simple of manners, moderated in all things, no one better than could not answer him when he was questioned. In, unforeseen terpellations did not disturb it. Skilful to attach to the questions of legislation the theories of the social order, it developed them with force and sobriety, and its word, always adapted, charmed the spirit in the illuminant ( Eloge of M.le count Muraire , by Mr. Delangle, public prosecutor at the court of appeal (of re-entry of the November 11th 1852 goes down for hearing). ”

Called by its position with haranguer often the Head of the State, president Muraire, who saw closely the results of the administration of the First consul, expressed to him without adulation, but with force, its admiration and the recognition of whole France. After the Legal settlement, the cardinal legate Caprara came to Paris.

Obeying submissively the impulse left in top, president Muraire asked and obtained, a few months after, that the court of cassation, like the Parliaments before 1789, inaugurate its work by a religious ceremony. Under the terms of a consular decree of the 3 ventôse year 10, each year, the court of cassation was to present to the members of the government, in the presence of the Council of State, the table of the parts of the legislation considered vicious or insufficient. Following the talk of the court of cassation, the large judge was held to make known the observations which it would have collected on the same questions. This ceremony took place for the first time the third day complementary to year XI. President Muraire carried there the word in the name of the court of cassation. In its speech, works matured and long-term, he insisted on some points of considerable importance. The principal one of its concerns had as an aim the institution of the jury, founded, as one knows, by the law of the September 29th 1791. He says that the sad result of the impunity of the greatest crimes had almost led it to doubt if this institution, if beautiful in theory, had not been hitherto more harmful than useful. He wondered whether it offered quite real advantages in a country where there was neither feudality no more, neither distinction, nor privileges; if it were quite true that, to pronounce on a crime and on-all the circumstances which moderate it, it was enough to have common direction and natural lights; if the institution of the jury adapted perfectly to the national character; so finally it was combined well with the too ordinary feeling of generosity and indulgence in the ones, timidity and unconcern in the others, which will always carry to the commiseration the majority of the men accustomed to regard the company only as one to be abstract, and seeing only that which they will strike.

President Muraire believed, as for him, that the ordinance of 1670, modified by the decrees of 1789, offered a larger guarantee and more real reasons for safety. He estimated, in all the cases, that the test little reassuring hitherto made institution of the jury held so that not enough conditions was necessary those which were invested of this frightening function. A question not less serious, that to know if it were necessary to remove the capital punishment, as required it already some publicity agents, fixed then the attention of Muraire. Its opinion in this respect could not be doubtful. Social interest, need for the examples, too great facility. to escape the purely temporary sorrows, was him appeared to make a law of the maintenance capital punishment. The right to make grace, precisely allotted to the Head of the State, appeared with president Muraire the only softening which could be brought, in certain circumstances favorable, with the rigidity of the laws. Having to note the great number of the child murders, it expressed the wish which the administration, going back to the cause of the evil to dry up the source of it, established and multiplied asylums where unmarried mothers would find help and discretion, and where their children, adopted by the fatherland, would receive initially first aid, and later one education which enabled them to be made useful. Lastly, about condemned released, of which returned in the company was a continual subject of alarm for it and serious concerns for the magistrature, president Muraire asked that the police force assign a residence to them and attached them to determined workshops, in order to contain, without carrying really reached with the civil liberty. The first part of speech of the president of the court of appeal had treated mainly proportion between the crimes and the sorrows, and one has just seen with which width this plan had been conceived and carried out.

Not having to deal, as the decree of the 5 prescribed it ventôse year X, with the improvement various codes not yet published, the reform of the abuses interesting the administration of justice was the second point which it examined. A recent Sénatus-consulte had ruled, in the interest and for the honor of the magistrature, that the magistrates could be subjected to a censure. President Muraire asked more still according to him, this measurement of order and wisdom wanted to be supplemented, and it effectively could the being only by one law which, organizing the exercise of the censure in beforehand given cases, would be the legal code of discipline. It estimated that a similar law, envisaging all the punishable cases, also obviating impunity and with arbitrary, for the magistrates a warning always present would be, and would even produce by that, without having need to be applied, the happiest results.

