Aquin. Acaau’s whole force was there on 9 May, according to Mullery’s plea.

The defender took the floor and said: “The Council and the audience cannot forget the signal service that Acaau rendered to the Republic in being the first to proclaim the fall of the hypocritical tyrant who was drenching the fatherland in horrors and flooding it with blood. It is thanks to Acaau’s liberating sword, it is to the heroic courage of our brothers of the South, that we owe the awakening of the North and the resolution of the West, which delivered us from the murderous axe of the Hérards, of those infamous men who knew no curb upon their furious passions. I maintain the innocence of the accused, observing that the accusation rests only on atrocious calumnies. The Council must confine itself strictly within the bounds of the decision of the Council of the Secretaries of State; that is the basis of the accusation. Observe, gentlemen, that it results from that deliberation that at the sitting of 21 July two members of the Council had voted for general Acaau to be brought to trial for all the acts in general imputed to him; that another member wished to restrict the accusation to the acts subsequent to the establishment of the present government, and that another member wished to restrict the accusation further still, to the acts dating from the official notification made to general Acaau of the election of General Guerrier to the Presidency; but that at the sitting of the 22nd the Council wisely decided that general Acaau would be prosecuted only for the acts subsequent to his adherence to the present government. This decision was dictated by reason and by wisdom, for the authority of a representative government (*) cannot act retroactively; now, the South, to shake off the yoke of a bloodthirsty tyrant, had detached itself from the rest of the Republic; after the deliverance of the nation, a new President is proclaimed by the North and the West; until the formal adherence of the South to this new government, the President exercised no authority over the citizens of that department, and consequently the chief of the South cannot be accused of disobedience to the orders of the President on account of acts prior to the adherence. The starting point of your investigations is therefore established in principle; the military prosecutor himself does not disown this principle; but he has committed an error in its application; he has fixed its date wrongly. Thus the first ground of the bill of indictment is erroneous. It is said there ‘that general Acaau had knowledge of the accession of the President, according to letters he wrote in reply to those of general Augustin, etc.’ Neither the knowledge acquired of this fact nor the letters written to that effect constituted an act of adherence; it was even impossible for Acaau to make his adherence on 9 May, since his whole force was at Aquin, and the nine generals of the army were writing to him that they wished to march, that they would by no means accept the proposals of the President’s deputies (*). On 9 May Acaau had made no adherence to the government; he did not correspond with the President as an inferior with his superior; he wrote to him as authority to authority; but, instead of hypocrisy, one saw frankness and energy in his expressions; in the letter of 9 May he took the title of General-in-Chief of the Demands of his fellow citizens.”