CHAPTER I. THE JACOBINS COME INTO IN POWER.

Produced by Svend Rom

THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 3

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, VOLUME 2

by Hippolyte A. Taine

Transcriber's Note: The numbering of Volumes, Books,

Chapters and Sections are as in the French not the

American edition. Annotations by the transcriber

are initialled SR.

Svend Rom, April 2000.

THE REVOLUTION. Volume II. THE JACOBIN CONQUEST.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VOLUME II.

BOOK FIRST. THE JACOBINS.

CHAPTER I. The Establishment of the new political organ. 6

I. The Revolutionary Party.

II. The Jacobins.

III. Jacobin Mentality.

IV. What the Theory Promises.

CHAPTER II. The Party.

I. Formation of the Party

II. Jacobin and other Associations

III. The Press.

IV. The Clubs.

V. Jacobin Power.

BOOK SECOND. THE FIRST STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.

CHAPTER I. The Jacobins in Power.

I. Manipulating the Vote.

II. Danger of holding Public Office.

III. Pursuit of the Opponents.

IV. Turmoil.

V. Tactics of Intimidation.

CHAPTER II. The Legislative Assembly.

I. New Incompetent Assembly.

II. Jacobin Intelligence and Culture.

III. Their Sessions.

IV. The political Parties.

V. Means and Ways.

VI. Political Tactics.

CHAPTER III. Policy of the Assembly.

I. Lawlessness.

II. Revolutionary Laws.

III. War.

IV. Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

V. Citoyens! Aux Armes!!

CHAPTER IV. The Departments.

I. Provence in 1792.

II. The expedition to Aix.

III. Marseilles against Arles.

IV. The Jacobins of Avignon.

V. The Class Struggle.

CHAPTER V. PARIS.

I. Weakening of the King.

II. The Armed Revolutionaries.

III. Jacobin Rabble-rousers.

IV. The King in front of the people.

CHAPTER VI. The Birth of the Terrible Paris Commune.

I. The Plan of the Girondists.

II. Girondists Foiled.

III. Preparations for the Coup.

IV. The Commune in Action.

V. Purging the Assembly.

VI. Take-over.

VII. The King's Submission.

VIII. Paris and its Jacobin leaders.

BOOK THIRD. THE SECOND STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.

CHAPTER I. Mob rule in times of anarchy.

I. Brigands.

II. Homicidal Part of Revolutionary Creed.

III. Terror is their Salvation.

IV. Carnage.

V. Abasement and Stupor.

VI. Jacobin Massacre.

CHAPTER II. THE DEPARTMENTS.

I. The Sovereignty of the People..

II. Robbers and Victims.

III. Local Dictature.

IV. Jacobin Violence, Rape and Pillage.

V. The Roving Gangs.

VI. The Programme of the Party.

CHAPTER III. The New Sovereigns..

I. Sharing the Spoils.

II. Doctoring the Elections

III Electoral Control..

IV: The New Republican Assembly.

V. The Jacobins forming alone the Sovereign People.

VI. Composition of the Jacobin Party.

VII. The Jacobin Chieftains.

CHAPTER IV. TAKEN HOSTAGE.

I. Jacobin tactics and power.

II. Jacobin characters and minds.

III. Physical fear and moral cowardice.

IV. Jacobin victory over Girondist majority.

V. Jacobin violence against the people.

VI. Jacobin tactics.

VII. The central Jacobin committee in power.

VIII. Right or Wrong, my Country.

PREFACE:

In this volume, as in those preceding it and in those to come, there

will be found only the history of Public Authorities. Others will write

that of diplomacy, of war, of the finances, of the Church; my subject

is a limited one. To my great regret, however, this new part fills an

entire volume; and the last part, on the revolutionary government, will

be as long.

I have again to regret the dissatisfaction I foresee this work will

cause to many of my countrymen. My excuse is, that almost all of them,

more fortunate than myself, have political principles which serve them

in forming their judgments of the past. I had none; if indeed, I had

any motive in undertaking this work, it was to seek for political

principles. Thus far I have attained to scarcely more than one; and this

is so simple that will seem puerile, and that I hardly dare express it.

Nevertheless I have adhered to it, and in what the reader is about to

peruse my judgments are all derived from that; its truth is the measure

of theirs. It consists wholly in this observation: that

HUMAN SOCIETY, ESPECIALLY A MODERN SOCIETY, IS A VAST AND COMPLICATED

THING.

Hence the difficulty in knowing and comprehending it. For the same

reason it is not easy to handle the subject well. It follows that a

cultivated mind is much better able to do this than an uncultivated

mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not. From these two

last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader deigns to

reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining.

H. A. Taine, Paris 1881.

*****

BOOK FIRST. THE JACOBINS.

CHAPTER I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW POLITICAL ORGAN.

In this disorganized society, in which the passions of the people are

the sole real force, authority belongs to the party that understands

how to flatter and take advantage of these. As the legal government can

neither repress nor gratify them, an illegal government arises which

sanctions, excites, and directs these passions. While the former

totters and falls to pieces, the latter grows stronger and improves its

organization, until, becoming legal in its turn, it takes the other's

place.

I.--Principle of the revolutionary party.

Its applications.

As a justification of these popular outbreaks and assaults, we discover

at the outset a theory, which is neither improvised, added to, nor

superficial, but now firmly fixed in the public mind. It has for a

long time been nourished by philosophical discussions. It is a sort of

enduring, long-lived root out of which the new constitutional tree has

arisen. It is the dogma of popular sovereignty.--Literally interpreted,

it means that the government is merely an inferior clerk or

servant.[1101] We, the people, have established the government; and ever

since, as well as before its organization, we are its masters. Between

it and us no infinite or long lasting "contract". "None which cannot be

done away with by mutual consent or through the unfaithfulness of one

of the two parties." Whatever it may be, or provide for, we are nowise

bound by it; it depends wholly on us. We remain free to "modify,

restrict, and resume as we please the power of which we have made it

the depository." Through a primordial and inalienable title deed the

commonwealth belongs to us and to us only. If we put this into the hands

of the government it is as when kings delegate authority for the time

being to a minister He is always tempted to abuse; it is our business

to watch him, warn him, check him, curb him, and, if necessary, displace

him. We must especially guard ourselves against the craft and maneuvers

by which, under the pretext of preserving law and order, he would tie

our hands. A law, superior to any he can make, forbids him to interfere

with our sovereignty; and he does interfere with it when he undertakes

to forestall, obstruct, or impede its exercise. The Assembly, even the

Constituent, usurps when it treats the people like a lazybones (roi

fainéant), when it subjects them to laws, which they have not

ratified, and when it deprives them of action except through their

representatives.[1102] The people themselves must act directly, must

assemble together and deliberate on public affairs. They must control

and censure the acts of those they elect; they must influence these with

their resolutions, correct their mistakes with their good sense, atone

for their weakness by their energy, stand at the helm alongside of them,

and even employ force and throw them overboard, so that the ship may

be saved, which, in their hands, is drifting on a rock.[1103] Such, in

fact, is the doctrine of the popular party. This doctrine is carried

into effect July 14 and October 5 and 6, 1789. Loustalot, Camille

Desmoulins, Fréron, Danton, Marat, Pétion, Robespierre proclaim it

untiringly in the political clubs, in the newspapers, and in the

assembly. The government, according to them, whether local or central,

trespasses everywhere. Why, after having overthrown one despotism,

should we install another? We are freed from the yoke of a privileged

aristocracy, but we still suffer from "the aristocracy of our

representatives."[1104] Already at Paris, "the population is

nothing, while the municipality is everything". It encroaches on our

imprescriptible rights in refusing to let a district revoke at will the

five members elected to represent it at the Hôtel-de-Ville, in passing

ordinances without obtaining the approval of voters, in preventing

citizens from assembling where they please, in interrupting the out-door

meetings of the clubs in the Palais Royal where "Patriots are driven

away be the patrol." Mayor Bailly, "who keeps liveried servants, who

gives himself a salary of 110,000 livres," who distributes captains'

commissions, who forces peddlers to wear metallic badges, and who

compels newspapers to have signatures to their articles is not only a

tyrant, but a crook, thief and "guilty of lése-nation."--Worse are the

abuses of the National Assembly. To swear fidelity to the constitution,

as this body has just done, to impose its work on us, forcing us to take

a similar oath, disregarding our superior rights to veto or ratify

their decisions,[1105] is to "slight and scorn our sovereignty". By

substituting the will of 1200 individuals for that of the people, "our

representatives have failed to treat us with respect." This is not the

first time, and it is not to be the last. Often do they exceed their

mandate, they disarm, mutilate, and gag their legitimate sovereign and

they pass decrees against the people in the people's name. Such is

their martial law, specially devised for "suppressing the uprising

of citizens", that is to say, the only means left to us against

conspirators, monopolists, and traitors. Such a decree against

publishing any kind of joint placard or petition, is a decree "null

and void," and "constitutes a most flagrant attack on the nation's

rights."[1106] Especially is the electoral law one of these, a law

which, requiring a small qualification tax for electors and a larger one

for those who are eligible, "consecrates the aristocracy of wealth."

The poor, who are excluded by the decree, must regard it as invalid;

register themselves as they please and vote without scruple, because

natural law has precedence over written law. It would simply be "fair

reprisal" if, at the end of the session, the millions of citizens lately

deprived of their vote unjustly, should seize the usurping majority by

the threat and tell them:

"You cut us off from society in your chamber, because you are the

strongest there; we, in our turn, cut you off from the living society,

because we are strongest in the street. You have killed us civilly--we

kill you physically."

Accordingly, from this point of view, all riots are legitimate.

Robespierre from the rostrum[1107] excuses jacqueries, refuses to call

castle-burners brigands, and justifies the insurgents of Soissons,

Nancy, Avignon, and the colonies. Desmoulins, alluding to two men hung

at Douai, states that it was done by the people and soldiers combined,

and declares that: "Henceforth,--I have no hesitation in saying it--they

have legitimated the insurrection;" they were guilty, and it was well

to hang them.[1108] Not only do the party leaders excuse assassinations,

but they provoke them. Desmoulins, "attorney-general of the Lantern,

insists on each of the 83 departments being threatened with at least one

lamppost hanging." (This sobriquet is bestowed on Desmoulins on account

of his advocacy of street executions, the victims of revolutionary

passions being often hung at the nearest lanterne, or street lamp,

at that time in Paris suspended across the street by ropes or

chains.--(Tr.)) Meanwhile Marat, in the name of principle, constantly

sounds the alarm in his journal:

"When public safety is in peril, the people must take power out of the

hands of those whom it is entrusted... Put that Austrian woman and her

brother-in-law in prison... Seize the ministers and their clerks and put

them in irons... Make sure of the mayor and his lieutenants; keep the

general in sight, and arrests his staff... The heir to the throne has no

rights to a dinner while you want bread. Organize bodies of armed men.

March to the National Assembly and demand food at once, supplied to

you out of the national stocks... Demand that the nation's poor have

a future secured to them out of the national contribution. If you are

refused join the army, take the land, as well as gold which the rascals

who want to force you to come to terms by hunger have buried and

share it amongst you. Off with the heads of the ministers and their

underlings, for now is the time; that of Lafayette and of every rascal

on his staff, and of every unpatriotic battalion officer, including

Bailly and those municipal reactionaries--all the traitors in the

National Assembly!"

Marat, indeed, still passes for a furious ranter among people of some

intelligence. But for all that, this is the sum and substance of his

theory: It installs in the political establishment, over the heads

of delegated, regular, and legal powers an anonymous, imbecile,

and terrific power whose decisions are absolute, whose projects are

constantly adopted, and whose intervention is sanguinary. This power is

that of the crowd, of a ferocious, suspicious sultan, who, appointing

his viziers, keeps his hands free to direct them and his scimitar ready

sharpened to cut of their heads.

II.--The Jacobins.

Formation of the Jacobins.--The common human elements of his

character.--Conceit and dogmatism are sensitive and

rebellious in every community.--How kept down in all

well-founded societies.--Their development in the new order

of things.--Effect of milieu on imagination and

ambitions.--The stimulants of Utopianism, abuses of speech, and

derangement of ideas.--Changes in office; interests playing

upon and perverted feeling.

That a speculator in his closet should have concocted such a theory is

comprehensible; paper will take all that is put upon it, while abstract

beings, the hollow simulacra and philosophic puppets he concocts, are

adapted to every sort of combination.--That a lunatic in his cell should

adopt and preach this theory is also comprehensible; he is beset with

phantoms and lives outside the actual world, and, moreover in this

ever-agitated democracy he is the eternal informer and instigator of

every riot and murder that takes place; he it is who under the name of

"the people's friend" becomes the arbiter of lives and the veritable

sovereign.--That a people borne down with taxes, wretched and starving,

indoctrinated by public speakers and sophists, should have welcomed this

theory and acted under it is again comprehensible; necessity knows no

law, and where the is oppression, that doctrine is true which serves to

throw oppression off.

But that public men, legislators and statesmen, with, at last, ministers

and heads of the government, should have made this theory their own;

* that they should have more fondly clung to it as it became more

destructive;

* that, daily for three years they should have seen social order

crumbling away piecemeal under its blows and not have recognized it as

the instrument of such vast ruin;

* that, in the light of the most disastrous experience, instead of

regarding it as a curse they should have glorified it as a boon;

* that many of them--an entire party; almost all of the Assembly--should

have venerated it as a religious dogma and carried it to extremes with

enthusiasm and rigor of faith;

* that, driven by it into a narrow strait, ever getting narrower and

narrower, they should have continued to crush each other at every step;

* that, finally, on reaching the visionary temple of their so-called

liberty, they should have found themselves in a slaughter-house, and,

within its precincts, should have become in turn butcher and brute;

* that, through their maxims of a universal and perfect liberty they

should have inaugurated a despotism worthy of Dahomey, a tribunal

like that of the Inquisition, and raised human hecatombs like those of

ancient Mexico;

* that amidst their prisons and scaffolds they should persist in

believing in the righteousness of their cause, in their own humanity, in

their virtue, and, on their fall, have regarded themselves as martyrs--

is certainly strange. Such intellectual aberration, such excessive

conceit are rarely encountered, and a concurrence of circumstances, the

like of which has never been seen in the world but once, was necessary

to produce it.[1108]

Extravagant conceit and dogmatism, however, are not rare in the

human species. These two roots of the Jacobin intellect exist in all

countries, underground and indestructible. Everywhere they are kept

from sprouting by the established order of things; everywhere are they

striving to overturn old historic foundations, which press them down.

Now, as in the past, students live in garrets, bohemians in lodgings,

physicians without patients and lawyers without clients in lonely

offices, so many Brissots, Dantons, Marats, Robespierres, and St.

Justs in embryo; only, for lack of air and sunshine, they never come

to maturity. At twenty, on entering society, a young man's judgment

and pride are extremely sensitive.--Firstly, let his society be what it

will, it is for him a scandal to pure reason: for it was not organized

by a legislative philosopher in accordance with a sound principle, but

is the work of one generation after another, according to manifold and

changing necessities. It is not a product of logic, but of history, and

the new-fledged thinker shrugs his shoulders as he looks up and sees

what the ancient tenement is, the foundations of which are arbitrary,

its architecture confused, and its many repairs plainly visible.--In

the second place, whatever degree of perfection preceding institutions,

laws, and customs have reached, these have not received his approval;

others, his predecessors, have chosen for him, he is being subjected

beforehand to moral, political, and social forms which pleased them.

Whether they please him or not is of no consequence. Like a horse

trotting along between the poles of a wagon in the harness that happens

to have been put on his back, he has to make best of it.--Besides,

whatever its organization, as it is essentially a hierarchy, he is

nearly always subaltern in it, and must ever remain so, either soldier,

corporal or sergeant. Even under the most liberal system, that in which

the highest grades are accessible to all, for every five or six men who

take the lead or command others, one hundred thousand must follow or be

commanded. This makes it vain to tell every conscript that he carriers

a marshal's baton in his sack, when, nine hundred and ninety-nine times

out of a thousand, he discovers too late, on rummaging his sack, that

the baton is not there.--It is not surprising that he is tempted to kick

against social barriers within which, willing or not, he is enrolled,

and which predestine him to subordination. It is not surprising that on

emerging from traditional influences he should accept a theory, which

subjects these arrangements to his judgment and gives him authority over

his superiors. And all the more because there is no doctrine more

simple and better adapted to his inexperience, it is the only one he can

comprehend and manage off-hand. Hence it is that young men on leaving

college, especially those who have their way to make in the world, are

more or less Jacobin,--it is a disorder of growing up.[1109]--In well

organized communities this ailment is beneficial, and soon cured.

The public establishment being substantial and carefully guarded,

malcontents soon discover that they have not enough strength to pull it

down, and that on contending with its guardians they gain nothing but

blows. After some grumbling, they too enter at one or the other of its

doors, find a place for themselves, and enjoy its advantages or become

reconciled to their lot. Finally, either through imitation, or habit,

or calculation, they willingly form part of that garrison which, in

protecting public interests, protects their own private interests

as well. Generally, after ten years have gone by, the young man has

obtained his rank in the file, where he advances step by step in his own

compartment, which he no longer thinks of tearing to pieces, and under

the eye of a policeman who he no longer thinks of condemning. He even

sometimes thinks that policeman and compartment are useful to him.

Should he consider the millions of individuals who are trying to mount

the social ladder, each striving to get ahead of the other, it may dawn

upon him that the worst of calamities would be a lack of barriers and of

guardians.

Here the worm-eaten barriers have cracked all at once, their easy-going,

timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to take their course.

Society, accordingly, disintegrated and a pell-mell, is turned into

a turbulent, shouting crowd, each pushing and being pushed, all alike

over-excited and congratulating each other on having finally obtained

elbow-room, and all demanding the new barriers shall be as fragile and

the new guardians as feeble, as defenseless, and as inert as possible.

This is what has been done. As a natural consequence, those who were

foremost in the rank have been relegated to the last; many have been

struck down in the fray, while in this permanent state of disorder,

which goes under the name of lasting order, elegant footwear continue

to be stamped upon by hobnailed boots and wooden shoes.--The fanatic and

the intemperate egoists can now let themselves go. They are no longer

subject to any ancient institutions, nor any armed might which can

restrain them. On the contrary, the new constitution, through its

theoretical declarations and the practical application of these, invites

them to let themselves go.--For, on the one hand, legally, it declares

to be based upon pure reason, beginning with a long string of abstract

dogmas from which its positive prescriptions are assumed to be

rigorously deduced. As a consequence all laws are submitted to the

shallow comments of reasoners and quibblers who will both interpret and

break them according to the principles.[1110]--On the other hand, as a

matter of fact, it hands over all government powers to the elections and

confers on the clubs the control of the authorities: which is to offer

a premium to the presumption of the ambitious who put themselves forward

because they think themselves capable, and who defame their rulers

purposely to displace them.--Every government department, organization

or administrative system is like a hothouse which serves to favor some

species of the human plant and wither others. This one is the best one

for the propagation and rapid increase of the coffee-house politician,

club haranguer, the stump-speaker, the street-rioter, the committee

dictator--in short, the revolutionary and the tyrant. In this political

hothouse wild dreams and conceit will assume monstrous proportions, and,

in a few months, brains that are now only ardent become hotheads.

Let us trace the effect of this excessive, unhealthy temperature on

imaginations and ambitions. The old tenement is down; the foundations of

the new one are not yet laid; society has to be made over again from top

to bottom. All willing men are asked to come and help, and, as one

plain principle suffices in drawing a plan, the first comer may succeed.

Henceforth political fancies swarm in the district meetings, in

the clubs, in the newspapers, in pamphlets, and in every head-long,

venturesome brain.

"There is not a merchant's clerk educated by reading the 'Nouvelle

Héloise,'[1111] not a school teacher that has translated ten pages of

Livy, not an artist that has leafed through Rollin, not an aesthete

converted into journalists by committing to memory the riddles of the

'Contrat Social,' who does not draft a constitution... As nothing is

easier than to perfect a daydream, all perturbed minds gather, and

become excited, in this ideal realm. They start out with curiosity and

end up with enthusiasm. The man in the street rushes to the enterprise

in the same manner as a miser to a conjurer promising treasures, and,

thus childishly attracted, each hopes to find at once, what has never

been seen under even the most liberal governments: perpetual perfection,

universal brotherhood, the power of acquiring what one lacks, and a life

composed wholly of enjoyment."

