As La Roquette (or properly La Grande Roquette, to distinguish it from La Petite Roquette, the prison for juvenile offenders, which stands opposite) is to be abolished, it will be interesting to make a brief survey of the place in which some of the most celebrated French criminals of modern times have awaited the visit of M. Deibler, with his scissors and pinioning straps.
Here the "toilet of the guillotine" has been performed on Orsini, Piéri, Verger, La Pommerais, Troppmann, Moreau, Billoir, Prévost, Barré and Lebiez, Campi, Pranzini, and so many others, down to Vaillant and Emile Henry.
It would be impossible even to summarise all that has been said and written in France in favour of abolishing the guillotine. It was vigorously advocated during the Revolution itself, while the scaffold was flowing with blood.
Under the Convention, Taillefer rose one day with the demand: "Let our guillotines be broken and burned!" At the sitting of the of "9th Vendémiaire, year iv," Languinais exclaimed: "Should we not be happy if, having begun our session by establishing the Republic, we were able to end it by pronouncing once for all against capital punishment!"
At the last siting of the Convention, Chénier in energetic terms denounced the guillotine. A voice called out: "What o'clock is it?" A voice responded: "The hour of justice." A moment later this vote was proclaimed: "Dating from the publication of the general peace, the punishment of death shall be abolished throughout the French Republic."
After a long sleep the question re-awoke on the lips of M. de Tracy, son of the orator who had been amongst the first to entreat that the code of France might be cleansed of blood. In the same historic mention we must gather in the names of the Duc de Broglie, the Marquis de Lally-Tallendal, the Marquis de Pastoret ("A man attacks me; I can defend myself only by killing him: I kill him. For society to do the same thing, it must find itself in precisely the same situation.") de Bérenger, Lafayette, Glais-Bizoin, Taschereau, Appert, Lèon Fancher, and Guizot the historian.
"If," added the authors of _Les Prisons de Paris_, "all these enlightened publicists and statesmen, with M. Guizot amongst them, did not succeed in pulling down the scaffold, at an epoch when, to quote M. de Bérenger, the very executioners were weary, it must be concluded, we suppose, that it is necessary to proceed with prudent hesitation, and, by a gradual abolition, to convince the most timid and incredulous that society has nothing to dread from this reform."