The ceremony that we have just pointed out did not renew. However the government hastened to adopt the majority of the sights expressed by president Muraire. As for him, it was the constant object of the favor of the Head of the State. In 1802, at the time when one discussed the various codes with the Council of State, the first consul had named it to advise except section, “to give, said the decree, a testimony of regard and satisfaction to the court of cassation and with its first president”. A few years later, in 1806, the emperor created it Count of the empire. It had already done it large officer about the Légion of honor and Grand Cross of the Ordre of the Meeting. It had still given him, in a critical circumstance, evidence of its munificence

In recognition of so much of benefits, the count Muraire served the emperor with a zeal and a devotion which no task wearied. Of an irreproachable assiduity at the court of appeal, it took also an active share with work of the Council of State. It is told that one day, in one of the meetings of the council, it supported against the emperor in person his opinion with as well of force, as already the noise of its disgrace started to circulate. It was about a tax question in which two courses lower had judged contrary to two stops of the court of appeal. Far from bringing its disgrace, this firmness, appreciated as it deserved to be it, added rather to its favor.

Several years occurred during which it continued to fulfill with the same zeal its double functions, giving to the acts of the emperor, in all the solemn circumstances where it was destined for the haranguer, an adhesion without reserve, but sincere. In 1806, a formerly famous lawyer, in side even of the famous Gerbier, Target, then to advise at the court of appeal, died. Muraire was one of his/her oldest friends. He pronounced, according to the use, his praise before the court. Only, and rightly undoubtedly of the bonds of friendship which had existed between him and Target, the praise of this last took the forms of an academic speech. There was in this life, very honourable with so much of regards, a serious difficulty for the first representative of the French magistrature; it was the refusal which, in one day of forever regrettable weakness for its memory, Louis XVI had made Target defend. Muraire approached this difficulty of face. “Not, he says, I will not rent what should not be rented; I will not try to justify what could not be justified, and faithful to engagement that I took to deny myself of any prevention and any partiality, I will feel sorry for Mr. Target sincerely to have refused the ministry that Louis XVI asked him and that humanity claimed. ”

Following the coup d'etat of fructidor and deportation which had struck Muraire, the municipality of its birthplace had been seen forced to put the seals on its furniture and the sequestration on its goods. One appears oneself if it had in heart to be compensated later for the constraint which had been imposed to him. Twice, in 1804 and 1811, the electoral college of the VAr carried among its candidates to the senate president Muraire, who was on behalf of his fellow-citizens, each time it was going to visit Provence, the object of enthusiastic ovations. However, time had gone and the difciles days had returned. The April 12th 1814, the count Muraire and the court of appeal, in a short address, had adhered to the emanated acts of the senate and provisional government.

The count Muraire escaped during a few months from the royalist reaction; but, the February 16th 1815, a royal decree put Mr. of Sèze at its place. It was named besides first honorary president of the court of appeal, and the king preserved to him, by special grace, half of his treatment cumulated with his pension of advising State. Forty days after, the count Muraire haranguait again the emperor with the Tuileries with the head of the court of appeal. As much adhesion with the acts senate and provisional government had been laconic, as much the harangue March 26th 1815, work of the first president, unanimously voted by the court, was cordial, abundant, expansive.

The political career and legal of Muraire was definitively broken a few months later. “Relieved after Waterloo, said in 1852 to the court of appeal one of its first magistrates, Mr. Muraire left this enclosure that during fifteen years it had filled of his name, carrying the sympathy of the colleagues to which it had owed his rise, also carrying the regrets of the bar, which had found constantly it benevolent, accessible, affectionate. ”

The count Muraire liked the letters, and it was found often-occupied reading Montaigne, which it called his best friend. The Franc-maçonnerie as filled, during the long years as it was given to him to traverse, the vacuum which had made in its life a premature retirement. In November 1837, the count Muraire was reached of a disease of which he saw gravity first of all, and who carried it the 22 of the same month.

Publications

There are of him several opuscules:

Praise of Target , in-8°;
Speech made in the R… of the lenient friendship, the day of its installation to the Scottish rite old and accepted , Paris, in-12;
Speech made with maconnic funerals of the general lieutenant baron Maransin, celebrated the June 26th 1828 , Paris, in-8°;
Cabin of Emeth. Maconnic funerals of T… Hon… F. Henri Ricard. Last good-bye , Paris, 1830, in-8°;
Souv… chap… of the Trinitaires, valley of Paris. Speech of installation of Souv… chap… of the 18th degree, under the distinctive title: Trinitaires established close the R… L… Scottish of same title 0… and valley of Paris , Paris, 1831, in-8°.

For more details on the count Muraire, to consult the note extended in the financial Studies and from social economy , page 203 to 249, Paris, 1859, 1 vol. in-8°.

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