One of these pleasures, and a keen one, is to daydream. One soars in

space. By means of eight or ten ready-made sentences, found in the

six-penny catechisms circulated by thousands in the country and in the

suburbs of the towns and cities,[1112] a village attorney, a customs

clerk, a theater attendant, a sergeant of a soldier's mess, becomes

a legislator and philosopher. He criticizes Malouet, Mirabeau, the

Ministry, the King, the Assembly, the Church, foreign Cabinets, France,

and all Europe. Consequently, on these important subjects, which always

seemed forever forbidden to him, he offers resolutions, reads addresses,

makes harangues, obtains applause, and congratulates himself on having

argued so well and with such big words. To hold fort on questions that

are not understood is now an occupation, a matter of pride and profit.

"More is uttered in one day," says an eye-witness,[1113] "in one section

of Paris than in one year in all the Swiss political assemblies put

together. An Englishman would give six weeks of study to what we dispose

of in a quarter of an hour."

Everywhere, in the town halls, in popular meetings, in the sectional

assemblies, in the wine shops, on the public promenades, on street

corners vanity erects a tribune of verbosity.

"Contemplate the incalculable activity of such a machine in a loquacious

nation where the passion for being something dominates all other

affections, where vanity has more phases than there are starts in the

firmament, where reputations already cost no more than the trouble of

insisting on their being deserved, where society is divided between

mediocrities and their trumpeters who laud them as divinities; where

so few people are content with their lot, where the corner grocer is

prouder of his epaulette than the Grand Condé of his Marshal's baton,

where agitation without object or resources is perpetual, where,

from the floor-scrubber to the dramatist, from the academician to the

simpleton who gets muddled over the evening newspaper, from the witty

courtier down to his philosophic lackey, each one revises Montesquieu

with the self-sufficiency of a child which, because it is learning to

read, deems itself wise; where self-esteem, in disputation, caviling and

sophistication, destroys all sensible conversation; where no one utters

a word, but to teach, never imagining that to learn one must keep quiet;

where the triumphs of a few lunatics entice every crackbrain from his

den; where, with two nonsensical ideas put together out of a book that

is not understood, a man assumes to have principles; where swindlers

talk about morality, women of easy virtue about civism, and the

most infamous of beings about the dignity of the species; where the

discharged valet of a grand seignior calls himself Brutus!" --In

reality, he is Brutus in his own eyes. Let the time come and he will be

so in earnest, especially against his late master; all he has to do is

to give him a thrust with his pike. Until he acts out the part he spouts

it, and grows excited over his own tirades; his common sense gives way

to the bombastic jargon of the revolution and to declamation, which

completes the Utopian performance and eases his brain of its last

modicum of ballast.

It is not merely ideas which the new regime has disturbed, but it has

also disordered sentiments. "Authority is transferred from the Château

of Versailles and the courtier's antechamber, with no intermediary or

counterpoise, to the proletariat and its flatterers."[1114] The whole of

the staff of the old government is brusquely set aside, while a general

election has brusquely installed another in is place, offices not being

given to capacity, seniority, and experience, but to self-sufficiency,

intrigue, and exaggeration. Not only are legal rights reduced to a

common level, but natural grades are transposed; the social ladder,

overthrown, is set up again bottom upwards; the first effect of the

promised regeneration is "to substitute in the administration of public

affairs pettifoggers for magistrates, ordinary citizens for cabinet

ministers, ex-commoners for ex-nobles, rustics for soldiers, soldiers

for captains, captains for generals, curés for bishops, vicars for

curés, monks for vicars, brokers for financiers, empiricists for

administrators, journalists for political economists, stump-orators for

legislators, and the poor for the rich."--Every species of covetousness

is stimulated by this spectacle. The profusion of offices and the

anticipation of vacancies "has excited the thirst for command,

stimulated self-esteem, and inflamed the hopes of the most inept. A rude

and grim presumption renders the fool and the ignoramus unconscious of

their insignificance. They have deemed themselves capable of anything,

because the law granted public functions merely to capacity. There has

appeared in front of one and all an ambitious perspective; the soldier

thinks only of displacing his captain, the captain of becoming general,

the clerk of supplanting the chief of his department, the new-fledged

attorney of being admitted to the high court, the curé of being ordained

a bishop, the shallow scribbler of seating himself on the legislative

bench. Offices and professions vacated by the appointment of so many

upstarts afford in their turn a vast field for the ambition of the

lower classes."--Thus, step by step, owing to the reversal of social

positions, is brought about a general intellectual fever.

"France is transformed into a gaming-table, where, alongside of the

discontented citizen offering his stakes, sits, bold, blustering,

and with fermenting brain, the pretentious subaltern rattling his

dice-box... At the sight of a public official rising from nowhere, even

the soul of a bootblack will bound with emulation."--He has merely to

push himself ahead and elbow his way to secure a ticket "in this immense

lottery of popular luck, of preferment without merit, of success

without talent, of apotheoses without virtues, of an infinity of places

distributed by the people wholesale, and enjoyed by the people in

detail."--Political charlatans flock thither from every quarters, those

taking the lead who, being most in earnest, believe in the virtue of

their nostrum, and need power to impose its recipe on the community; all

being saviors, all places belong to them, and especially the highest.

They lay siege to these conscientiously and philanthropically; if

necessary, they will take them by assault, hold them through force, and,

forcibly or otherwise, administer their cure-all to the human species.

III.--Psychology of the Jacobin.

His intellectual method.--Tyranny of formulae and

suppression of facts.--Mental balance disturbed.--Signs of

this in the revolutionary language.--Scope and expression of

the Jacobin intellect.--In what respect his method is

mischievous.--How it is successful.--Illusions produced by

it.

Such are our Jacobins, born out of social decomposition like mushrooms

out of compost. Let us consider their inner organization, for they have

one as formerly the Puritans; we have only to follow their dogma down to

its depths, as with a sounding-line, to reach the psychological stratum

in which the normal balance of faculty and sentiment is overthrown.

When a statesman, who is not wholly unworthy of that great name, finds

an abstract principle in his way, as, for instance, that of popular

sovereignty, he accepts it, if he accepts it at all, according to

his conception of its practical bearings. He begins, accordingly, by

imagining it applied and in operation. From personal recollections and

such information as he can obtain, he forms an idea of some village or

town, some community of moderate size in the north, in the south, or

in the center of the country, for which he has to make laws. He then

imagines its inhabitants acting according to his principle, that is to

say, voting, mounting guard, levying taxes, and administering their

own affairs. Familiar with ten or a dozen groups of this sort, which he

regards as examples, he concludes by analogy as to others and the rest

on the territory. Evidently it is a difficult and uncertain process; to

be exact, or nearly so, requires rare powers of observation and, at each

step, a great deal of tact, for a nice calculation has to be made on

given quantities imperfectly ascertained and imperfectly noted![1115]

Any political leader who does this successfully, does it through the

ripest experience associated with genius. And even then he keeps his

hand on the check-rein in pushing his innovation or reform; he is

almost always tentative; he applies his law only in part, gradually and

provisionally; he wishes to ascertain its effect; he is always ready to

stay its operation, amend it, or modify it, according to the good or ill

results of experiment; the state of the human material he has to deal

with is never clear to his mind, even when superior, until after many

and repeated gropings.--Now the Jacobin pursues just the opposite

course. His principle is an axiom of political geometry, which always

carries its own proof along with it; for, like the axioms of common

geometry, it is formed out of the combination of a few simple ideas, and

its evidence imposes itself at once on all minds capable of embracing

in one conception the two terms of which it is the aggregate expression.

Man in general, the rights of Man, the social contract, liberty,

equality, reason, nature, the people, tyrants, are examples of these

basic concepts: whether precise or not, they fill the brain of the new

sectarian. Often these terms are merely vague and grandiose words, but

that makes no difference; as soon as they meet in his brain an axiom

springs out of them that can be instantly and absolutely applied on

every occasion and to excess. Mankind as it is does not concern him. He

does not observe them; he does not require to observe them; with closed

eyes he imposes a pattern of his own on the human substance manipulated

by him; the idea never enters his head of forming any previous

conception of this complex, multiform, swaying material--contemporary

peasants, artisans, townspeople, curés and nobles, behind their plows,

in their homes, in their shops, in their parsonages, in their mansions,

with their inveterate beliefs, persistent inclinations, and powerful

wills. Nothing of this enters into or lodges in his mind; all its

avenues are stopped by the abstract principle which flourishes there

and fills it completely. Should actual experience through the eye or

ear plant some unwelcome truth forcibly in his mind, it cannot subsist

there; however noisy and relentless it may be, the abstract principle

drives it out;[1116] if need be it will distort and strangle it,

considering it a slanderer since it refutes a principle which is true

and undeniable in itself. Obviously, a mind of this kind is not sound;

of the two faculties which should pull together harmoniously, one is

degenerated and the other overgrown; facts cannot turn the scale against

the theory. Charged on one side and empty on the other, the Jacobin mind

turns violently over on that side to which it leans, and such is its

incurable infirmity.

Consider, indeed, the authentic monuments of Jacobin thought, the

"Journal des Amis de la Constitution," the gazettes of Loustalot,

Desmoulins, Brissot, Condorcet, Fréron and Marat, Robespierre's, and St.

Just's pamphlets and speeches, the debates in the Legislative Assembly

and in the Convention, the harangues, addresses and reports of the

Girondins and Montagnards, in brief, the forty volumes of extracts

compiled by Buchez and Roux. Never has so much been said to so little

purpose; all the truth that is uttered is drowned in the monotony and

inflation of empty verbiage and vociferous bombast. One experience in

this direction is sufficient.[1117] The historian who resorts this mass

of rubbish for accurate information finds none of any account; in vain

will he read kilometers of it: hardly will he there meet one fact, one

instructive detail, one document which brings before his eyes a distinct

personality, which shows him the real sentiments of a villager or of a

gentleman, which vividly portrays the interior of a hôtel-de-ville, of

a soldier's barracks, of a municipal chamber, or the character of an

insurrection. To define fifteen or twenty types and situations which sum

up the history of the period, we have been and shall be obliged to

seek them elsewhere--in the correspondence of local administrators,

in affidavits on criminal records, in confidential reports of the

police,[1118] and in the narratives of foreigners,[1119] who, prepared

for it by a different education, look behind words for things, and see

France beyond the "Contrat Social." This teeming France, this grand

tragedy which twenty-six millions of players are performing on a stage

of 26 000 square leagues, is lost to the Jacobin. His literature, as

well as his brain, contain only insubstantial generalizations like those

above cited, rolling out in a mere play of ideas, sometimes in concise

terms when the writer happens to be a professional reasoner like

Condorcet, but most frequently in a tangled, knotty style full of loose

and disconnected meshes when the spokesman happens to be an improvised

politician or a philosophic tyro like the ordinary deputies of the

Assembly and the speakers of the clubs. It is a pedantic scholasticism

set forth with fanatical rant. Its entire vocabulary consists of about

a hundred words, while all ideas are reduced to one, that of man in

himself: human units, all alike equal and independent, contracting

together for the first time. This is their concept of society. None

could be briefer, for, to arrive at it, man had to be reduced to a

minimum. Never were political brains so willfully dried up. For it

is the attempt to systematize and to simplify which causes their

impoverishment. In that respect they go by the methods of their time

and in the track of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: their outlook on life is the

classic view, which, already narrow in the late philosophers, has now

become even more narrow and hardened. The best representatives of the

type are Condorcet,[1120] among the Girondins, and Robespierre, among

the Montagnards, both mere dogmatists and pure logicians, the latter the

most remarkable and with a perfection of intellectual sterility never

surpassed.--Unquestionably, as far as the formulation of durable laws

is concerned, i.e. adapting the social machinery to personalities,

conditions, and circumstances; their mentality is certainly the

most impotent and harmful. It is organically short-sighted, and by

interposing their principles between it and reality, they shut off the

horizon. Beyond their crowd and the club it distinguishes nothing, while

in the vagueness and confusion of the distance it erects the hollow

idols of its own Utopia.--But when power is to be seized by assault, and

a dictatorship arbitrarily exercised, the mechanical inflexibility of

such a mind is useful rather than detrimental. It is not embarrassed

or slowed down, like that of a statesman, by the obligation to make

inquiries, to respect precedents, of looking into statistics, of

calculating and tracing beforehand in different directions the near and

remote consequences of its work as this affects the interests,

habits, and passions of diverse classes. All this is now obsolete

and superfluous: the Jacobin knows on the spot the correct form of

government and the good laws. For both construction as well as for

destruction, his rectilinear method is the quickest and most vigorous.

For, if calm reflection is required to get at what suits twenty-six

millions of living Frenchmen, a mere glance suffices to understand the

desires of the abstract men of their theory. Indeed, according to the

theory, men are all shaped to one pattern, nothing being left to them

but an elementary will; thus defined, the philosophic robot demands

liberty, equality and popular sovereignty, the maintenance of the rights

of man and adhesion to the "Contrat Social." That is enough: from now

on the will of the people is known, and known beforehand; a consultation

among citizens previous to action is not essential; there is no

obligation to await their votes. In any events, a ratification by the

people is sure; and should this not be forthcoming it is owing to their

ignorance, disdain or malice, in which case their response deserves

to be considered as null. The best thing to do, consequently, through

precaution and to protect the people from what is bad for them, is

to dictate to them what is good for them.--Here, the Jacobin might

be sincere; for the men in whose behalf he claims rights are not

flesh-and-blood Frenchmen, as we see them in the streets and in the

fields, but men in general, as they ought to be on leaving the hands of

Nature, or after the teachings of Reason. As to the former, there is no

need of being scrupulous because they are infatuated with prejudices

and their opinions are mere drivel; as for the latter, it is just the

opposite: full of respect for the vainglorious images of his own theory,

of ghosts produced by his own intellectual device, the Jacobin will

always bow down to responses that he himself has provided, for, the

beings that he has created are more real in his eyes than living ones

and it is their suffrage on which he counts. Accordingly, viewing

things in the worst lights, he has nothing against him but the momentary

antipathy of a purblind generation. To offset this, he enjoys the

approval of humanity, self-obtained; that of a posterity which his acts

have regenerated; that of men who, thanks to him, who are again become

what they should never have ceased to be. Hence, far from looking upon

himself as an usurper or a tyrant, he considers himself the natural

mandatory of a veritable people, the authorized executor of the common

will. Marching along in the procession formed for him by this imaginary

crowd, sustained by millions of metaphysical wills created by himself

in his own image, he has their unanimous assent, and, like a chorus of

triumphant shouts, he will fill the outward world with the inward echo

of his own voice.

IV.--What the theory promises.

How it flatters wounded self-esteem.--The ruling passion of

the Jacobin.--Apparent both in style and conduct.--He alone

is virtuous in his own estimation, while his adversaries are

vile.--They must accordingly be put out of the way.--

Perfection of this character.--Common sense and moral sense

both perverted.

When an ideology attracts people, it is less due to its sophistication

than to the promises it holds out. It appeals more to their desires than

to their intelligence; for, if the heart sometimes may be the dupe of

the head, the latter is much more frequently the dupe of the former. We

do not accept a system because we deem it a true one, but because the

truth we find in it suits us. Political or religious fanaticism, any

theological or philosophical channel in which truth flows, always

has its source in some ardent longing, some secret passion, some

accumulation of intense, painful desire to which a theory affords

and outlet. In the Jacobin, as well as in the Puritan, there is a

fountain-head of this description. What feeds this source with the

Puritan is the anxieties of a disturbed conscience which, forming for

itself some idea of perfect justice, becomes rigid and multiplies the

commandments it believes that God has promulgated; on being constrained

to disobey these it rebels, and, to impose them on others, it becomes

tyrannical even to despotism. The first effort of the Puritan, however,

wholly internal, is self-control; before becoming political he becomes

moral. With the Jacobin, on the contrary, the first precept is not

moral, political; it is not his duties which he exaggerates but his

rights, while his doctrine, instead of being a prick to his conscience,

flatters his pride.[1121] However vast and insatiate human pride may

be, now it is satisfied, for never before has it had so much to feed

upon.--In the program of the sect, do not look for the restricted

prerogatives growing out of self-respect which the proud-spirited man

claims for himself, such as civil rights accompanied by those liberties

that serve as sentinels and guardians of these rights--security for

life and property, the stability of the law, the integrity of courts,

equality of citizens before the law and under taxation, the abolition

of privileges and arbitrary proceedings, the election of representatives

and the administration of public funds. Summing it up, the precious

guarantees which render each citizen an inviolable sovereign on his

limited domain, which protect his person and property against all

species of public or private oppression and exaction, which maintain him

calm and erect before competitors as well as adversaries, upright and

respectful in the presence of magistrates and in the presence of the

government.

A Malouet, a Mounier, a Mallet du Pan, partisans of the English

Constitution and Parliament, may be content with such trifling gifts,

but the Jacobin theory holds them all cheap, and, if need be, will

trample them in the dust. Independence and security for the private

citizen is not what it promises, not the right to vote every two years,

not a moderate exercise of influence, not an indirect, limited and

intermittent control of the commonwealth, but political dominion in the

full and complete possession of France and the French people. There is

no doubt on this point. In Rousseau's own words, the "Contrat Social"

prescribes "the complete alienation to the community of each associate

and all his rights," every individual surrendering himself wholly,

"just as he may actually be, he himself and all his powers of which

his possessions form a part," so that the state not only the recognized

owner of property, but of minds and bodies as well, may forcibly and

legitimately impose on every member of it such education, form

of worship, religious faith, opinions and sympathies as it deems

best.[1122] Now each man, solely because he is a man, is by right a

member of this despotic sovereignty. Whatever, accordingly, my condition

may be, my incompetence, my ignorance, my insignificance in the career

in which I have plodded along, I have full control over the fortunes,

lives, and consciences of twenty-six million French people, being

accordingly Czar and Pope, according to my share of authority.----But

if I adhere strictly to this doctrine, I am yet more so than my quota

warrants. This royal prerogative with which I am endowed is only

conferred on those who, like myself, sign the Social Contract in

full; others, merely because they reject some clause of it, incur a

forfeiture; no one must enjoy the advantages of a pact of which some of

the conditions are repudiated.--Even better, as this pact is based on

natural right and is obligatory, he who rejects it or withdraws from it,

becomes by that act a miscreant, a public wrong-doer and an enemy of

the people. There were once crimes of royal lèse-majesty; now there are

crimes of popular lèse-majesty. Such crimes are committed when by deed,

word, or thought, any portion whatever of the more than royal authority

belonging to the people is denied or contested. The dogma through which

popular sovereignty is proclaimed thus actually ends in a dictatorship

of the few, and a proscription of the many. Outside of the sect you are

outside of the laws. We, the five or six thousand Jacobins of Paris,

are the legitimate monarch, the infallible Pontiff, and woe betide the

refractory and the lukewarm, all government agents, all private persons,

the clergy, the nobles, the rich, merchants, traders, the indifferent

among all classes, who, steadily opposing or yielding uncertain

adhesion, dare to throw doubt on our unquestionable right.

One by one these consequences are to come into light, and it is evident

that, let the logical machinery by which they unfold themselves be what

it may, no ordinary person, unless of consummate vanity, will fully

adopt them. He must have an exalted opinion of himself to consider

himself sovereign otherwise than by his vote, to conduct public business

with no more misgivings than his private business, to directly and

forcibly interfere with this, to set himself up, he and his clique, as

guides, censors and rulers of his government, to persuade himself that,

with his mediocre education and average intellect, with his few

scraps of Latin and such information as is obtained in reading-rooms,

coffee-houses, and newspapers, with no other experience than that of a

club, or a municipal council, he could discourse wisely and well on the

vast, complex questions which superior men, specially devoted to them,

hesitate to take up. At first this presumption existed in him only

in germ, and, in ordinary times, it would have remained, for lack of

nourishment, as dry-rot or creeping mold, But the heart knows not

what strange seeds it contains! Any of these, feeble and seemingly

inoffensive, needs only air and sunshine to become a noxious excrescence

and a colossal plant. Whether third or fourth rate attorney, counselor,

surgeon, journalist, curé, artist, or author, the Jacobin is like the

shepherd that has just found, in one corner of his hut, a lot of old

parchments which entitle him to the throne. What a contrasts between the

meanness of his calling and the importance with which the theory invests

him! With what rapture he accepts a dogma that raises him so high in

his own estimation! Diligently conning the Declaration of Rights,

the Constitution, all the official documents that confer on him

such glorious prerogatives, charging his imagination with them, he

immediately assumes a tone befitting his new position.[1123]--Nothing

surpasses the haughtiness and arrogance of this tone. It declares itself

at the outset in the harangues of the clubs and in the petitions to the

Constituent Assembly. Loustalot, Fréron, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, St.

Just, always employ dictatorial language, that of the sect, and

which finally becomes the jargon of their meanest valets. Courtesy or

toleration, anything that denotes regard or respect for others, find no

place in their utterances nor in their acts; a swaggering, tyrannical

conceit creates for itself a language in its own image, and we see not

only the foremost actors, but their minor associates, enthroned on their

grandiloquent platform. Each in his own eyes is Roman, savior, hero, and

great man.

"I stood in the tribune of the palace," writes Anarcharsis Clootz,[1124]

"at the head of the foreigners, acting as ambassador of the human

species, while the ministers of the tyrants regarded me with a jealous

and disconcerted air."

A schoolmaster at Troyes, on the opening of the club in that town,

advises the women "to teach their children, as soon as they can utter

a word, that they are free and have equal rights with the mightiest

potentates of the universe."[1125] Pétion's account of the journey in

the king's carriage, on the return from Varennes, must be read to see

how far self-importance of a pedant and the self-conceit of a lout can

be carried.[1126] In their memoirs and even down to their epitaphs,

Barbaroux, Buzot, Pétion, Roland, and Madame Roland[1127] give

themselves certificates of virtue and, if we could take their word for

it, they would pass for Plutarch's model characters.--This infatuation,

from the Girondins to the Montagnards, continues to grow. St. Just,

at the age of twenty-four, and merely a private individual, is already

consumed with suppressed ambition. Marat says:

"I believe that I have exhausted every combination of the human

intellect in relation to morality, philosophy and political science."

Robespierre, from the beginning to the end of the Revolution, is

always, in his own eyes, Robespierre the unique, the one pure man, the

infallible and the impeccable; no man ever burnt to himself the incense

of his own praise so constantly and so directly.--At this level, conceit

may drink the theory to the bottom, however revolting the dregs and

however fatal its poison even to those defy its nausea for the sake of

swallowing it. And, since it is virtue, no one may refuse it without

committing a crime. Thus construed, the theory divides Frenchmen into

two groups: one consisting of aristocrats, fanatics, egoists, the

corrupt, bad citizens in short, and the other patriots, philosophers,

and the virtuous, that is to say, those belonging to the sect.[1128]

Thanks to this reduction, the vast moral and social world with which

they deal finds its definition, expression, and representation in a

ready-made antithesis. The aim of the government is now clear: the

wicked must submit to the good, or, which is briefer, the wicked must be

suppressed. To this end let us employ confiscation, imprisonment, exile,

drowning and the guillotine and a large scale. All means are justifiable

and meritorious against these traitors; now that the Jacobin has

canonized his slaughter, he slays through philanthropy.--Thus is the

forming of his personality completed like that of a theologian who

becomes inquisitor. Extraordinary contrasts are gathered to construct

it:--a lunatic that is logical, and a monster that pretends to have

a conscience. Under the pressure of his faith and egotism, he has

developed two deformities, one of the head and the other of the heart;

his common sense is gone, and his moral sense is utterly perverted. In

fixing his mind on abstract formulas, he is no longer able to see men

as they are. His self-admiration makes him consider his adversaries, and

even his rivals, as miscreants deserving of death. On this downhill road

nothing stops him, for, in qualifying things inversely to their true

meaning, he has violated within himself the precious concepts which

brings us back to truth and justice. No light reaches eyes which regard

blindness as clear-sightedness; no remorse affects a soul which erects

barbarism into patriotism, and which sanctions murder with duty.

*****

[Footnote 1101: Cf. "The Ancient Régime," p. 242. Citations from the

"Contrat Social."--Buchez et Roux, "Histoire Parlementaire," XXVI. 96.

Declaration of rights read by Robespierre in the Jacobin club, April 21,

1793, and adopted by the club as its own. "The people is sovereign, the

government is its work and its property, and public functionaries are

its clerks. The people can displace its mandatories and change its

government when it pleases."]

[Footnote 1102: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other dictators that

like that also organized elections and saw themselves as being the

people, speaking and acting on their behalf and therefore entitled to do

anything they pleased.(SR).]

[Footnote 1103: Rightly so, might Lenin have thought when he first read

this text. Later, under his and Stalin's leadership the Party, guided

by the first secretary of its central committee, aided by the secret

police, should penetrate all affairs slowly extending their power

or influence to the entire world through their secret party members,

mutually ensuring their promotion into the highest posts, the party will

eventually come to govern the world. (SR).]

[Footnote 1104: Buchez and Roux, III, 324.. (An article by Loustalot,

Sept. 8, 1789). Ibid. 331 Motion of the District of Cordéliers,

presided over by Danton.--Ibid 239.. Denunciation of the municipality by

Marat.--V., 128, Vi. 24-41 (March, 1790). The majority of the districts

demand the permanent authority of the districts, that is to say, of the

sovereign political assemblies]

[Footnote 1105: Buchez et Roux. IV. 458. Meeting of Feb. 24, 1790, an

article by Loustalot.--III 202. Speech by Robespierre, meeting of Oct.

21, 1789. Ibid. 219. Resolution of the district of St. Martin

declaring that martial law shall not be enforced. Ibid. 222. Article by

Loustalot.]

[Footnote 1106: Buchez et Roux, X. 124, an article by Marat.--X. 1-22,

speech by Robespierre at the meeting of May 9, 1791.-III. an article

by Loustalot. III. 217, speech by Robespierre, meeting of Oct.22, 1789.

Ibid. 431, article by Loustalot and Desmoulins, Nov., 1789.--VI. 336,

articles by Loustalot and Marat, July, 1790.]

[Footnote 1107: Ernest Hamel, "Histoire de Robespierre", passim,

(I.436). Robespierre proposed to confer political rights on the

blacks.--Buchez et Roux, IX. 264 (March, 1791).]

[Footnote 1108: Buchez et Roux, V. 146 (March, 1790); VI. 436 (July 26,

1790); VIII. 247 (Dec 1790); X. 224 (June, 1791).]

[Footnote 1109: Gustave Flaubert. "Tout notaire a rêvé des

sultanes." (All barristers have dreams of being sultans!) (Madame

Bovary").--"Frédéric trouvait que le bonheur mérité par l'excellence de

son âme tardait à venir." (Frédéric found that the happiness he

deserved due to his brilliancy was a long time coming.) ("L'Education

sentimentale.)]

[Footnote 1110: Such has also been the effect of similar declarations

set forth in the Constitutions of the United Nations, the European

Community, as well as many individual nations. All that was required

for the international Communist movement was then to await the slow

promotion of the secret party members directed to seek a career inside

the various legal administrations for, one day, to see all superior

courts staffed by their men. (SR).]

[Footnote 1111: Mallet du Pan, "Correspondance politique." 1796.]

[Footnote 1112: "Entretiens du Père Gérard," by Collot d'Herbois.--"Les

Etrennes au Peuple," by Barrère.-"La Constitution française pour les

habitants des campagnes," etc.--Later "L'Alphabet des Sans-Culottes, le

Nouveau Catéchisme républicain, les Commandements de la Patrie et de la

République (in verse), etc."]

[Footnote 1113: Mercure de France, an article by Mallet du Pan, April 7,

1792. (Summing up of the year 1791.)]

[Footnote 1114: Mercure de France, see the numbers of Dec. 30, 1791, and

April 7, 1792. (Note the phrase, it is close to Marx statement in 1850

'that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the

proletariat.' SR.)]

[Footnote 1115: Fox, before deciding on any measure, consulted a Mr.

H.--, one of the most uninfluential, and even narrow-minded members

of the House of Commons. Some astonishment being expressed at this, he

replied that he regarded Mr. H.---as a perfect type of the faculties

and prejudices of a country gentleman, and he used him as a thermometer.

Napoleon likewise stated that before framing an important law, he

imagined to himself the impression it would make on the mind of a burly

peasant.]

[Footnote 1116: Just like the strong influence which the current

fashionable principles and buzz-words introduced by the media have over

today's audiences. (SR).]

[Footnote 1117: Alas! This phenomenon should be repeated with the

interminable speeches held by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Mao and all

the other inheritors of the Jacobin creed. (SR).]

[Footnote 1118: "Tableaux de la Révolution Française," by Schmidt

(especially the reports by Dutard), 3 vols.]

[Footnote 1119: "Correspondence of Gouverneur Morris,"--"Memoirs of

Mallet du Pan," John Moore']

[Footnote 1120: See, in "Progrès de l'esprit humaine," the superiority

awarded to the republican constitution of 1793. (Book IX.) "The

principles from which the constitution and laws of France have been

combined are purer, more exact, and deeper than those which governed the

Americans: they have more completely escaped the influence of every sort

of prejudice, etc."]

[Footnote 1121: Camille Desmoulins, the enfant terrible of the

Revolution, confesses this, as well as other truths. After citing the

Revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, "which derived

their virtue from and had their roots in conscience, which were

sustained by fanaticism and the hopes of another world," he thus

concludes: "Our Revolution, purely political, is wholly rooted in

egotism, in everybody's amour propre, in the combinations of which is

found the common interest." ("Brissot dévoilé," by Camille Desmoulins,

January, 1792)--Bouchez et Roux, XIII, 207.)]

[Footnote 1122: Rousseau's idea of the omnipotence of the State is also

that of Louis XIV and Napoleon... It is curious to see the development

of the same idea in the mind of a contemporary bourgeois, like Rétif de

la Bretonne, half literary and half one of the people ("Nuits de Paris,"

XVe nuit, 377, on the September Massacres) "No, I do not pity those

fanatical priests; they have done the country too much mischief.

Whatever a society, or a majority of it, desires, that is right. He

who opposes this, who calls down war and vengeance on the Nation, is

a monster. Order is always found in the agreement of the majority. The

minority is always guilty, I repeat it, even if it is morally right.

Nothing but common sense is needed to see that truth."--Ibid. (On the

execution of Louis XVI.), p. 447. "Had the nation the right to condemn

and execute him? No thinking person can ask such a question. The nation

is everything in itself; its power is that which the whole human kind

would have if but one nation, one single government governed the

globe. Who would dare then dispute the power of humanity? It is this

indisputable power that a nation has, to hang even an innocent man,

felt by the ancient Greeks, which led them to exile Aristoteles and put

Phocion to death. 'Oh truth, unrecognized by our contemporaries, what

evil has arisen through forgetting it!'"]

[Footnote 1123: Moniteur, XI. 46. Speech by Isnard in the Assembly,

Jan. 5, 1792. "The people are now conscious of their dignity. They know,

according to the constitution, that every Frenchman's motto is: 'Live

free, the equal of all, and one of the common sovereignty.'"--Guillon

de Montléon, I. 445. Speech by Chalier, in the Lyons Central Club, March

21, 1793. "Know that you are kings, and more than kings. Do you not feel

sovereignty circulating in your veins?"]

[Footnote 1124: Moniteur, V. 136. (Celebration of the Federation, July

14, 1790.)]

[Footnote 1125: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes pendant la

Révolution," I. 436 (April 10, 1790).]

[Footnote 1126: Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire de la Terreur," I. 353.

(Pétion's own narrative of this journey.) This pert blockhead cannot

even spell: he writes aselle for aisselle, etc. He is convinced that

Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister, wants to seduce him, and that she

makes advances to him: "If we had been alone, I believe that she would

have fallen into my arms, and let the impulses of nature have their

way." He makes a display of virtue however, and becomes only the more

supercilious as he talks with the king, the young dauphin, and the

ladies he is fetching back.]

[Footnote 1127: The "Mémoires de Madame Roland" is a masterpiece of that

conceit supposed to be so careflilly concealed as not to be visible

and never off its stilts. "I am beautiful, I am affectionate, I am

sensitive, I inspire love, I reciprocate, I remain virtuous, my mind is

superior, and my courage indomitable. I am philosopher, statesman, and

writer, worthy of the highest success," is constantly in her mind, and

always perceptible in her phraseology. Real modesty never shows itself.

On the contrary, many indecorous things are said and done by her from

bravado, and to set herself above her sex. Cf. the "Memoirs of Mirs.

Hutchinson," which present a great contrast. Madame Roland wrote: "I

see no part in society which suits me but that of Providence."--The same

presumption shines out in others, with less refined pretensions. The

deputy Rouyer addresses the following letter, found among the papers of

the iron wardrobe, to the king, "I have compared, examined, and foreseen

everything. All I ask to carry out my noble purposes, is that direction

of forces, which the law confers on you. I am aware of and brave the

danger; weakness defers to this, while genius overcomes it I have turned

my attention to all the courts of Europe, and am sure that I can force

peace on them."--Robert, an obscure pamphleteer, asks Dumouriez to make

him ambassador to Constantinople, while Louvet, the author of "Faublas,"

declares in his memoirs that liberty perished in 1792, because he was

not appointed Minister of Justice.]

[Footnote 1128: Moniteur, p. 189. Speech by Collot d'Herbois, on the

mitraillades at Lyons. "We too, possess sensibility! The Jacobins

have every virtue; they are compassionate, humane, and generous. These

virtues, however, are reserved for patriots, who are their brethren, but

never for aristocrats."--Meillan, "Mémoires," p. 4. "Robespierre was

one day eulogizing a man named Desfieux, well known for his lack of

integrity, and whom he finally sacrificed. 'But, I said to him, your man

Desfieux is known to be a rascal.'--'No matter,' he replied, 'he is

a good patriot.'--'But he is a fraudulent bankrupt.'-'He is a good

patriot.'--'But he is a thief.'--'He is a good patriot.' I could not get

more than these three words out of him."]

CHAPTER II.

I.--Formation of the party.

Its recruits--These are rare in the upper class and amongst

the masses.--They are numerous in the low bourgeois class

and in the upper stratum of the people.--The position and

education which enroll a man in the party.

Personalities like these are found in all classes of society; no

situation or position in life protects one from wild Utopia or frantic

ambition. We find among the Jacobins a Barras and a Châteauneuf-Randon,

two nobles of the oldest families; Condorcet, a marquis, mathematician,

philosopher and member of two renowned academies; Gobel, bishop of Lydda

and suffragan to the bishop of Bâle; Hérault de Séchellles, a protégé of

the Queen's and attorney-general to the Paris parliament; Lepelletier de

St. Fargeau, chief-justice and one of the richest land-owners in France;

Charles de Hesse, major-general, born in the royal family; and, last of

all, a prince of the blood and fourth personage in the realm, the Duke

of Orleans.--But, with the exception of these rare deserters, neither

the hereditary aristocracy nor the upper magistracy, nor the highest of

the middle class, none of the land-owners who live on their estates, or

the leaders of industrial and commercial enterprises, no one belonging

to the administration, none of those, in general, who are or deserve to

be considered social authorities, furnish the party with recruits. All

have too much at stake in the political establishment, shattered as it

is, to wish its entire demolition. Their political experience, brief as

it is, enables them to see at once that a habitable house is not built

by merely tracing a plan of it on paper according the theorems of school

geometry.--On the other hand, among the ordinary rural population the

ideology finds, unless it can be changed into a legend, no listeners.

Share croppers, small holders and farmers looking after their own plots

of ground, peasants and craftsmen who work too hard to think and whose

minds never range beyond a village horizon, busy only with that which

brings in their daily bread, find abstract doctrines unintelligible;

should the dogmas of the new catechism arrest their attention the same

thing happens as with the old one, they do not understand them; that

mental faculty by which an abstraction is reached is not yet formed in

them. On being taken to a political club they fall asleep; they

open their eyes only when some one announces that tithes and feudal

privileges are to be restored; they can be depended on for nothing more

than a brawl and a jacquerie; later on, when their grain comes to be

taxed or is taken, they prove as unruly under the republic as under the

monarchy.

The believers in this theory come from other quarters, from the two

extremes of the lower stratum of the middle class and the upper stratum

of the low class. Again, in these two contiguous groups, which merge

into each other, those must be left out who, absorbed in their daily

occupations or professions, have no time or thought to give to public

matters, who have reached a fair position in the social hierarchy and

are not disposed to run risks, almost all of them well-established,

steady-going, mature, married folks who have sown their wild oats and

whom experience in life has rendered distrustful of themselves and of

theories. Overweening conceit is, most of the time, only average in the

average human being, so speculative ideas will with most people only

obtain a loose, transient and feeble hold. Moreover, in this society

which, for many centuries consists of people accustomed to being ruled,

the hereditary spirit is bourgeois that is to say, used to discipline,

fond of order, peaceable and even timid.--There remains a minority, a

very small one,[1201] innovating and restless. This consisted, on

the one hand, of people who were discontented with their calling

or profession, because they were of secondary or subaltern rank in

it.[1202] Some were debutantes not fully employed and others aspirants

for careers not yet entered upon. Then, on the other hand, there were

the men of unstable character and all those who were uprooted by the

immense upheaval of things: in the Church, through the suppression of

convents and through schism; in the judiciary, in the administration,

in the financial departments, in the army, and in various private and

public careers, through the reorganization of institutions, through the

novelty of fresh resources and occupations, and through the disturbance

caused by the changed relationships of patrons and clients. Many who, in

ordinary times, would otherwise remain quiet, become in this way nomadic

and extravagant in politics. Among the foremost of these are found those

who, through a classical education, can take in an abstract proposition

and deduce its consequences, but who, for lack of special preparation

for it, and confined to the narrow circle of local affairs, are

incapable of forming accurate conceptions of a vast, complex social

organization, and of the conditions which enable it to subsist.

Their talent lies in making a speech, in dashing off an editorial, in

composing a pamphlet, and in drawing up reports in more or less pompous

and dogmatic style; the genre admitted, a few of them who are gifted

become eloquent, but that is all. Among those are the lawyers, notaries,

bailiffs and former petty provincial judges and attorneys who furnish

the leading actors and two-thirds of the members of the Legislative

Assembly and of the Convention: There are surgeons and doctors in small

towns, like Bo, Levasseur, and Baudot, second and third-rate literary

characters, like Barrère, Louvet, Garat, Manuel, and Ronsin, college

professors like Louchet and Romme, schoolmasters like Leonard Bourdon,

journalists like Brissot, Desmoulins and Freron, actors like Collot

d'Herbois, artists like Sergent, Oratoriens[1203] like Fouché, capuchins

like Chabot, more or less secularized priests like Lebon, Chasles,

Lakanal, and Grégoire, students scarcely out of school like St.

Just, Monet of Strasbourg, Rousseline of St. Albin, and Julien of the

Drôme--in short, the poorly sown and badly cultivated minds, and on

which the theory had only to fall to smother the good grain and thrive

like a nettle. Add to these charlatans and others who live by their

wits, the visionary and morbid of all sorts, from Fanchet and Klootz

to Châlier or Marat, the whole of that needy, chattering, irresponsible

crowd, ever swarming about large cities ventilating its shallow conceits

and abortive pretensions. Farther in the background appear those whose

scanty education qualifies them to half understand an abstract principle

and imperfectly deduce its consequences, but whose roughly-polished

instinct atones for the feebleness of a coarse argumentation. Through

cupidity, envy and rancor, they divine a rich pasture-ground behind

the theory, and Jacobin dogmas become dearer to them, because the

imagination sees untold treasures beyond the mists in which they are

shrouded. They can listen to a club harangue without falling asleep,

applaud its tirades in the rights place, offer a resolution in a public

garden, shout in the tribunes, pen affidavits for arrests, compose

orders-of-the-day for the national guard, and lend their lungs, arms,

and sabers to whoever bids for them. But here their capacity ends.

In this group merchants' and notaries' clerks abound, like Hébert and

Henriot, Vincent and Chaumette, butchers like Legendre, postmasters like

Drouet, boss-joiners like Duplay, school-teachers like that Buchot who

becomes a minister, and many others of the same sort, accustomed to

jotting down ideas, with vague notions of orthography and who are apt

in speech-making,[1204] foremen, sub-officers, former begging friars,

peddlers, tavern-keepers, retailers, market-porters, and city-journeymen

from Gouchon, the orator of the faubourg St. Antoine, down to Simon, the

cobbler of the Temple, from Trinchard, the juryman of the Revolutionary

Tribunal, down to grocers, tailors, shoemakers, tapster, waiters,

barbers, and other shopkeepers or artisans who do their work at home,

and who are yet to do the work of the September massacres. Add to these

the foul remnants of every popular insurrection and dictatorship, beasts

of prey like Jourdain of Avignon, and Fournier the American, women like

Théroigne, Rose Lacombe, and the tricoteuses of the Convention who have

unsexed themselves, the amnestied bandits and other gallows birds who,

for lack of a police, have a wide range, street-rollers and vagabonds,

rebels against labor and discipline, the whole of that class in the

center of civilization which preserves the instincts of savages, and

asserts the sovereignty of the people to glut a natural appetite for

license, laziness, and ferocity.--Thus is the party recruited through an

enlisting process that gleans its subjects from every station in life,

but which reaps them down in great swaths, and gathers them together

in the two groups to which dogmatism and presumption naturally belong.

Here, education has brought man to the threshold, even to the heart of

general ideas; consequently, he feels hampered within the narrow bounds

of his profession or occupation, and aspires to something beyond. But

as his education has remained superficial or rudimentary, consequently,

outside of his narrow circle he feels out of his place. He has a

perception or obtains a glimpse of political ideas and, therefore,

assumes that he has capacity. But his perception is confided to a

formula, and he sees them dimly through a cloud; hence his incapacity,

and the reason why his mental lacunae as well as his attainments both

contribute to make him a Jacobin.

II.--Spontaneous associations after July 14, 1789.

How these dissolve.--Withdrawal of people of sense and

occupation.--Number of those absent at elections.--Birth and

multiplication of Jacobin societies.--Their influence over

their adherents--Their maneuvers and despotism.

Men thus disposed cannot fail to draw near each other, to understand

each other, and combine together; for, in the principle of popular

sovereignty, they have a common dogma, and, in the conquest of political

supremacy, a common aim. Through a common aim they form a faction, and

through a common dogma they constitute a sect, the league between them

being more easily effected because they are a faction and sect at the

same time.

At first their association is not distinguishable in the multitude of

other associations. Political societies spring up on all sides after the

taking of the Bastille. Some kind of organization had to be substituted

for the deposed or tottering government, in order to provide for urgent

public needs, to secure protection against ruffians, to obtain supplies

of provisions, and to guard against the probably machinations of

the court. Committees installed themselves in the town halls, while

volunteers formed bodies of militia: hundreds of local governments,

almost independent, arose in the place of the central government, almost

destroyed.[1205] For six months everybody attended to matters of common

interest, each individual getting to be a public personage and bearing

his quota of the government load: a heavy load at all times, but heavier

in times of anarchy; this, at least, is the opinion of the majority but

not of all of them. Consequently, a division arises amongst those who

had assumed this load, and two groups are formed, one huge, inert and

disintegrating, and the other small, compact and energetic, each

taking one of two ways which diverge from each other, and which keep on

diverging more and more.

On one hand are the ordinary, sensible people, those who are busy, and

who are, to some extent, not over-conscientious, and not over-conceited.

The power is in their hands because they find it prostrate, lying

abandoned in the street; they hold it provisionally only, for they knew

beforehand, or soon discover, that they are not qualified for the

post, it being one of those which, to be properly filled, needs some

preparation and fitness for it. A man does not become legislator or

administrator in one day, any more than he suddenly becomes a physician

or surgeon. If an accident obliges me to act in the latter capacity, I

yield, but against my will, and I do no more than is necessary to save

my patients from hurting themselves, My fear of their dying under the

operation is very great, and, as soon as some other person can be found

to take my place, I go home.[1206]--I should be glad, like everybody

else, to have my vote in the selection of this person, and, among the

candidates. I should designate, to the best of my ability, one who

seemed to me the ablest and most conscientious. Once selected, however,

and installed, I should not attempt to dictate to him; his cabinet is

private, and I have no right to run there constantly and cross-question

him, as if he were a child or under suspicion. It does not become me to

tell him what to do; he probably knows more about the case than I do;

in any event, to keep a steady hand, he must not be threatened, and, to

keep a clear head, he must not be disturbed. Nor must I be disturbed;

my office and books, my shop, my customers must be attended to as well.

Everybody has to mind his own business, and whoever would attend to his

own and another's too, spoils both.--This way of thinking prevails with

most healthy minds towards the beginning of the year 1790, all whose

heads are not turned by insane ambition and the mania for theorizing,

especially after six months of practical experience and knowing the

dangers, miscalculation, and vexations to which one is exposed in trying

to lead an eager, over-excited population.--Just at this time, December

1789, municipal law becomes established throughout the country; all the

mayors and municipal officers are elected almost immediately, and in the

following months, all administrators of districts and departments. The

interregnum has a length come to an end. Legal authorities now exist,

with legitimate and clearly-determined functions. Reasonable, honest

people gladly turn power over to those to whom it belongs, and certainly

do not dream of resuming it. All associations for temporary purposes are

at once disbanded for lack of an object, and if others are formed, it

is for the purpose of defending established institutions. This is the

object of the Federation, and, for six months, people embrace each other

and exchange oaths of fidelity.--After this, July 14, 1790, they

retire into private life, and I have no doubt that, from this date,

the political ambition of a large plurality of the French people is

satisfied, for, although Rousseau's denunciation of the social hierarchy

are still cited by them, they, at bottom, desire but little more than

the suppression of administrative brutality and state favoritism.[1207]

All this is obtained, and plenty of other things besides; the august

title of sovereign, the respect of the public authorities, honors to all

who wield a pen or make a speech, and, better still, actual sovereignty

in the appointment to office of all local land national administrators;

not only do the people elect their deputies, but every species of

functionary of every degree, those of commune, district, and department,

officers in the national guard, civil and criminal magistrates, bishops

and priests. Again, to ensure the responsibility of the elected to their

electors, the term of office fixed by law is a short one,[1208]

the electoral machine which summons the sovereign to exercise his

sovereignty being set agoing about every four months.--This was a good

deal, and too much, as the sovereign himself soon discovers. Voting so

frequently becomes unendurable; so many prerogatives end in getting to

be drudgery. Early in 1790, and after this date, the majority forego

the privilege of voting and the number of absentees becomes enormous.

At Chartres, in May, 1790,[1209] 1,447 out of 1,551 voters do not attend

preliminary meetings. At Besançon, in January, 1790, on the election of

mayor and municipal officers, 2,141 out of 3,200 registered electors are

recorded as absent from the polls, and 2,900 in the following month of

November.[1210] At Grenoble, in August and November of this year, out of

2,500 registered voters, more than 2,000 are noted as absent.[1211] At

Limoges, out of about the same number, there are only 150 voters. At

Paris, out of 81,400 electors, in August, 1790, 67,200 do not vote, and,

three months later, the number of absentees is 71,408.[1212]

Thus for every elector that votes, there are four, six, eight, ten, and

even sixteen that abstain from voting.--In the election of deputies,

the case is the same. At the primary meetings of 1791, in Paris, out of

81,200 registered names more than 74,000 fail to respond. In the Doubs,

three out of four voters stay away. In one of the cantons of the Côte

d'Or, at the close of the polls, only one-eighth of the electors remain

at the counting of the votes, while in the secondary meetings the

desertion is not less. At Paris, out of 946 electors chosen only 200 are

found to give their suffrage; at Rouen, out of 700 there are but

160, and on the last day of the ballot, only 60. In short, "in all

departments," says an orator in the tribune, "scarcely one out of five

electors of the second degree discharges his duty."

In this manner the majority hands in its resignation. Through inertia,

want of forethought, lassitude, aversion to the electoral hubbub, lack

of political preferences, or dislike of all the political candidates, it

shirks the task which the constitution imposes on it. Most certainly is

has no taste for the painstaking burden of being involved in a league

(of human rights). Men who cannot find time once in three months to

drop a ballot in the box, will not come three times a week to attend

the meetings of a club. Far from meddling with the government, they

abdicate, and as they refuse to elect it, they cannot undertake to

control it.

It is, on the other hand, just the opposite with the upstarts and

dogmatists who regard their royal privileges seriously. They not only

vote at the elections, but they mean to keep the authority they delegate

in their own hands. In their eyes every official is one of their

creatures, and remains accountable to them, for, in point of law, the

people may not part with their sovereignty, while, in fact, power has

proved so sweet that they are not disposed to part with it.[1213] During

six months preceding the regular elections, they have come to know,

comprehend, and test each other; they have held secret meetings;

a mutual understanding is arrived at, and henceforth, as other

associations disappear like fleeting bloom, theirs[1214] rise vigorously

on the abandoned soil. A club is established at Marseilles before the

end of 1789; each large town has one within the first six months of

1790, Aix in February, Montpellier in March, Nîmes in April, Lyons in

May, and Bordeaux in June.[1215] But their greatest increase takes place

after the Federation festival. Just when local gatherings merge into

that of the whole country, the sectarian Jacobins keep aloof, and form

leagues of their own. At Rouen, July 14, 1790, two surgeons, a printer,

a chaplain at the prison, a widowed Jewess, and four women or children

living in the house,--eight persons in all, pure and not to be

confounded with the mass,[1216] bind themselves together, and form a

distinct association. Their patriotism is of superior quality, and they

take a special view of the social compact;[1217] in swearing fealty to

the constitution they reserve to themselves the Rights of Man, and they

mean to maintain not only the reforms already effected, but to complete

the Revolution just begun.--During the Federation they have welcomed

and indoctrinated their fellows who, on quitting the capital or large

cities, become bearers of instructions to the small towns and hamlets;

they are told what the object of a club is, and how to form one, and,

everywhere, popular associations arise on the same plan, for the same

purpose, and bearing the same name. A month later, sixty of these

associations are in operation; three months later, one hundred; in

March, 1791, two hundred and twenty-nine, and in August, 1791, nearly

four hundred.[1218] After this date a sudden increase takes place, owing

to two simultaneous impulses, which scatter their seeds over the entire

territory.--On the one hand, at then end of July, 1791, all moderate

men, the friends of law and order, who still hold the clubs in check,

all constitutionalists, or Feuillants, withdraw from them and leave them

to exaggeration or the triviality of proposing motions; the political

tone immediately falls to that of the tavern and guard-house, so that

wherever one or the other is found, there is a political club. On the

other hand, a convocation of the electoral body is held at the same

date for the election of a new National Assembly, and for the renewal

of local governments; the prey being in sight, hunting-parties are

everywhere formed to capture it. In two months,[1219] six hundred new

clubs spring up; by the end of September they amount to one thousand,

and in June, 1792, to twelve hundred--as many as there are towns and

walled boroughs. On the fall of the throne, and at the panic caused by

the Prussian invasion, during a period of anarchy which equaled that of

July, 1789, there were, according to Roederer, almost as many clubs as

there were communes, 26,000, one for every village containing five or

six hot-headed, boisterous fellows, or roughs, (tape-durs), with a clerk

able to pen a petition.

After November, 1790,[1220] "every street in every town and hamlet,"

says a Journal of large circulation, "must have a club of its own. Let

some honest craftsman invite his neighbors to his house, where, with

using a shared candle, he may read aloud the decrees of the National

Assembly, on which he and his neighbors may comment. Before the meeting

closes, in order to enliven the company, which may feel a little

disturbed on account of Marat's articles, let him read the patriotic

oaths in 'Pêre Duchesne.'"[1221]--The advice is followed. At the

meetings in the club are read aloud pamphlets, newspapers, and

catechisms dispatched from Paris, the "Gazette Villageoise," the

"Journal du Soir," the "Journal de la Montagne," "Pêre Duchesne," the

"Révolutions de Paris," and "Laclos' Gazette." Revolutionary songs

are sung, and, if a good speaker happens to be present, a former

monk (oratorien), lawyer, or school-master, he pours out his stock of

phrases, speaking of the Greeks and Romans, proclaiming the regeneration

of the human species. One of them, appealing to the women, wants to see

"the declaration of the Rights of Man suspended on the walls of their

bedrooms as their principal ornament, and, should war break out,

these virtuous supporters, marching at the head of our armies like new

bacchantes with flowing hair, the wand of Bacchus in their hand."

Shouts of applause greet this sentiment. The minds of the listeners,

swept away by this gale of declamation, become overheated and ignite

through mutual contact; like half-consumed embers that would die out

if let alone, they kindle into a blaze when gathered together in a

heap.--Their convictions, at the same time, gain strength. There is

nothing like a coterie to make these take root. In politics, as

in religion, faith generating the church, the latter, in its turn,

nourishes faith. In the club, as in the private religious meeting, each

derives authority from the common unanimity, every word and action of

the whole tending to prove each in the right. And all the more because

a dogma which remains uncontested, ends in seeming incontestable; as

the Jacobin lives in a narrow circle, carefully guarded, no contrary

opinions find their way to him. The public, in his eyes, seems two

hundred persons; their opinion weighs on him without any counterpoise,

and, outside of their belief, which is his also, every other belief is

absurd and even culpable. Moreover, he discovers through this constant

system of preaching, which is nothing but flattery, that he is

patriotic, intelligent, virtuous, of which he can have no doubt,

because, before being admitted into the club, his civic virtues have

been verified and he carries a printed certificate of them in his

pocket.--Accordingly, he is one of an élite corps, a corps which,

enjoying a monopoly of patriotism, holds itself aloof, talks loud,

and is distinguished from ordinary citizens by its tone and way of

conducting things. The club of Pontarlier,[1222] from the first,

prohibits its members from using the common forms of politeness.

"Members are to abstain from saluting their fellow-citizens by removing

the hat, and are to avoid the phrase, 'I have the honor to be,' and

others of like import, in addressing persons."

A proper idea of one's importance is indispensable.

"Does not the famous tribune of the Jacobins in Paris inspire traitors

and impostors with fear? And do not anti-Revolutionaries return to dust

on beholding it?"

All this is true, in the provinces as well as at the capital, for,

scarcely is a club organized before it sets to work on the population.

In may of the large cities, in Paris, Lyons, Aix and Bordeaux, there

are two clubs in partnership,[1223] one, more or less respectable and

parliamentary, "composed partly of the members of the different branches

of the administration and specially devoted to purposes of general

utility," and the other, practical and active, made up of bar-room

politicians and club-haranguers, who indoctrinate workmen,

market-gardeners and the rest of the lower bourgeois class. The latter

is a branch of the former, and, in urgent cases, supplies it with

rioters.

"We are placed amongst the people," says one of these subaltern clubs,

"we read to them the decrees, and, through lectures and counsel, we

warn them against the publications and intrigues of the aristocrats.

We ferret out and track plotters and their machinations. We welcome and

advise all complainants; we enforce their demands, when just; finally,

we, in some way, attend to all details."

Thanks to these vulgar auxiliaries, but whose lungs and arms are strong,

the party soon becomes dominant; it has force and uses it, and,

denying that its adversaries have any rights, it re-establishes all the

privileges for its own advantage.[1224]

III.--How they view the liberty of the press.

Their political doings.

Let us consider its mode of procedure in one instance and upon a limited

field, the freedom of the press.[1225] In December, 1790, M. Etienne,

an engineer, whom Marat and Fréron had denounced as a spy in their

periodicals, brought a suit against them in the police court. The

numbers containing the libel were seized, the printers summoned to

appear, and M. Etienne claimed a public retraction or 25,000 francs

damages with costs. At this the two journalists, considering themselves

infallible as well as exempt from arrest, are indignant.

"It is of the utmost importance," writes Marat, "that the informer

should not be liable to prosecution as he is accountable only to the

public for what he says and does for the public good."

M. Etienne (surnamed Languedoc), therefore, is a traitor: "Monsieur

Languedoc, I advise you to keep your mouth shut; if I can have you hung

I will." M. Etienne, nevertheless, persists and obtains a first decision

in his favor. Fire and flame are at once belched forth by Marat and

Fréon:

"Master Thorillon," exclaims Fréron to the commissary of police, "you

shall be punished and held up to the people as an example; this infamous

decision must be canceled."--"Citizens," writes Marat, "go in a body

to the Hôtel-de-Ville and do not allow one of the guards to enter the

court-room. "--On the day of the trial, and in the most condescending

spirit, but two grenadiers are let in. Even these, however, are too many

and shouts from the Jacobin crowd arise "Turn 'em out! We rule here,"

upon which the two grenadiers withdraw. On the other hand, says Fréron

triumphantly, that there were in the court-room "sixty of the victors at

the Bastille led by the brave Santerre, who intended to interfere in

the trial."--They intervene, indeed, and first against the plaintiff. M.

Etienne is attacked at the entrance of the court-room and nearly knocked

down He is so maltreated that he is obliged to seek shelter in the

guard-room. He is spit upon, and they "move to cut off his ears." His

friends receive "hundreds of kicks," while he runs away, and the case is

postponed.--It is called up again several times, so no the judges

have to be restrained. A certain Mandart in the audience, author of a

pamphlet on "Popular Sovereignty," springs to his feet and, addressing

Bailly, mayor of Paris, and president of the tribunal, challenges the

court. As usual Bailly yields, attempting to cover up his weakness with

an honorable pretext: "Although a judge can be challenged only by the

parties to a suit, the appeal of one citizen is sufficient for me and

I leave the bench." The other judges, who are likewise insulted and

menaced, yield also, and, through a sophism which admirably illustrates

the times, they discover in the oppression to which the plaintiff is

subject a legal device by which they can give a fair color to their

denial of justice. M. Etienne having signified to them that neither

he nor his counsel could attend in court, because their lives were in

danger, the court decides that M. Etienne, "failing to appear in person,

or by counsel, is non-suited."--Victorious shouts at once proceed from

the two journalists, while their articles on the case disseminated

throughout France set a precedence contained in the ruling. Any Jacobin

may after this with impunity denounce, insult, and calumniate whomsoever

he pleases, sheltered as he is from the action of courts, and held

superior to the law.

Let us see, on the other hand, what liberty they allow their

adversaries. A fortnight before this, Mallet du Pan, a writer of great

ability, who, in the best periodical of the day, discusses questions

week after week free of all personalities, the most independent,

straight-forward, and honorable of men, the most eloquent and judicious

advocate of public order and true liberty, is waited upon by a

deputation from the Palais-Royal,[1226] consisting of about a dozen

well-dressed individuals, civil enough and not too ill-disposed, but

quite satisfied that they have a right to interfere. The conversation

which ensues shows to what extent the current political creed had turned

peoples' heads.

"One of the party, addressing me, informed me that he and his associates

were deputies of the Palais-Royal clubs, and that they had called

to notify me that I would do well to change my principles and stop

attacking the constitution, otherwise extreme violence would be brought

to bear on me. I replied that I recognized no authority but the law and

that of the courts; the law is your master and mine, and no respect is

shown to the constitution by assailing the freedom of the press."

"The constitution is the common will, resumed the spokesman. The law, is

the authority of the strongest. You are subject to the strongest and you

ought to submit. We notify you of the will of the nation and that is the

law.'"

Mallet du Pan stated to them that he was not in favor of the ancient

régime, but that he did approve of royal authority.

"Oh!" exclaimed all together, "we should be sorry not to have a king.

We respect the King and maintain his authority. But you are forbidden

to oppose the dominant opinion and the liberty which is decreed by the

National Assembly."

Mallet du Pan, apparently, knows more about this than they do, for he is

a Swiss by birth, and has lived under a republic for twenty years.

But this does not concern them. They persist all the same, five or six

talking at once, misconstruing the sense the words they use, and each

contradicting the other in point of detail, but all agreeing to impose

silence on him:

"You should not run counter to the popular will, for in doing this

you preach civil war, bring the assembly's decrees into contempt, and

irritate the nation."

Evidently, for them, they constitute the nation, or, more or less,

they represent it. Through this self-investiture they are at once

magistrates, censors, and police, while the scolded journalist is only

too glad, in his case, to have them stop at injunctions.--Three days

before this he is advised that a body of rioters in his neighborhood

"threatened to treat his house like that of M. de Castries," in which

everything had been smashed and thrown out the windows. At another time,

apropos of the suspensive or absolute veto; "four savage fellows came

to his domicile to warn him, showing him their pistols, that if he dared

write in behalf of M. Mounier he should answer for it with his life."

Thus, from the outset,

"just as the nation begins to enjoy the inestimable right of free

thought and free speech, factional tyrants lose no time in depriving

citizens of these, proclaiming to all that would maintain the integrity

of their consciences: Tremble, die, or believe as we do!"

After this, to impose silence on those who express what is offensive,

the crowd, the club, the section, decree and execute, each on its

own authority,[1227] searches, arrests, assaults, and, at length,

assassinations. During the month of June, 1792, "three decrees of

arrest and fifteen denunciations, two acts of affixing seals, four civic

invasions of his premises, and the confiscation of whatever belonged to

him in France" is the experience of Mallet du Pan. He passes four years

"without knowing with any certainty on going to bed whether he should

get out of it in the morning alive and free." Later on, if he escapes

the guillotine and the lantern, it is owing to exile. On the 10th

of August, Suleau, a conservative journalist, is massacred in the

street.--This shows how the party regards the freedom of the press.

Other liberties may be judged of by its encroachments on this domain.

Law, in its eyes, is null when it proves an obstacle, and when it

affords protection to adversaries; consequently there is no excess which

it does not sanction for itself; and no right which it does not refuse

to others.

There is no escape from the tyranny of the clubs. "That of Marseilles

has forced the city officials to resign;[1228] it has summoned the

municipal body to appear before it; it has ignored the authority of the

department, and has insulted the administrators of the law. Members of

the Orleans club have kept the national Supreme Court under supervision,

and taken part in its proceedings. Those of the Caen club have insulted

the magistrates, and seized and burnt the records of the proceedings

commenced against the destroyers of the statue of Louis XIV. At Alby

they have forcibly abstracted from the record-office the papers relating

to an assassin's trial, and burnt them." The club at Coutance gives the

deputies of its district to understand that "no reflections must be

cast on the laws of the people." That of Lyons stops an artillery

train, under the pretext that the ministry in office does not enjoy the

nation's confidence.--Thus does the club everywhere govern, or prepare

to govern. On the one hand, at the elections, it sets aside or supports

candidates; it alone votes, or, at least, controls the voting. In short,

the club is the elective power, and practically, if not legally, enjoys

the privileges of a political aristocracy. On the other hand, it assumes

to be a spontaneous police-board; it prepares and circulates the lists

which designate the ill-disposed, suspected, and lukewarm; it lodges

information against nobles whose sons have emigrated; against unsworn

priests who still reside in their former parishes, and against nuns,

"whose conduct is unconstitutional". It prompts, directs, and rebukes

local authorities; it is itself a supplemental, superior, and usurping

authority.--All at once, sensible men realize its character, and protest

against it.

"A body thus organized," says a petition,[1229] "exists solely for

arming one citizen against another.... Discussions take place there, and

denunciations are made under the seal of inviolable secrecy..... Honest

citizens, surrendered to the most atrocious calumny, are destroyed

without an opportunity of defending themselves. It is a veritable

Inquisition. It is the center of seditious publications, a school of

cabals and intrigue. If the citizens have to blush at the selection of

unworthy candidates, they are all due to this class of associations...

Composed of the excited and the incendiary, of those who aim to rule the

State," the club everywhere tends

"to a mastery of the popular opinion, to thwarting the municipalities,

to an intrusion of itself between these and the people," to an

usurpation of legal forms and to become a "colossus of despotism."

Vain complaints! The National Assembly, ever in alarm on its own

account, shields the popular club and accords it its favor or

indulgence. A journal of the party had recommended "the people to

form themselves into small platoons." These platoons, one by one,

are growing. Each borough now has a local oligarchy, an enlisted and

governing band. To create an army out of these scattered bands, simply

requires a staff and a central rallying-point. The central point and

the staff have both for a long time been ready in Paris, it is the

association of the "Friends of the Constitution."

IV.--Their rallying-points.

Origin and composition of the Paris Jacobin club.--It

affiliates with provincial clubs.--Its leaders.--The

fanatics.--The Intriguers.--Their object.--Their means.

No association in France, indeed, dates farther back, and has an equal

prestige. It was born before the Revolution, April 30, 1789.[1230]

At the assembly of the States-General in Brittany, the deputies from

Quimper, Hennebon, and Pontivy saw how important it was to vote in

concert, and they had scarcely reached Versailles when, in common with

others, they hired a hall, and, along with Mounier, secretary of the

States-General of Dauphiny, and other deputies from the provinces, at

once organized a union which was destined to last. Up to the 6th of

October, none but deputies were comprised in it; after that date, on

removing to Paris, in the library of the Jacobins, a convent in the

Rue St. Honoré, many well-known eminent men were admitted, such as

Condorcet, and then Laharpe, Chénier, Champfort, David, and Talma, among

the most prominent, with other authors and artists, the whole amounting

to about a thousand notable personages.--No assemblage could be more

imposing--two or three hundred deputies are on its benches, while its

rules and by-laws seem specially designed to gather a superior body

of men. Candidates for admission were proposed by ten members and

afterwards voted on by ballot. To be present at one of its meetings

required a card of admission. On one occasion, a member of the committee

of two, appointed to verify these cards, happens to be the young Duke

of Chartres. There is a committee on administration and a president.

Discussions took place with parliamentary formalities, and, according

to its status, the questions considered there were those under debate

in the National Assembly.[1231] In the lower hall, at certain hours,

workmen received instruction and the constitution was explained to them.

Seen from afar, no society seems worthier of directing public opinion;

near by, the case is different. In the departments, however, where

distance lends enchantment, and where old customs prevail implanted by

centralization, it is accepted as a guide because its seat is at the

capital. Its statutes, its regulations, its spirit, are all imitated;

it becomes the alma mater of other associations and they its adopted

daughters. It publishes, accordingly, a list of all clubs conspicuously

in its journal, together with their denunciations; it insists on their

demands; henceforth, every Jacobin in the remotest borough feels the

support and endorsement, not only of his local, club, but again of the

great club whose numerous offshoots reached the entire territory and

which extends its all-powerful protection to the least of its adherents.

In return for this protection, each associated club obeys the word

of command given at Paris, and to and from, from the center to the

extremities, a constant correspondence maintains the established

harmony. A vast political machine is thus set agoing, a machine with

thousands of arms, all working at once under one impulsion, and the

lever which the motions is in the hands of a few master spirits in the

Rue St. Honoré.

No machine could be more effective; never was one seen so well contrived

for manufacturing artificial, violent public opinion, for making this

appear to be national, spontaneous sentiment, for conferring the

rights of the silent majority on a vociferous minority, for forcing the

surrender of the government.

"Our tactics were very simple," says Grégoire[1232]. "It was understood

that one of us should take advantage of the first favorable opportunity

to propose some measure in the National Assembly that was sure to be

applauded by a small minority and cried down by the majority. But that

made no difference. The proposer demanded, which was granted, that the

measure should be referred to a committee in which its opponents hoped

to see it buried. Then the Paris Jacobins took hold of it. A circular

was issued, after which an article on the measure was printed in their

journal and discussed in three or four hundred clubs that were leagued

together. Three weeks after this the Assembly was flooded with petitions

from every quarter, demanding a decree of which the first proposal had

been rejected, and which is now passed by a great majority because a

discussion of it had ripened public opinion."

In other words, the Assembly must go ahead or it will be driven along,

in which process the worst expedients are the best. Those who conduct

the club, whether fanatics or intriguers, are fully agreed on this

point.

At the head of the former class is Duport, once a counselor in the

parliament, who, after 1788, knew how to turn riots to account. The

first revolutionary consultations were held in his house. He wants to

plough deep, and his devices for burying the ploughshare are such

that Sieyès, a radical, if there ever was one, dubbed it a "cavernous

policy."[1233] Duport, on the 28th of July, 1789, is the organizer of

the Committee on Searches, by which all favorably disposed informers

or spies form in his hands a supervisory police, which fast becomes

a police of provocation. He finds recruits in the lower hall of the

Jacobin club, where workmen come to be catechized every morning, while

his two lieutenants, the brothers Laurette, have only to draw on

the same source for a zealous staff in a choice selection of their

instruments. "Ten reliable men receive orders there daily;[1234] each

of these in turn gives his orders to ten more, belonging to different

battalions in Paris. In this way each battalion and section receives the

same insurrectionary orders, the same denunciations of the constituted

authorities, of the mayor of Paris, of the president of the department,

and of the commander of the National Guard," everything taking place

secretly. These are dark deeds: the leaders themselves call it 'the

Sabbath' and, along with fanatics they enlist ruffians. "They spread

the rumor that, on a certain day, there will be a great commotion with

assassinations and pillage, preceded by the payment of money distributed

from hand to hand by subaltern officers among those that can be relied

on, and that these bands are to assemble, as advertised, within a radius

of thirty or forty leagues."[1235]--One day, to provoke a riot, "half a

dozen men, who have arranged the thing, form a small group, in which one

of them holds forth vehemently; at once a crowd of about sixty others

gathers around them. Then the six men move on from place to place,

to form fresh groups making their apparent excitement pass for popular

irritation.--Another day, "about forty fanatics, with powerful lungs,

and four or five hundred paid men," scatter themselves around the

Tuileries, "yelling furiously," and, gathering under the windows of

the Assembly, "move resolutions to assassinate."--"Our ushers," says a

deputy to the Assembly, "whom you ordered to suppress this tumult, heard

reiterated threats of bringing you the heads of those the crowd wished

to proscribe. That very evening, in the Palais-Royal, "I heard a

subordinate leader of this factious band boast of having charged your

ushers to take this answer back, adding that there was time enough yet

for all good citizens to follow his advice."--The watchword of these

agitators is, are you true and the response is, a true man. Their pay

is twelve francs a day, and when in action they make engagements on the

spot at that rate. "From several depositions taken by officers of the

National Guard and at the mayoralty," it is ascertained that twelve

francs a day were tendered to "honest people to join in with those you

may have heard shouting, and some of them actually had the twelve francs

put into their hands."--The money comes from the coffers of the Duke of

Orleans, and they are freely drawn upon; at his death, with a property

amounting to 114,000,000 francs, his debts amount to 74,000,000.[1236]

Being one of the faction, he contributes to its expenses, and, being

the richest man in the kingdom, he contributes proportionately to his

wealth. Not because he is a party leader, for he is too effeminate,

too nervous; but "his petty council,"[1237] and especially one of his

private secretaries, Laclos, cherishes great designs for him, their

object being to make him lieutenant-general of the kingdom, afterwards

regent, and even king,[1238] so that they may rule in his name and

"share the profits."----In the mean time they turn his whims to the best

account, particularly Laclos, who is a kind of subordinate Macchiavelli,

capable of anything, profound, depraved, and long indulging his

fondness for monstrous combinations; nobody ever so coolly delighted in

indescribable compounds of human wickedness and debauchery. In politics,

as in romance, his department is "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Formerly

he maneuvered as an amateur with prostitutes and ruffians in the

fashionable world; now he maneuvers in earnest with the prostitutes

and ruffians of the sidewalks. On the 5th of October 1789, he is seen,

"dressed in a brown coat,"[1239] foremost among the women starting for

Versailles, while his hand[1240] is visible "in the Réveillon affair,

also in the burning of barriers and Châteaux," and in the widespread

panic which aroused all France against imaginary bandits. His

operations, says Malouet, "were all paid for by the Duke of Orleans";

he entered into them "for his own account, and the Jacobins for

theirs."--At this time their alliance is plain to everybody. On the 21st

of November, 1790, Laclos becomes secretary of the club, chief of the

department of correspondence, titular editor of its journal, and the

invisible, active, and permanent director of all its enterprises.

Whether actual demagogues or prompted by ambition, whether paid agents

or earnest revolutionaries, each group works on its own account, both

in concert, both in the same direction, and both devoted to the same

undertaking, which is the conquest of power by every possible means.

V.--Small number of Jacobins.

Sources of their power.--They form a league.--They have

faith.--Their unscrupulousness.--The power of the party

vested in the group which best fulfills these conditions.

At first sight their success seems doubtful, for they are in a

minority, and a very small one. At Besançon, in November, 1791, the

revolutionaries of every shade of opinion and degree, whether Girondists

or Montagnards, consist of about 500 or 600 out of 3,000 electors, and,

in November, 1792, of not more than the same number out of 6,000 and

7,000.[1241] At Paris, in November, 1791, there are 6,700 out of more

than 81,000 on the rolls; in October, 1792, there are less than 14,000

out of 160,000.[1242] At Troyes, in 1792, there are found only 400 or

500 out of 7,000 electors, and at Strasbourg the same number out of

8,000 electors.[1243] Accordingly only about one-tenth of the electoral

population are revolutionaries, and if we leave out the Girondists and

the semi-conservatives, the number is reduced by one-half. Towards the

end of 1792, at Besançon, scarcely more than 300 pure Jacobins are found

in a population of from 25,000 to 30,000, while at Paris, out of 700,000

inhabitants only 5,000 are Jacobins. It is certain that in the capital,

where the most excitement prevails, and where more of them are found

than elsewhere, never, even in a crisis and when vagabonds are paid and

bandits recruited, are there more than 10,000.[1244] In a large town

like Toulouse a representative of the people on missionary service wins

over only about 400 persons.[1245] Counting fifty or so in each small

town, twenty in each large borough, and five or six in each village, we

find, on an average, but one Jacobin to fifteen electors and National

Guards, while, taking the whole of France, all the Jacobins put

together do not amount to 300,000.[1246]--This is a small number for the

enslavement of six millions of able-bodied men, and for installing in

a country of twenty-six millions inhabitants a more absolute despotism

than that of an Asiatic sovereign. Force, however, is not measured

by numbers; they form a band in the midst of a crowd and, in this

disorganized, inert crowd, a band that is determined to push its way

like an iron wedge splitting a log.

And against sedition from within as well as conquest from without a

nation may only defend itself through the activities of its government,

which provides the indispensable instruments of common action. Let

it fail or falter and the great majority, undecided about what to do,

lukewarm and busy elsewhere, ceases to be a corps and disintegrates into

dust. Of the two governments around which the nation might have rallied,

the first one, after July 14, 1789, lies prostrate on the ground where

it slowly crumbles away. Now its ghost, which returns, is still

more odious because it brings with it the same senseless abuses and

intolerable burdens, and, in addition to these, a yelping pack of

claimants and recriminators. After 1790 it appears on the frontier more

arbitrary than ever at the head of a coming invasion of angry émigrés

and grasping foreigners.--The other government, that just constructed

by the Constituent Assembly, is so badly put together that the majority

cannot use it. It is not adapted to its hand; no political instrument at

once so ponderous and so helpless was ever seen. An enormous effort is

needed to set it in motion; every citizen is obliged to give it about

two days labor per week.[1247] Thus laboriously started but half

in motion, it poorly meets the various tasks imposed upon it--the

collection of taxes, public order in the streets, the circulation of

supplies, and security for consciences, lives and property. Toppled over

by its own action, another rises out of it, illegal and serviceable,

which takes its place and stands.--In a great centralized state whoever

possesses the head possesses the body. By virtue of being led, the

French have contracted the habit of letting themselves be led.[1248]

People in the provinces involuntarily turn their eyes to the capital,

and, on a crisis occurring, run out to stop the mailman to know what

government happens to have fallen, the majority accepts or submits to

it.--Because, in the first place, most of the isolated groups which

would like to overthrow it dare not engage in the struggle: it seems too

strong; through inveterate routine they imagine behind it that great,

distant France which, under its impulsion, will crush them with its

mass.[1249] In the second place, should a few isolated groups undertake

to overthrow it, they are not in a condition to keep up the struggle: it

is too strong. They are, indeed, not yet organized while it is fully

so, owing to the docile set of officials inherited from the government

overthrown. Under monarchy or republic the government clerk comes to

his office regularly every morning to dispatch the orders transmitted

to him.[1250] Under monarchy or republic the policeman daily makes

his round to arrest those against who he has a warrant. So long as

instructions come from above in the hierarchical order of things, they

are obeyed. From one end of the territory to the other, therefore, the

machine, with its hundred thousand arms, works efficiently in the hands

of those who have seized the lever at the central point. Resolution,

audacity, rude energy, are all that are needed to make the lever act,

and none of these are wanting in the Jacobin. [1251]

First, he has faith, and faith at all times "moves mountains.[1252]

"Take any ordinary party recruit, an attorney, a second-rate lawyer,

a shopkeeper, an artisan, and conceive, if you can, the extraordinary

effect of this doctrine on a mind so poorly prepared for it, so narrow,

so out of proportion with the gigantic conception which has mastered it.

Formed for the routine and the limited views of one in his position, he

is suddenly carried away by a complete system of philosophy, a theory

of nature and of man, a theory of society and of religion, a theory of

universal history,[1253] conclusions about the past, the present, and

the future of humanity, axioms of absolute right, a system of perfect

and final truth, the whole concentrated in a few rigid formulae as, for

example:

"Religion is superstition, monarchy is usurpation, priests are

impostors, aristocrats are vampires, and kings are so many tyrants and

monsters."

These ideas flood a mind of his stamp like a vast torrent precipitating

itself into a narrow gorge; they upset it, and, no longer under

self-direction, they sweep it away. The man is beside himself. A plain

bourgeois, a common laborer is not transformed with impunity into an

apostle or liberator of the human species.--For, it is not his country

that he would save, but the entire race. Roland, just before the 10th of

August, exclaims "with tears in his eyes, should liberty die in France,

she is lost the rest of the world forever! The hopes of philosophers

will perish! The whole earth will succumb to the cruelest

tyranny!"[1254]--Grégoire, on the meeting of the Convention, obtained a

decree abolishing royalty, and seemed overcome with the thought of the

immense benefit he had conferred on the human race.

"I must confess," said he, "that for days I could neither eat nor sleep

for excess of joy!"

One day a Jacobin in the tribune declared: "We shall be a nation of

gods!"--Fancies like these bring on lunacy, or, at all events, they

create disease. "Some men are in a fever all day long," said a companion

of St. Just; "I had it for twelve years..."[1255] Later on, "when

advanced in life and trying to analyze their experiences, they cannot

comprehend it."[1256] Another tells that, in his case, on a "crisis

occurring, there was only a hair's breadth between reason and

madness."--"When St. Just and myself," says Baudot, "discharged the

batteries at Wissenbourg, we were most liberally thanked for it. Well,

there was no merit in that; we knew perfectly well that the shot could

not do us any harm."--Man, in this exalted state, is unconscious of

obstacles, and, according to circumstances, rise above or falls below

himself, freely spilling his own blood as well as the blood of others,

heroic as a soldier and atrocious as a civilian; he is not to be

resisted in either direction for his strength increases a hundredfold

through his fury, and, on his tearing wildly through the streets, people

get out of his way as on the approach of a mad bull.

If they do not jump aside of their own accord, he will run at them,

for he is unscrupulous as well as furious.--In every political struggle

certain kinds of actions are prohibited; at all events, if the majority

is sensible and wishes to act fairly, it repudiates them for itself.

It will not violate any particular law, for, if one law is broken,

this tends to the breaking of others. It is opposed to overthrowing

an established government because every interregnum is a return to

barbarism. It is opposed to the element of popular insurrection because,

in such a resort, public power is surrendered to the irrationality of

brutal passion. It is opposed to a conversion of the government into

a machine for confiscation and murder because it deems the natural

function of government to be the protection of life and property.--The

majority, accordingly, in confronting the Jacobin, who allows

himself all this,[1257] is like a unarmed man facing one who is fully

armed.[1258] The Jacobin, on principle, holds the law in contempt,

for the only law, which he accepts is arbitrary mob rule. He has no

hesitation in proceeding against the government because, in his eyes,

the government is a clerk which the people always has the right to

remove. He welcomes insurrection because, through it, the people recover

their sovereignty with no limitations.--Moreover, as with casuists, "the

end justifies the means."[1259] "Let the colonies perish," exclaims

a Jacobin in the Constituent Assembly, "rather than sacrifice a

principle." "Should the day come," says St. Just, "when I become

convinced that it is impossible to endow the French with mild, vigorous,

and rational ways, inflexible against tyranny and injustice, that day

I will stab myself." Meanwhile he guillotines the others. "We will make

France a graveyard," exclaimed Carrier, "rather than not regenerating

it our own way!"[1260] They are ready to risk the ship in order to seize

the helm. From the first, they organize street riots and jacqueries in

the rural districts, they let loose on society prostitutes and ruffians,

vile and savage beasts. Throughout the struggle they take advantage of

the coarsest and most destructive passions, of the blindness, credulity,

and rage of an infatuated crowd, of dearth, of fear of bandits, of

rumors of conspiracy, and of threats of invasion. At last, having seized

power through a general upheaval, they hold on to it through terror and

executions.--Straining will to the utmost, with no curb to check it,

steadfastly believing in its own right and with utter contempt for

the rights of others, with fanatical energy and the expedients of

scoundrels, a minority may, in employing such forces, easily master and

subdue a majority. So true is that, with faction itself, that victory is

always on the side of the group with the strongest faith and the least

scruples. Four times between 1789 and 1794, political gamblers take

their seats at a table where the stake is supreme power, and four times

in succession the "Impartiaux," the "Feuillants," the "Girondins," and

the "Dantonists," form the majority and lose the game. Four times in

succession the majority has no desire to break customary rules, or, at

the very least, to infringe on any rule universally accepted, to wholly

disregard the teachings of experience, the letter of the law, the

precepts of humanity, or the suggestions of pity.--The minority, on the

contrary, is determined beforehand to win at any price; its views and

opinion are correct, and if rules are opposed to that, so much the

worse for the rules. At the decisive moment, it claps a pistol to its

adversary's head, overturns the table, and collects the stakes.

*****

[Footnote 1201: See the figures further on.]

[Footnote 1202: Mallet du Pan, II. 491. Danton, in 1793, said one day to

one of his former brethren an advocate to the Council.: "The old régime

made a great mistake. It brought me up on a scholarship in Plessis

College. I was brought up with nobles, who were my comrades, and with

whom I lived on familiar terms. On completing my studies, I had nothing;

I was poor and tried to get a place. The Paris bar was very expensive,

and it required extensive efforts to be accepted. I could not get into

the army, having neither rank nor patronage. There was no opening for me

in the Church. I could purchase no employment, for I hadn't a cent. My

old companions turned their backs on me. I remained without a situation,

and only after many long years did I succeed in buying the post of

advocate in the Royal Council. The Revolution came, when I, and all like

me, threw themselves into it. The ancient régime forced us to do so, by

providing a good education for us, without providing an opening for

our talents." This applies to Robespierre, C. Desmoulins, Brissot,

Vergniaud, and others.]

[Footnote 1203: Religious order founded in Rome in 1654 by saint

Philippe Neri and who dedicated their efforts to preaching and the

education of children. (SR)]

[Footnote 1204: Dauban, "La Demagogie à Paris en 1793," and "Paris in

1794." Read General Henriot's orders of the day in these two works.

Comparton, "Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionaire de Paris," a letter by

Trinchard, I. 306 (which is here given in the original, on account of

the ortography): "Si tu nest pas toute seulle et que le compagnion soit

a travailler tu peus ma chaire amie ventir voir juger 24 mesieurs tous

si devent président ou conselier au parlement de Paris et de Toulouse.

Je t'ainvite a prendre quelque chose aven de venir parcheque

nous naurons pas fini de 3 hurres. Je t'embrase ma chaire amie et

épouge."-Ibid. II. 350, examination of André Chenier.--Wallon, "Hist. Du

Trib. Rév.", I, 316. Letter by Simon. "Je te coitte le bonjour mois est

mon est pousse."]

[Footnote 1205: Cf. "The Revolution," page 60.]

[Footnote 1206: Cf. On this point the admissions of the honest Bailly

("Mémoires," passim)]

[Footnote 1207: Rétif de la Bretonne: "Nuits de Paris," 11éme nuit, p.

36. "I lived in Paris twenty-five years as free as air. All could enjoy

as much freedom as myself in two ways--by living uprightly, and by

not writing pamphlets against the ministry. All else was permitted, my

freedom never being interfered with. It is only since the Revolution

that a scoundrel could succeed in having me arrested twice."]

[Footnote 1208: Cf. "The Revolution," vol. I. p.264.]

[Footnote 1209: Moniteur, IV. 495. (Letter from Chartres, May 27,

1790.)]

[Footnote 1210: Sauzay, I.147, 195 218, 711.]

[Footnote 1211: Mercure de France, numbers of August 7, 14, 26, and Dec.

18, 1790.]

[Footnote 1212: Ibid. number of November 26, 1790. Pétion is elected

mayor of Paris by 6,728 out of 10,632 voters. "Only 7,000 voters

are found at the election of the electors who elect deputies to the

legislature. Primary and municipal meetings are deserted in the same

proportion."---Moniteur, X. 529 (Number of Dec. 4, 1791). Manuel is

elected Attorney of the Commune by 3,770 out of 5,311 voters.--Ibid.

XI. 378. At the election of municipal officers for Paris, Feb.10 and 11,

1792, only 3,787 voters present themselves; Dussault, who obtains the

most votes, has 2,588; Sergent receives 1,648.--Buchez et Roux, XI. 238

(session of Aug.12, 1791). Speech by Chapelier; "Archives Nationales,"

F.6 (carton), 21. Primary meeting of June 13, 1791, canton of Bèze (Cote

d'Or). Out of 460 active citizens, 157 are present, and, on the final

ballot, 58.--Ibid., F7, 3235, (January, 1792). Lozerre: "1,000 citizens,

at most, out of 25,000, voted in the primary meetings. At. Saint-Chèly,

capital of the district, a few armed ruffians succeed in forming the

primary meeting and in substituting their own election for that of eight

parishes, whose frightened citizens who withdrew from it... At Langogne,

chief town of the canton and district, out of more than 400 active

citizens, 22 or 23 at most--just what one would suppose them to be when

their presence drove away the rest--alone formed the meeting."]

[Footnote 1213: This power, with its gratifications, is thus shown,

Beugnot, I. 140, 147. "On the publication of the decrees of August

4, the committee of surveillance of Montigny, reinforced by all the

patriots of the country, came down like a torrent on the barony of

Choiseul, and exterminated all the hares and partridges... They fished

out the ponds. At Mandres we find, in the best room of the inn, a dozen

peasants gathered around a table decked with tumblers and bottles,

amongst which we noticed an inkstand, pens, and something resembling a

register.--'I don't know what they are about,' said the landlady,

'but there they are, from morning till night, drinking, swearing, and

storming away at everybody, and they say that they are a committee.'"]

[Footnote 1214: Albert Babeau, I. 206, 242.--The first meeting of the

revolutionary committee of Troyes in the cemetery of St. Jules, August,

1789. This committee becomes the only authority in the town, after the

assassination of the mayor, M. Huez (Sept 10, 1790).]

[Footnote 1215: "The French Revolution," Vol.I. pp. 235, 242,

251.--Buchez et Roux, VI, 179.--Guillon de Montléon, "Histoire de la

Ville de Lyon pendant la Revolution," I. 87.--Guadet, "Les Girondins."]

[Footnote 1216: Michelet, "Histoire de la Révolution," II.47.]

[Footnote 1217: The rules of the Paris club state that members must

"labor to establish and strengthen the Constitution, according to the

spirit of the club."]

[Footnote 1218: Mercure de France, Aug.11, 1790.--"Journal de la Société

des Amis la Constitution," Nov.21, 1790.--Ibid., March, 1791.--Ibid.,

March, 1791.--Ibid., Aug.14, 1791 (speech by Roederer)--Buchez et Roux,

XI. 481.]

[Footnote 1219: Michelet, II. 407.--Moniteur, XII 347 (May 11, 1792),

article by Marie-Joseph Chénier, according to whom 800 Jacobin clubs

exist at this date.--Ibid., XII. 753 (speech by M. Delfaux session of

June 25, 1792).--Roederer, preface to his translation of Hobbes.]

[Footnote 1220: "Les Révolutions de Paris," by Prudhomme, number 173.]

[Footnote 1221: Constant, "Histoire d'un Club Jacobin en province,

"passim (Fontainbleau Club, founded May 5, 1791).--Albert Babeau, I.434

and following pages (foundation of the Troyes Club, Oct 1790).--Sauzay,

I 206 and following pages (foundation of the Besançon Club Aug. 28,

1790).--Ibid., 214 (foundation of the Pontarlier Club, March, 1791)]

[Footnote 1222: Sauzay, I. 214 (April 2, 1791)]

[Footnote 1223: "Journal des Amis de la Constitution," I. 534 (Letter

of the "Café National" Club of Bordeaux, Jan.29, 1791). Guillon de

Monthléon, I. 88.-"The French Revolution," vol. I. 128, 242.]

[Footnote 1224: Here we have a complete system of propaganda and

organizational tactics identical to those used by the NAZIS,

the Marxist-Leninists and other 'children' of the original

communist-Jacobins. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1225: Eugène Hatin, "Histoire politique et littéraire de la

presse," IV. 210 (with Marat's text in "L'Ami L'Ami du peuple," and

Fréron's in "l'Orateur du peuple").]

[Footnote 1226: Mercure de France, Nov. 27, 1790.]

[Footnote 1227: Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791 (article by Mallet du

Pan). "On the strength of a denunciation, the authors of which I knew,

the Luxembourg section on the 21st of June, the day of the king's

departure, sent commissaries and a military detachment to my domicile.

There was no judicial verdict, no legal order, either of police-court,

or justice of the peace, no examination whatever preceding this

mission... The employees of the section overhauled my papers, books and

letters, transcribing some of the latter, and carried away copies and

the originals, putting seals on the rest, which were left in charge of

two fusiliers."]

[Footnote 1228: Mercure de France, Aug. 27, 1791 (report by

Duport-Dutertre, Minister of Justice).--Ibid., Cf. numbers of Sept. 8,

1790, and March 12, 1791.]

[Footnote 1229: Sauzay, I.208. (Petition of the officers of the National

Guard of Besançon, and observations of the municipal body, Sept. 15,

1790.--Petition of 500 national guards, Dec. 15, 1790).--Observations

of the district directory, which directory, having authorized the club,

avows that "three-quarters" of the national guard and a portion of

other citizens "are quite hostile to it."--Similar petitions at Dax,

Chalons-sur-Saône, etc., against the local club.]

[Footnote 1230: "Lettres" (manuscript) of M. Roullé, deputy from

Pontivy, to his constituents (May 1, 1789).]

[Footnote 1231: A rule of the association says: "The object of the

association is to discuss questions beforehand which are to be decided

by the National Assembly,... and to correspond with associations of the

same character which may be formed in the kingdom."]

[Footnote 1232: Grégoires, "Mémoires," I. 387.]

[Footnote 1233: Malouet, II. 248. "I saw counselor Duport, who was a

fanatic, and not a bad man, with two or three others like him, exclaim:

'Terror! Terror! What a pity that it has become necessary!'"]

[Footnote 1234: Lafayette, "Mémoires" (in relation to Messieurs de

Lameth and their friends).--According to a squib of the day: "What

Duport thinks, Barnave says and Lameth does"--This trio was named

the Triumvirate. Mirabeau, a government man, and a man to whom brutal

disorder was repugnant, called it the Triumgueusat. (A trinity of shabby

fellows)]

[Footnote 1235: Moniteur, V.212, 583. (Report and speech of Dupont de

Nemours, sessions of July 31 and September 7, 1790.)--Vagabonds and

ruffians begin to play their parts in Paris on the 27th of April, 1789

(the Réveillon affair).--Already on the 30th of July, 1789, Rivarol

wrote: "Woe to whoever stirs up the dregs of a nation! The century

Enlightenment has not touched the populace!"--In the preface of his

future dictionary, he refers to his articles of this period: "There may

be seen the precautions I took to prevent Europe from attributing to the

French nation the horrors committed by the crowd of ruffians which

the Revolution and the gold of a great personage had attracted to

the capital."--"Letter of a deputy to his constituents," published by

Duprez, Paris, in the beginning of 1790 (cited by M. de Ségur, in the

Revue de France, September 1, 1880). It relates to the maneuvers for

forcing a vote in favor of confiscating clerical property. "Throughout

All-Saints' day (November 1, 1789), drums were beaten to call together

the band known here as the Coadjutors of the Revolution. On the morning

of November 2, when the deputies went to the Assembly, they found the

cathedral square and all the avenues to the archbishop's palace, where

the sessions were held, filled with an innumerable crowd of people. This

army was composed of from 20,000 to 25,000 men, of which the greater

number had no shoes or stockings; woollen caps and rags formed their

uniform and they had clubs instead of guns. They overwhelmed the

ecclesiastical deputies with insults, as they passed on their way, and

shouted that they would massacre without mercy all who would not vote

for stripping the clergy... Near 300 deputies who were opposed to the

motion did not dare attend the Assembly... The rush of ruffians in the

vicinity of the hall, their comments and threats, excited fears of this

atrocious project being carried out. All who did not feel courageous

enough to sacrifice themselves, avoided going to the Assembly." (The

decree was adopted by 378 votes against 346.)]

[Footnote 1236: Cf. "The Ancient Régime," p. 51.]

[Footnote 1237: Malouet, 1.247, 248.--"Correspondence (manuscript) of M.

de Staël," Swedish Ambassador, with his court, copied from the archives

at Stockholm by M. Léouzon-le-Duc. Letter from M. Staël of April 21,

1791: "M. Laclos, secret agent of this wretched prince, (is a) clever

and subtle intriguer." April 24: "His agents are more to be feared

than himself. Through his bad conduct, he is more of a nuisance than a

benefit to his party."]

[Footnote 1238: Especially after the king's flight to Varennes, and

at the time of the affair in the Champ de Mars. The petition of the

Jacobins was drawn up by Laclos and Brissot.]

[Footnote 1239: Investigations at the Chatelet, testimony of Count

d'Absac de Ternay.]

[Footnote 1240: Malouet I. 247, 248. This evidence is conclusive. "Apart

from what I saw myself," says Malouet, "M. de Montmorin and M. Delessart

communicated to me all the police reports of 1789 and 1790."]

[Footnote 1241: Sauzay, II.79 (municipal election, Nov.15, 1791).--III.

221 (mayoralty election, November, 1792). The half-way moderates had 237

votes, and the sans-culottes, 310.]

[Footnote 1242: Mercure de France, Nov. 26, 1791 (Pétion was elected

mayor, Nov.17, by 6,728 votes out of 10,682 voters).--Mortimer-Ternaux,

V. 95. (Oct 4, 1792, Pétion was elected mayor by 13,746 votes out

of 14,137 voters. He declines.--Oct. 21, d'Ormessan, a moderate, who

declines to stand, has nevertheless, 4,910 votes. His competitor,

Lhuillier, a pure Jacobin, obtains only 4,896.)]

[Footnote 1243: Albert Babeau, II. 15. (The 32,000 inhabitants of Troyes

indicate about 7,000 electors. In December, 1792, Jacquet is elected

mayor by 400 votes out of 555 voters. A striking coincidence is found

in there being 400 members of the Troyes club at this time.)--Carnot,

Mémoires," I. 181. "Dr. Bollmann, who passed through Strasbourg in 1792,

relates that out of 8,000 qualified citizens, only 400 voters presented

themselves.]

[Footnote 1244: Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 21. In February, 1793, Pache is

elected mayor of Paris by 11,881 votes.--Journal de Paris, number

185. Henriot, July 2, 1793, is elected commander-in-chief of the Paris

national guard, by 9,084, against 6,095 votes given for his competitor,

Raffet. The national guard comprises at this time 110,000 registered

members, besides 10,000 gendarmes and federates. Many of Henriot's

partisans, again, voted twice. (Cf. on the elections and the number of

Jacobins at Paris, chapters XI. and XII. of this volume.)]

[Footnote 1245: Michelet, VI. 95. "Almost all (the missionary

representatives) were supported by only, the smallest minority. Baudot,

for instance, at Toulouse, in 1793, had but 400 men for him."]

[Footnote 1246: For example, "Archives Nationales," Fl 6, carton 3.

Petition of the inhabitants of Arnay-le-Duc to the king (April, 1792),

very insulting, employing the most familiar language; about fifty

signatures.--Sauzay, III. ch. XXXV. and XXXIV. (details of

local elections).--Ibid., VII. 687 (letter of Grégoire, Dec. 24,

1796).--Malouet, II. 531 (letter by Malouet, July 22, 1779). Malouet and

Grégoire agree on the number 300,000. Marie-Joseph Chénier (Moniteur,

XII, 695, 20 avril 1792) carries it up to 400,000.]

[Footnote 1247: Cf. "The French Revolution," Vol. I. book II. Ch. III.]

[Footnote 1248: Cf. "The Ancient Régime," p.352.]

[Footnote 1249: "Memoires de Madame de Sapinaud," p. 18. Reply of M. de

Sapinaud to the peasants of La Vendée, who wished him to act as their

general: "My friends, it is the earthen pot against the iron pot. What

could we do? One department against eighty-two--we should be smashed!"]

[Footnote 1250: Malouet, II. 241. "I knew a clerk in one of the bureaus,

who, during these sad days, September, 1792), never missed going. as

usual, to copy and add up his registers. Ministerial correspondence

with the armies and the provinces followed its regular course in regular

forms. The Paris police looked after supplies and kept its eye on

sharpers, while blood ran in the streets."--Cf. on this mechanical need

and inveterate habit of receiving orders from the central authority,

Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," 490: "Dumouriez' soldiers said to him: 'F--,

papa general, get the Convention to order us to march on Paris and

you'll see how we will make mince-meat of those b--in the Assembly!'"]

[Footnote 1251: With want great interest did any aspiring radical

politicians read these lines, whether the German socialist from Hitler

learned so much or Lenin during his long stay in Paris around 1906.

Taine maybe thought that he was arming decent men to better understand

and defend the republic against a new Jacobin onslaught while, in fact,

he provided them with an accurate recipe for repeating the revolution.

(SR).]

[Footnote 1252: At. Matthew, 17:20. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1253: Buchez et Roux, XXVIII 55. Letter by Brun-Lafond, a

grenadier in the national guard, July 14, 1793, to a friend in the

provinces, in justification of the 31st of May. The whole of this letter

requires to be read. In it are found the ordinary ideas of a Jacobin in

relation to history: "Can we ignore, that it is ever the people of Paris

which, through its murmurings and righteous insurrections against the

oppressive system of many of our kings, has forced them to entertain

milder sentiments regarding the relief of the French people, and

principally of the tiller of the soil?.. Without the energy of Paris,

Paris and France would now be inhabited solely by slaves, while this

beautiful soil would present an aspect as wild and deserted as that

of the Turkish empire or that of Germany," which has led us "to confer

still greater lustre on this Revolution, by re-establishing on earth

the ancient Athenian and other Grecian republics in all their purity.

Distinctions among the early people of the earth did not exist; early

family ties bound people together who had no ancient founders or origin;

they had no other laws in their republics but those which, so to say,

inspired them with those sentiments of fraternity experienced by them in

the cradle of primitive populations."]

[Footnote 1254: Barbaroux, "Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban), 336.--Grégoire,

"Mémoires," I. 410.]

[Footnote 1255: "La Révolution Française," by Quinet (extracts from the

unpublished "Mémoires" of Baudot), II. 209, 211, 421, 620.--Guillon de

Montléon I. 445 (speech by Chalier, in the Lyons Central Club, March 23,

1793). "They say that the sans-culottes will go on spilling their blood.

This is only the talk of aristocrats. Can a sans-culotte be reached in

that quarter? Is he not invulnerable, like the gods whom he replaces on

this earth?"--Speech by David, in the Convention, on Barra and

Viala: "Under so fine a government woman will bring forth without

pain."--Mercier "Le Nouveau Paris," I. 13. "I heard (an orator) exclaim

in one of the sections, to which I bear witness: 'Yes, I would take my

own head by the hair, cut it off, and, presenting it to the despot, I

would say to him: Tyrant, behold the act of a free man!'"]

[Footnote 1256: Now, one hundred years later, I consider the tens of

thousands of western intellectuals, who, in their old age, seem unable

to understand their longtime fascination with Lenin, Stalin and Mao,

I cannot help to think that history might be holding similar future

surprises in store for us. (SR).]

[Footnote 1257: And my lifetime, our Jacobins the communists, have

including in their register the distortion, the lie and slander as a

regular tool of their trade. (SR).]

[Footnote 1258: Lafayette, "Mémoires," I.467 (on the Jacobins of

August 10, 1792). "This sect, the destruction of which was desired by

nineteen-twentieths of France."--Durand-Maillan, 49. The aversion to

the Jacobins after June 20, 1792, was general. "The communes of France,

everywhere wearied and dissatisfied with popular clubs, would gladly

have got rid of them, that they might no longer be under their

control."]

[Footnote 1259: The words of Leclerc, a deputy of the Lyons committee in

the Jacobin Club at Paris May 12, 1793. "Popular machiavelianism must be

established... Everything impure must disappear off the French soil...

I shall doubtless be regarded as a brigand, but there is one way to get

ahead of calumny, and that is to exterminate the calumniators."]

[Footnote 1260: Buchez et Roux, XXXIV. 204 (testimony of François

Lameyrie). "Collection of authentic documents for the History of the

Revolution at Strasbourg," II. 210 (speech by Baudot, Frimaire 19, year

II., in the Jacobin club at Strasbourg). "Egoists, the heedless, the

enemies of liberty, the enemies of all nature should not be regarded

as her children. Are not all who oppose the public good, or who do not

share it, in the same case? Let us, then, utterly destroy them... Were

they a million, would not one sacrifice the twenty-fourth part of

one's self to get rid of a gangrene which might infect the rest of the

body?..."For these reasons, the orator thinks that every man who is not

wholly devoted to the Republic must be put to death. He states that the

Republic should at one blow cause the instant disappearance of

every friend to kings and feudalism.--Beaulieu, "Essai," V. 200. M.

d'Antonelle thought, "like most of the revolutionary clubs, that, to

constitute a republic, an approximate equality of property should

be established; and to do this, a third of the population should be

suppressed."--"This was the general idea among the fanatics of the

Revolution. "--Larevellière-Lépaux, "Mémoires," I.150 "Jean Bon St.

André... suggested that for the solid foundation of the Republic in

France, the population should be reduced one-half." He is violently

interrupted by Larevellière-Lépeaux, but continues and insists on

this.--Guffroy, deputy of the Pas-de-Calais, proposed in his journal a

still larger amputation; he wanted to reduce France to five millions of

inhabitants.]

BOOK SECOND. THE FIRST STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.

CHAPTER I. THE JACOBINS COME INTO IN POWER.

The Elections Of 1791.--Proportion Of Places Gained By Them.

In June, 1791, and during the five following months, the class of active

citizens[2101] are convoked to elect their representatives, which, as we

know, according to the law, are of every kind and degree. In the first

place, there are 40,000 members of electoral colleges of the second

degree and 745 deputies. Next, there are one-half of the administrators

of 83 departments, one-half of the administrators of 544 districts,

one-half of the administrators of 41,000 communes, and finally, in each

municipality, the mayor and syndic-attorney. Then in each department

they have to elect the president of the criminal court and the

prosecuting-attorney, and, throughout France, officers of the National

Guard; in short, almost the entire body of the agents and depositories

of legal authority. The garrison of the public citadel is to be renewed,

which is the second and even the third time since 1789.--At each time

the Jacobins have crept into the place, in small bands, but this time

they enter in large bodies. Pétion becomes mayor of Paris, Manual,

syndic-attorney, and Danton the deputy of Manuel. Robespierre is elected

prosecuting-attorney in criminal cases. The very first week,[2102] 136

new deputies enter their names on the club's register. In the Assembly

the party numbers about 250 members. On passing all the posts of the

fortress in review, we may estimate the besiegers as occupying one-third

of them, and perhaps more. Their siege for two years has been carried on

with unerring instinct, the extraordinary spectacle presenting itself of

an entire nation legally overcome by a troop of insurgents.[2103]

I.--Their siege operations.

Means used by them to discourage the majority of electors

and conservative candidates.--Frequency of elections.--

Obligation to take the oath.

First of all, they clear the ground, and through the decrees forced out

of the Constituent Assembly, they keep most of the majority away from

the polls.--On the one hand, under the pretext of better ensuring

popular sovereignty, the elections are so multiplied, and held so near

together, as to demand of each active citizen one-sixth of his time;

such an exaction is very great for hard-working people who have a trade

or any occupation,[2104] which is the case with the great mass; at all

events, with the useful and sane portion of the population. Accordingly,

as we have seen, it stays away from the polls, leaving the field open

to idlers or fanatics.[2105]--On the other hand, by virtue of the

constitution, the civic oath, which includes the ecclesiastical oath, is

imposed on all electors, for, if any one takes the former and reserves

the latter, his vote is thrown out: in November, in the Doubs, the

municipal elections of thirty-three communes are invalidated solely

on this pretext.[2106] Not only forty thousand ecclesiastics are thus

rendered unsworn (insermentés), but again, all scrupulous Catholics lose

the right of suffrage, these being by far the most numerous in Artois,

Doubs and the Jura, in the Lower and Upper Rhine district,[2107] in the

two Sévres and la Vendée, in the Lower Loire, Morbihan, Finisterre and

Côtes du Nord, in Lozère and Ardèche, without mentioning the southern

departments.[2108] Thus, aided by the law which they have rendered

impracticable, the Jacobins, on the one hand, are rid of all sensible

voters in advance, counting by millions; and, on the other, aided by a

law which they have rendered intolerant, they are rid of the Catholic

vote which counts by hundreds of thousands. On entering the electoral

lists, consequently, thanks to this double exclusion, they find

themselves confronted by only the smallest number of electors.

II.--Annoyances and dangers of public elections.

The constituents excluded from the Legislative body.

Operations must now be commenced against these, and a first expedient

consists in depriving them of their candidates. The obligation of

taking the oath has already partly provided for this, in Lozère all the

officials send in their resignations rather than take the oath;[2109]

here are men who will not be candidates at the coming elections, for

nobody covets a place which he was forced to abandon; in general, the

suppression of all party candidatures is effected in no other way than

by making the post of a magistrate distasteful.--The Jacobins have

successfully adhered to this principle by promoting and taking the lead

in innumerable riots against the King, the officials and the clerks,

against nobles, ecclesiastics, corn-dealers and land-owners, against

every species of public authority whatever its origin. Everywhere the

authorities are constrained to tolerate or excuse murders, pillage and

arson, or, at the very least, insurrections and disobedience. For two

years a mayor runs the risk of being hung on proclaiming martial law;

a captain is not sure of his men on marching to protect a tax levy;

a judge on the bench is threatened if he condemns the marauders who

devastate the national forests. The magistrate, whose duty it is to see

that the law is respected, is constantly obliged to strain the law,

or allow it to be strained; if refractory, a summary blow dealt by the

local Jacobins forces his legal authority to yield to their illegal

dictate, so that he has to resign himself to being either their

accomplice or their puppet. Such a rôle is intolerable to a man of

feeling or conscience. Hence, in 1790 and 1791, nearly all the prominent

and reputable men who, in 1789, had seats in the Hôtels-de-villes, or

held command in the National Guard, all country-gentlemen, chevaliers

of St. Louis, old parliamentarians, the upper bourgeoisie and large

landed-proprietors, retire into private life and renounce public

functions which are no longer tenable. Instead of offering themselves to

public suffrage they avoid it, and the party of order, far from electing

the magistracy, no longer even finds candidates for it.

Through an excess of precaution, its natural leaders have been legally

disqualified, the principal offices, especially those of deputy and

minister, being interdicted beforehand to the influential men in whom we

find the little common sense gained by the French people during the past

two years.-In the month of June, 1779, even after the irreconcilables

had parted company with the "Right," there still remained in the

Assembly about 700 members who, adhering to the constitution but

determined to repress disorder, would have formed a sensible legislature

had they been re-elected. All of these, except a very small group of

revolutionaries, had learned something by experience, and, in the last

days of their session, two serious events, the king's flight and the

riot in the Champ de Mars, had made them acquainted with the defects of

their machinery. With this executive instrument in their hands for three

months, they see that it is racked, that things are tottering, and

that they themselves are being run over by fanatics and the crowd.

They accordingly attempt to put on a drag, and several even think of

retracing their steps.[2110] They cut loose from the Jacobins; of

the three or four hundred deputies on the club list in the Rue St.

Honoré[2111] but seven remain; the rest form at the Feuillants a

distinct opposition club, and at their head are the first founders,

Duport, the two Lameths, Barnave, the authors of the constitution,

all the fathers of the new régime.[2112] In the last decree of the

Constituent Assembly they loudly condemn the usurpations of popular

associations, and not only interdict to these all meddling in

administrative or political matters, but likewise any collective

petition or deputation.[2113]--Here may the friends of order find

candidates whose chances are good, for, during two years and more, each

in his own district is the most conspicuous, the best accredited, and

the most influential man there; he stands well with his electors on

account of the popularity of the constitution he has made, and it is

very probable that his name would rally to it a majority of votes.-The

Jacobins, however, have foreseen this danger: Four months earlier,[2114]

with the aid of the Court, which never missed an opportunity to ruin

itself and everything else,[2115] they made the most of the grudges

of the conservatives and the weariness of the Assembly. Tired and

disgusted, in a fit of mistaken selflessness, the Assembly, through

enthusiasm and taken by surprise, passes an act declaring all its

members ineligible for election to the next Assembly dismissing in

advance the leaders of the gentlemen's party.

III.--The friends of order deprived of the right of free assemblage.

Violent treatment of their clubs in Paris and the

provinces.--Legal prevention of conservative associations.

If the latter (the honest men of the Right), in spite of so many

drawbacks, attempt a struggle, they are arrested at the very first step.

For, to enter upon an electoral campaign, requires preliminary meetings

for conference and to understand each other, while the faculty of

forming an association, which the law grants them as a right, is

actually withheld from them by their adversaries. As a beginning, the

Jacobins hooted at and "stone" the members of the "Right"[2116] holding

their meetings in the Salon français of the Rue Royale, and, according

to the prevailing rule, the police tribunal, "considering that this

assemblage is a cause of disturbance, that it produces gatherings in the

street, that only violent means can be employed to protect it," orders

its dissolution.[2117]--Towards the month of August, 1790, a second club

is organized, and, this time, composed of the wisest and most liberal

men. Malouet and Count Clermont-Tonnerre are at the head of it. It takes

the name of "Friends of a Monarchical Constitution," and is desirous

of restoring public order by maintaining the reforms which have been

reached. All formalities on its part have been complied with. There

are already about 800 members in Paris. Subscriptions flow into its

treasury. The provinces send in numerous adhesions, and, what is worse

than all, bread is distributed by them at a reduced price, by which the

people, probably, will be conciliated. Here is a center of opinion and

influence, analogous to that of the Jacobin club, which the Jacobins

cannot tolerate.[2118] M. de Clermont-Tonnerre having leased the summer

Vauxhall, a captain in the National Guard notifies the proprietor of it

that if he rents it, the patriots of the Palais-Royal will march to it

in a body, and close it; fearing that the building will be damaged,

he cancels the lease, while the municipality, which fears skirmishes,

orders a suspension of the meetings. The club makes a complaint and

follows it up, while the letter of the law is so plain that an official

authorization of the club is finally granted. Thereupon the Jacobin

newspapers and stump--speakers let loose their fury against a future

rival that threatens to dispute their empire. On the 23rd of January,

1791, Barnave, in the National Assembly, employing metaphorical language

apt to be used as a death-shout, accuses the members of the new club "of

giving the people bread that carries poison with it." Four days after

this, M. Clermont-Tonnerre's dwelling is assailed by an armed throng.

Malouet, on leaving it, is almost dragged from his carriage, and the

crowd around him cry out, "There goes the bastard who denounced the

people!"--At length, its founders, who, out of consideration for the

municipality, have waited two months, hire another hall in the Rue des

Petites-Ecuries, and on the 28th of March begin their sessions. "On

reaching it," writes one of them, "we found a mob composed of drunkards,

screaming boys, ragged women, soldiers exciting them on, and especially

those frightful hounds, armed with stout, knotty cudgels, two feet

long, which are excellent skull-crackers."[2119] The thing was made up

beforehand. At first there were only three or four hundred of them, and,

ten minutes after, five or six hundred; in a quarter of an hour, there

are perhaps four thousand flocking in from all sides; in short, the

usual make-up of an insurrection. "The people of the quarter certified

that they did not recognize one of the faces." Jokes, insults, cuffs,

clubbings, and saber-cuts,--the members of the club "who agreed to come

unarmed" being dispersed, while several are knocked down, dragged by the

hair, and a dozen or fifteen more are wounded. To justify the attack,

white cockades are shown, which, it is pretended, were found in their

pockets. Mayor Bailly arrives only when it is all over, and, as a

measure of "public order," the municipal authorities have the club of

Constitutional Monarchists closed for good.

Owing to these outrages by the faction, with the connivance of the

authorities, other similar clubs are suppressed in the same way. There

are a good many of them, and in the principal towns--"Friends of

Peace," "Friends of the Country," "Friends of the King, of Peace, and of

Religion," "Defenders of Religion, Persons, and Property". Magistrates

and officers, the most cultivated and polished people, are generally

members; in short, the élite of the place. Formerly, meetings took

place for conversation and debate, and, being long-established, the

club naturally passes over from literature to politics.--The

watch-word against all these provincial clubs is given from the Rue St.

Honoré.[2120] "They are centers of conspiracy, and must be looked after"

forthwith, and be at once trodden out.--At one time, as at Cahors,[2121]

a squad of the National Guard, on its return from an expedition against

the neighboring gentry, and to finish its task breaks in on the club,

"throws its furniture out of the windows and demolishes the house."--At

another time, as at Perpignan, the excited mob surrounds the club,

dancing a fandango, and yell out, to the lantern! The club-house is

sacked, while eighty of its members, covered with bruises, are shut up

in the citadel for their safety.[2122]--At another time, as at Aix, the

Jacobin club insults its adversaries on their own premises and provokes

a scuffle, whereupon the municipality causes the doors of the assailed

club to be walled up and issues warrants of arrest against its

members.--Always punishment awaits them for whatever violence they have

to submit to. Their mere existence seems an offense. At Grenoble, they

scarcely assemble before they are dispersed. The fact is, they are

suspected of "incivism;" their intentions may not be right; in any

event, they cause a division of the place into two camps, and that is

enough. In the department of Gard, their clubs are all broken up, by

order of the department, because "they are centers of malevolence."

At Bordeaux, the municipality, considering that "alarming reports are

current of priests and privileged persons returning to town," prohibits

all reunions, except that of the Jacobin club.--Thus, "under a system

of liberty of the most exalted kind, in the presence of the famous

Declaration of the Rights of Man which legitimates whatever is not

unlawful," and which postulates equality as the principle of the French

constitution, whoever is not a Jacobin is excluded from common rights.

An intolerant club sets itself up as a holy church, and proscribes

others which have not received from it "orthodox baptism, civic

inspiration, and the aptitude of languages." To her alone belongs the

right of assemblage, and the right of making proselytes. Conservative,

thoughtful men in all towns throughout the kingdom are forbidden to

form electoral committees, to possess a tribune, a fund, subscribers and

adherents, to cast the weight of their names and common strength into

the scale of public opinion, to gather around their permanent nucleus

the scattered multitude of sensible people, who would like to escape

from the Revolution without falling back into the ancient régime.

Let them whisper amongst themselves in corners, and they may still be

tolerated, but woe to them if they would leave their lonely retreat to

act in concert, to canvass voters, and support a candidate. Up to

the day of voting they must remain in the presence of their combined,

active, and obstreperous adversaries, scattered, inert, and mute.

IV. Turmoil of the elections of 1790.--Elections in 1791.--Effect of

the King's flight.--Domiciliary visits.--Montagne during the electoral

period.

Will they at least be able to vote freely on that day? They are not

sure of it, and, judging by occurrences during the past year, it is

doubtful.--In April, 1790, at Bois d'Aisy, in Burgundy, M. de Bois

d'Aisy, a deputy, who had returned from Paris to deposit his vote,[2123]

was publicly menaced. He was informed that nobles and priests must take

no part m the elections, while many were heard to say, in his hearing,

that in order to prevent this it would be better to hang him. Not far

off; at Ste. Colombe, M. de Viteaux was driven out of the electoral

assembly, and then put to death after three hours of torture. The same

thing occurred at Semur; two gentlemen were knocked down with clubs and

stones, another saved himself with difficulty, and a curé died after

being stabbed six times.--A warning for priests and for gentlemen: they

had better not vote, and the same good advice may be given to dealers in

grain, to land-owners, and every other suspected person. For this is the

day on which the people recover their sovereignty; the violent believe

that they have the right to do exactly what suits them, nothing being

more natural than to exclude candidates in advance who are

distrusted, or electors who do not vote as they ought to.--At

Villeneuve-St.-Georges, near Paris,[2124] a barrister, a man of austere

and energetic character, is about to be elected judge by the district

electors; the proletariat, however, mistrust a judge likely to condemn

marauders, and forty or fifty vagabonds collect together under the

windows and cry out: "We don't want him elected." The curé of Crosne,

president of the electoral assembly, informs them in vain that the

assembled electors represent 90 communes, nearly 100,000 inhabitants,

and that "40 persons should not prevail against 100,000. Shouts redouble

and the electors renounce their candidate.--At Pau, patriots among

the militia[2125] forcibly release one of their imprisoned leaders,

circulate a list for proscriptions, attack a poll-teller with their

fists and afterwards with sabers, until the proscribed hide themselves

away; on the following day "nobody is disposed to attend the electoral

assembly."----Things are much worse in 1791. In the month of June, just

at the time of the opening of the primary meetings, the king has fled to

Varennes, the Revolution seems compromised, civil war and a foreign

war loom up on the horizon like two ghosts; the National Guard had

everywhere taken up arms, and the Jacobins were making the most of the

universal panic for their own advantage. To dispute their votes is

no longer the question; it is not well to be visible: among so many

turbulent gatherings a popular execution is soon over. The best thing

now for royalists, constitutionalists, conservatives and moderates of

every kind, for the friends of law and of order, is to stay at home--too

happy if they may be allowed to remain there, to which the armed rabble

agrees; on the condition of frequently paying them visits.

Consider their situation during the whole of the electoral period, in a

calm district, and judge of the rest of France by this corner of it. At

Mortagne,[2126] a small town of 6,000 souls, the laudable spirit of 1789

still existed up to the journey to Varennes. Among the forty or fifty

noble families were a good many liberals. Here, as elsewhere among the

gentry, the clergy and the middle class, the philosophic education

of the eighteenth century had revived the old provincial spirit of

initiative, and the entire upper class had zealously and gratuitously

undertaken the public duties which it alone could perform well. District

presidents, mayors, and municipal officers, were all chosen from among

ecclesiastics and the nobles; the three principal officers of the

National Guard were chevaliers of St. Louis, while other grades were

filled by the leading people of the community. Thus had the free

elections placed authority in the hands of the socially superior, the

new order of things resting on the legitimate hierarchy of conditions,

educations, and capacities.--But for six months the club, formed out of

"a dozen hot-headed, turbulent fellows, under the presidency and in the

hands of a certain Rattier, formerly a cook," worked upon the population

and the rural districts. Immediately on the receipt of the news of

the King's flight, the Jacobins "give out that nobles and priests

had supplied him with money for his departure, to bring about a

counter-revolution." One family had given such an amount, and another

so much; there was no doubt about it; the precise figures are given, and

given for each family according to its known resources.--Forthwith, "the

principal clubbists, associated with the dubious part of the National

Guard," spread through the streets in squads: the houses of the nobles

and of other suspected persons are invaded. All the arms, "guns,

pistols, swords, hunting-knives, and sword-canes," are carried off.

Every hole and corner is ransacked; they make the inmates open, or they

force open, secretaries and clothes-presses in search of ammunition,

the search extending "even to the ladies' toilette-tables". By way

of precaution "they break sticks of pomatum in two, presuming that

musket-balls are concealed in them, and they take away hair-powder

under the pretext that it is either colored or masked gunpowder." Then,

without disbanding, the troop betakes itself to the environs and into

the country, where it operates with the same promptness in the chateaux,

so that "in one day all honest citizens, those with the most property

and furniture to protect, are left without arms at the mercy of the

first robber that comes along." All reputed aristocrats are disarmed. As

such are considered those who "disapprove of the enthusiasm of the day,

or who do not attend the club, or who harbor any unsworn ecclesiastic,"

and, first of all, "the officers of the National Guard who are nobles,

beginning with the commander and his entire staff."--The latter allow

their swords to be taken without resistance, and with a forbearance and

patriotic spirit of which their brethren everywhere furnish an example

"they are obliging enough to remain at their posts so as not to

disorganize the army, hoping that this frenzy will soon come to an

end," contenting themselves with making their complaint to the

department.--But in vain the department orders their arms to be restored

to them. The clubbists refuse to give them up so long as the king

refuses to accept the Constitution; meanwhile they do not hesitate

to say that "at the very first gun on the frontier, they will cut the

throats of all the nobles and unsworn priests."--After the royal oath

to the Constitution is taken, the department again insists, but no

attention is paid to it. On the contrary, the National Guard, dragging

cannons along with them, purposely station themselves before the

mansions of the unarmed gentry; the ladies of their families are

followed in the streets by urchins who sing ÇA IRA[2127] in their faces,

and, in the final refrain, they mention them by name and promise them

the lantern; "not one of them could invite a dozen of his friends to

supper without incurring the risk of an uproar."--On the strength of

this, the old chiefs of the National Guard resign, and the Jacobins turn

the opportunity to account. In contempt of the law the whole body of

officers is renewed, and, as peaceable folks dare not deposit their

votes, the new staff "is composed of maniacs, taken for the most part,

from the lowest class." With this purged militia the club expels nuns,

drives off unsworn priests, organizes expeditions in the neighborhood,

and goes so far as to purify suspected municipalities.[2128]--So many

acts of violence committed in town and country, render town and country

uninhabitable, and for the élite of the propriety owners, or for

well-bred persons, there is no longer any asylum but Paris. After the

first disarmament seven or eight families take refuge there, and a dozen

or fifteen more join them after a threat of having their throats cut;

after the religious persecution, unsworn ecclesiastics, the rest of

the nobles, and countless other townspeople, "even with little means,"

betake themselves there in a mass. There, at least, one is lost in the

crowd; one is protected by an incognito against the outrages of the

commonalty; one can live there as a private individual. In the provinces

even civil rights do not exist; how could any one there exercise

political rights? "All honest citizens are kept away from the primary

meetings by threats or maltreatment.. . The electoral battlefield is

left for those who pay forty-five sous of taxes, more than one-half of

them being registered on the poor list."--Thus the elections are

decided beforehand! The former cook is the one who authorizes or creates

candidatures, and on the election of the department deputies at

the county town, the electors elected are, like himself, true

Jacobins.[2129]

V.--Intimidation and withdrawal of the Conservatives.

Popular outbreaks in Burgundy, Lyonnais, Provence, and the

large cities.--Electoral proceedings of the Jacobins;

examples at Aix, Dax, and Montpellier.--Agitators go

unpunished--Denunciations by name.--Manoeuvres with the

peasantry.--General tactics of the Jacobins.

Such is the pressure under which voting takes place in France during

the summer and fall of 1791. Domiciliary visits[2130] and disarmament

everywhere force nobles and ecclesiastics, landed proprietors and people

of culture, to abandon their homes, to seek refuge in the large towns

and to emigrate,[2131] or, at least, confine themselves strictly to

private life, to abstain from all propaganda, from every candidature,

and from all voting. It would be madness to be seen in so many cantons

where searches end in a riot; in Burgundy and the Lyonnais, where

castles are sacked, where aged gentlemen are mauled and left for dead,

where M. de Guillin has just been assassinated and cut to pieces; at

Marseilles, where conservative party leaders are imprisoned, where a

regiment of Swiss guards under arms scarcely suffices to enforce

the verdict of the court which sets them at liberty, where, if any

indiscreet person opposes Jacobin resolutions his mouth is closed

by being notified that he will be buried alive; at Toulon, where the

Jacobins shoot down all conservatives and the regular troops, where

M. de Beaucaire, captain in the navy, is killed by a shot in the back,

where the club, supported by the needy, by sailors, by navvies, and

"vagabond peddlers," maintains a dictatorship by right of conquest;

at Brest, at Tulle, at Cahors, where at this very moment gentlemen and

officers are massacred in the street. It is not surprising that

honest people turn away from the ballot-box as from a center of

cut-throats.--Nevertheless, let them come if they like; it will be easy

to get rid of them. At Aix, the assessor whose duty it is to read the

electors' names is informed that "the names should be called out by

an unsullied mouth, that, being an aristocrat and fanatical, he could

neither speak nor vote," and, without further ceremony, they put him

out of the room.[2132] The process is an admirable one for converting

a minority into a majority and yet here is another, still more

effective.--At Dax, the Feuillants, taking the title of "Friends of

the French Constitution," have split up with the Jacobins,[2133] and,

moreover, they insist on excluding from the National Guard "foreigners

without property or position," the passive citizens who are admitted

into it in spite of the law, who usurp the right of voting and who

"daily affront tranquil inhabitants." Consequently, on election day,

in the church where the primary meeting is held, two of the Feuillants,

Laurède, formerly collector of the vingtièmes,, and Brunache, a glazier,

propose to exclude an intruder, a servant on wages. The Jacobins at

once rush forward. Laurède is pressed back on the holy-water basin

and wounded on the head; on trying to escape he is seized by the hair,

thrown down, pierced in the arm with a bayonet, put in prison, and

Brunache along with him. Eight days afterwards, at the second meeting

none are present but Jacobins; naturally, "they are all elected". They

form the new municipality, which, notwithstanding the orders of the

department, not only refuses to liberate the two prisoners, but throws

them into a dungeon.--At Montpellier, the delay in the operation is

greater, but it is only the more complete. The votes are deposited,

the ballot-boxes closed and sealed up and the conservatives obtain

a majority. Thereupon the Jacobin club, with the Society of the

"iron-clubs," calling itself the Executive power, betake themselves in

force to the sectional meetings, burn one of the ballots, use firearms

and kill two men. To restore order the municipality stations each

company of the National Guard at its captain's door, The moderates among

them naturally obey orders, but the violent party do not. They overrun

the town, numbering about 2,000 inhabitants, enter the houses,

kill three men in the street or in their domiciles, and force the

administrative body to suspend its electoral assemblies. In addition

to this they require the disarmament "of the aristocrats," and this

not being done soon enough, they kill an artisan who is walking in the

street with his mother, cut off his head, bear it aloft in triumph, and

suspend it in front of his dwelling. The authorities are now convinced

and accordingly decree a disarmament, and the victors parade the streets

in a body. In exuberance or as a precaution, they fire, as they

pass along, at the windows of suspected houses and happen to kill an

additional man and woman. During the three following days six hundred

families emigrate, while the authorities report that everything is going

on well, and that order is restored. "The elections," they say, "are now

proceeding in the quietest manner since the ill-intentioned voluntarily

keeping away from them, a large number having left the town. "[2134] A

void is created around the ballot-box and this is called the unanimity

of voters.--The effect of such assassinations is great and only a few

are required; especially when they go unpunished, which is always the

case. Henceforth all that the Jacobins have to do is to threaten; people

no longer resist them for they know that it costs too much to face them

down. They do not care to attend electoral meetings where they meet

insult and danger; they acknowledge defeat at the start. Have not the

Jacobins irresistible arguments, without taking blows into account? At

Paris,[2135] Marat in three successive numbers of his paper has just

denounced by name "the rascals and thieves" who canvass for electoral

nominations, not the nobles and priests but ordinary citizens, lawyers,

architects, physicians, jewellers, stationers, printers, upholsterers

and other artisans, each name being given in full with the professions,

addresses and one of the following qualifications, "hypocrite (tartufe),

immoral, dishonest, bankrupt, informer, usurer, cheat," not to mention

others that I cannot write down. It must be noted that this slanderous

list may become a proscriptive list, and that in every town and village

in France similar lists are constantly drawn up and circulated by the

local dub, which enables us to judge whether the struggle between it

and its adversaries is a fair one.-As to rural electors, it has suitable

means for persuading them, especially in the innumerable cantons ravaged

or threatened by the jacqueries, (country-riots) or, for example, in

Corrèze, where "the whole department is smattered with insurrections

and devastation's, and where nobody talks of anything but of hanging the

officers who serve papers."[2136] Through-out the electoral operations

the sittings of the dub are permanent; "its electors are incessantly

summoned to its meetings;" at each of these "the main question is the

destruction of fish-ponds and rentals, their principal speakers summing

it all up by saying that none ought to be paid." The majority of

electors, composed of rustics, are found to be sensitive to speeches

like this; all its candidates are obliged to express themselves against

fishponds and rentals; its deputies and the public prosecuting attorney

are nominated on this profession of faith; in other words, to be

elected, the Jacobins promise to greedy tenants the incomes and property

of their owners.--We already see in the proceedings by which they secure

one-third of the offices in 1791 the germ of the methods by which they

will secure the whole of them in 1792; in this first electoral campaign

their acts indicate not merely their maxims and policy but, again, the

condition, education, spirit and character of the men whom they place in

power locally as well as at the capital.

*****

[Footnote 2101: Law of May 28, 29, 1791 (according to official

statements, the total of active citizens amounted to 4,288,360).--Laws

of July 23, Sept. 12, Sept. 29, 1791.--Buchez et Roux, XII. 310.]

[Footnote 2102: Bucher Ct Roux, XII. 33.--Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire de

la Terreur," II. 205, 348.--Sauzay, II. ch. XVIII--Albert Babeau, I. ch.

XX.]

[Footnote 2103: Lenin repeated this performance in 1917 and Stalin

attempted to do the same in the rest of the World. (SR)..]

[Footnote 2104: The following letter, by Camille Desmoulins (April 3,

1792), shows at once the time consumed by public affairs, the sort of

attraction they had, and the kind of men which they diverted from their

business. "I have gone back to my old profession of the law, to which I

give nearly all the time which my municipal or electoral functions, and

the Jacobins (club), allow me--that is to say, very little. It is very

disagreeable to me to come down to pleading bourgeois cases after having

managed interests of such importance, and the affairs of the government,

in the face of all Europe."]

[Footnote 2105: I cannot help but think of the willful proliferation of

idle functionaries, pensioners and other receivers of public funds which

today vote for the party which represents their interests. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2106: Sauzay, II. 83-89 and 123. A resolution of the

inhabitants of Chalèze, who, headed by their municipal officers, declare

themselves unanimously "non-conformists," and demand "the right of using

a temple for the exercise of their religious opinions, belonging to

them and built with their contributions" On the strength of this,

the municipal officers of Chalèze are soundly rated by the district

administration, which thus states what principles are: "Liberty,

indefinite for the private individual, must be restricted for the

public man whose opinions must conform to the law: otherwise,.. he must

renounce all public functions."]

[Footnote 2107: Archives Nationales," F7, 3,253 (letter of the

department directory, April 7, 1792). "On the 25th of January, in our

report to the National Assembly, we stated the almost general opposition

which the execution of the laws relating to the clergy has found in

this department... nine-tenths, at least, of the Catholics refusing to

recognize the sworn priests. The teachers, influenced by their old

curés or vicars, are willing to take the civic oath, but they refuse to

recognize their legitimate pastors and attend their services. We are,

therefore, obliged to remove them, and to look out for others to replace

them. The citizens of a large number of the communes, persisting in

trusting these, will lend no assistance whatever to the election of the

new ones; the result is, that we are obliged, in selecting these people,

to refer the matter to persons whom we scarcely know, and who are

scarcely better known to the directories of the district. As they

are elected against the will of the citizens, they do not gain their

confidence, and draw their salaries from the commune treasury, without

any advantage to public instruction,"]

[Footnote 2108: Mercure de France, Sep. 3, 1791. "The right of attending

primary meetings is that of every citizen who pays a tax of three

livres; owing to the violence to which opinions are subject, more than

one-half of the French are compelled to stay away from these reunions,

which are abandoned to persons who have the least interest in

maintaining public order and in securing stable laws, with the least

property, and who pay the fewest taxes."]

[Footnote 2109: "The French Revolution," Vol. I. p. 182 and following

pages.]

[Footnote 2110: "Correspondence of M. de Staël" (manuscript), Swedish

ambassador, with his court, Sept 4, 1791. "The change in the way of

thinking of the democrats is extraordinary; they now seem convinced

that it is impossible to make the Constitution work. Barnave, to my own

knowledge, has declared that the influence of assemblies in the future

should be limited to a council of notables, and that all power should be

in the government"]

[Footnote 2111: Ibid. Letter of July 17, 1791. "All the members of the

Assembly, with the exception of three or four, have passed a resolution

to separate from the Jacobins; they number about 300."--The seven

deputies who remain at the Jacobin Club, are Robespierre, Pétion,

Grégoire, Buzot, Coroller, and Abbé Royer.]

[Footnote 2112: "Les Feuillants" Was a political club consisting

of constitutional monarchists who held their meetings in the former

Feuillants monastery in Paris from 1791 to 1792. (SR).]

[Footnote 2113: Decree of Sept 29, 30, 1791, with report and

instructions of the Committee on the Constitution.]

[Footnote 2114: Decree of May 17, 1791.--Malouet, XII. 161. "There was

nothing left to us but to make one great mistake, which we did not fail

to do."]

[Footnote 2115: A few months after this, on the election of a mayor for

Paris, the court voted against Lafayette, and for Pétion]

[Footnote 2116: M. de Montlosier, "Mémoires," II. 309. "As far as

concerns myself, truth compels me to say, that I was stuck on the head

by three carrots and two cabbages only."--Archives of the prefecture of

police (decisions of the police court, May 15, 1790). Moniteur, V. 427.

"The prompt attendance of the members at the hour of meeting, in spite

of the hooting and murmurings of the crowd, seemed to convince the

people that this was yet another conspiracy against liberty."]

[Footnote 2117: This is what is, today in 1998, taking place whenever

any political faction, disliked by the Socialists, try to arrange a

meeting. (SR).]

[Footnote 2118: Malout, II. 50.--Mercure de France, Jan. 7, Feb. 5, and

April 9, 1791 (letter of a member of the Monarchical Club)]

[Footnote 2119: Ferrières, II. 222. "The Jacobin Club sent five or six

hundred trusty men, armed with clubs," besides "about a hundred national

guards, and some of the Palais-Royal prostitutes."]

[Footnote 2120: "Journal des Amis de la Constitution." Letter of the Café

National! Club at Bordeaux, Jan. 20, 1791.--Letters of the "Friends of

the Constitution," at Brives and Cambray, Jan. 19, 1791.]

[Footnote 2121: "The French Revolution," I. pp. 243, 324.]

[Footnote 2122: Mercure de France, Dec.18, 1790, Jan. 17, June 8, and

July 14, 1791.--Moniteur, VI. 697.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3,193.

Letter from the Directory of the department of Aveyron, April 20, 1792.

Narrative of events after the end of 1790.--May 22, 1791, the club of

"The Friends of Order and Peace" is burned by the Jacobins, the fire

lasting all night and a part of the next day. (Official report of the

Directory of Milhau, May 22, 1791).]

[Footnote 2123: "The French Revolution," I. 256, 307.]

[Footnote 2124: Mercure de France, Dec. 14, 1790 (letter from

Villeneuve-St.-Georges, Nov.29).]

[Footnote 2125: "Archives Nationales," II. 1,453. Correspondence of M.

Bercheny. Letter from Pau, Feb. 7, 1790. "No one has any idea of the

actual state of things, in this once delightful town. People are cutting

each other's throats. Four duels have taken place within 48 hours, and

ten or a dozen good citizens have been obliged to hide themselves for

three days past"]

[Footnote 2126: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3,249. Memorial on the actual

condition of the town and district of Mortagne, department of Orne

(November, 1791).]

[Footnote 2127: Revolutionary song with the refrain: "Les aristocrates,

à la lanterne, tous les aristocrates on les pendra" (all the aristocrats

will hang). (SR)]

[Footnote 2128: On the 15th of August, 1791, the mother-superior of the

Hôtel-Dieu hospital is forcibly carried off and placed in a tavern, half

a league from the town, while the rest of the nuns are driven out and

replaced by eight young girls from the town. Among other motives that

require notice is the hostility of two pharmacists belonging to the

club; in the Hotel-Dieu the nuns, keeping a pharmacy from which they

sold drugs at cost and thereby brought themselves into competition with

the two pharmacists.]

[Footnote 2129: Cf. "Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 13. Letter of the

municipal officers and notables of Champoeuil to the administrators of

Seine-et-Oise, concerning elections, June 17, 1791.--Similar letters,

from various other parishes, among them that of Charcon, June 16: "They

have the honor to inform you that, at the time of the preceding primary

meetings, they were exposed to the greatest danger; that the curé of

Charcon, their pastor, was repeatedly stabbed with a bayonet, the

marks of which he will carry to his grave. The mayor, and several other

inhabitants of Charcon, escaped the same peril with difficulty."--Ibid.,

letters from the administrators of Hautes-Alpes to the National Assembly

(September, 1791), on the disturbances in the electoral assembly of Gap,

August 29, 1791.]

[Footnote 2130: Police searches of private homes. (SR).]

[Footnote 2131: "The French Revolution," pp. 159, 160, 310, 323,

324.--Lauvergne, "Histoire du département du Var," (August 23).]

[Footnote 2132: '"Archives Nationales," F7, 3,198, deposition of

Vérand-Icard, an elector at Arles, Sep. 8, 1791.--Ibid., F7, 3,195.

Letter of the administrators of the Tarascon district, Dec. 8, 1791. Two

parties confront each other at the municipal elections of Barbantane,

one headed by the Abbé Chabaud, brother of one of the Avignon brigands,

composed of three or four townsmen, and of "the most impoverished in

the country," and the other, three times as numerous, comprising all

the land-owners, the substantial métayers and artisans, and all "who are

most interested in a good administration" The question is, whether the

Abbé Chabaud is to be mayor. The elections took place Dec.5th, 1791.

Here is the official report of the acting mayor: mayor: "We, Pierre

Fontaine, mayor, addressed the rioters, to induce them to keep the

peace. At this very moment, the said Claude Gontier, alias Baoque,

struck us with his fist on the left eye, which bruised us considerably,

and on account of which we are almost blind, and, conjointly with

others, jumped upon us, threw us down, and dragged us by the hair,

continuing to strike us, from in front of the church door, till we came

in front of the door, the town hall."]

[Footnote 2133: Ibid., F7, 3,229. Letters of M. de Laurède, June 18,

1791; from the directory of the department, June 8, July 31, and Sept.

22, 1791; from the municipality, July 15, 1791. The municipality "leaves

the release of the prisoners in suspense," for six months, because,

it says, the people is disposed to "insurrectionise against their

discharge."--Letter of many of the national guard, stating that the

factions form only a part of it.]

[Footnote 2134: Mercure de France, Dec. 10, 1791, letter from

Montpellier, dated Nov. 17, 1791.--" Archives Nationales," F7, 3,223.

Extracts from letters, on the incidents of Oct. 9 and 12, 1791. Petition

by Messrs. Théri and Devon, Nov. 17, 1791. Letter addressed them to

the Minister, Oct. 25. Letters of M. Dupin, syndical attorney of the

department, to the Minister, Nov.14 and 15, and Dec. 26, 1791 (with

official reports).--Among those assassinated on the 14th and 15th of

November, we find a jeweler, an attorney, a carpenter, and a dyer. "This

painful Scene," writes the syndic attorney, "has restored quiet to the

town."]

[Footnote 2135: Buchez et Roux, X. 223 (l'Ami du Peuple, June 17, 19,

21, 1791)]

[Footnote 2136: "'Archives Nationales,' F7, 3204. letter by M. Melon de

Tradou, royal commissary at Tulle, Sept. 8, 1791]