Some time ago we set forth the principles of our foreign policy; today we come to expound the principles of our internal policy.
After having proceeded haphazardly for a long time, swept along by the movement of opposing factions, the representatives of the French people have finally demonstrated a character and a government. A sudden change in the nation's fortune announced to Europe the regeneration that had been effected in the national representation. But, up to the very moment when I am speaking, it must be agreed that we have been guided, amid such stormy circumstances, by the love of good and by the awareness of our country's needs rather than by an exact theory and by precise rules of conduct, which we did not have even leisure enough to lay out. . . .
What is the goal toward which we are heading? The peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice whose laws have been inscribed, not in marble and stone, but in the hearts of all men, even in that of the slave who forgets them and in that of the tyrant who denies them.
We seek an order of things in which all the base and cruel passions are enchained, all the beneficent and generous passions are awakened by the laws; where ambition becomes the desire to merit glory and to serve our country; where distinctions are born only of equality itself; where the citizen is subject to the magistrate, the magistrate to the people, and the people to justice; where our country assures the well-being of each individual, and where each individual proudly enjoys our country's prosperity and glory; where every soul grows greater through the continual flow of republican sentiments, and by the need of deserving the esteem of a great people; where the arts are the adornments of the liberty which ennobles them and commerce the source of public wealth rather than solely the monstrous opulence of a few families.
In our land we want to substitute morality for egotism, integrity for formal codes of honor, principles for customs, a sense of duty for one of mere propriety, the rule of reason for the tyranny of fashion, scorn of vice for scorn of the unlucky; self-respect for insolence, grandeur of soul for vanity, love of glory for the love of money, good people in place of good society. We wish to substitute merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for glamor, the charm of happiness for sensuous boredom, the greatness of man for the pettiness of the great, a people who are magnanimous, powerful, and happy, in place of a kindly, frivolous, and miserable people—which is to say all the virtues and all the miracles of the republic in place of all the vices of the monarchy. . . .
What kind of government can realize these wonders? Only a democratic or republican government—these two words are synonyms despite the abuses in common speech—because an aristocracy is no closer than a monarchy to being a republic. Democracy is not a state in which the people, continually meeting, regulate for themselves all public affairs, still less is it a state in which a tiny fraction of the people, acting by isolated, hasty, and contradictory measures, decide the fate of the whole society. Such a government has never existed, and it could exist only to lead the people back into despotism.
Democracy is a state in which the sovereign people, guided by laws which are of their own making, do for themselves all that they can do well, and by their delegates do all that they cannot do for themselves.
It is therefore in the principles of democratic government that you should seek the rules of your political conduct.
But, in order to lay the foundations of democracy among us and to consolidate it, in order to arrive at the peaceful reign of constitutional laws, we must finish the war of liberty against tyranny and safely cross through the storms of the revolution: that is the goal of the revolutionary system which you have put in order. You should therefore still base your conduct upon the stormy circumstances in which the republic finds itself; and the plan of your administration should be the result of the spirit of revolutionary government, combined with the general principles of democracy.
Now, what is the fundamental principle of popular or democratic government, that is to say, the essential mainspring which sustains it and makes it move? It is virtue. I speak of the public virtue which worked so many wonders in Greece and Rome and which ought to produce even more astonishing things in republican France—that virtue which is nothing other than the love of the nation and its laws. . . .
But the French are the first people of the world who have established real democracy, by calling all men to equality and full rights of citizenship; and there, in my judgment, is the true reason why all the tyrants in league against the Republic will be vanquished.
There are important consequences to be drawn immediately from the principles we have just explained.
Since the soul of the Republic is virtue, equality, and since your goal is to found, to consolidate the Republic, it follows that the first rule of your political conduct ought to be to relate all your efforts to maintaining equality and developing virtue; because the first care of the legislator ought to be to fortify the principle of the government. Thus everything that tends to excite love of country, to purify morals, to elevate souls, to direct the passions of the human heart toward the public interest ought to be adopted or established by you. Everything which tends to concentrate them in the abjection of selfishness, to awaken enjoyment for petty things and scorn for great ones, ought to be rejected or curbed by you. Within the scheme of the French revolution, that which is immoral is impolitic, that which is corrupting is counterrevolutionary. . . .
We deduce from all this a great truth—that the characteristic of popular government is to be trustful towards the people and severe towards itself.
Here the development of our theory would reach its limit, if you had only to steer the ship of the Republic through calm waters. But the tempest rages, and the state of the revolution in which you find yourself imposes upon you another task.
This great purity of the French Revolution's fundamental elements, the very sublimity of its objective, is precisely what creates our strength and our weakness: our strength, because it gives us the victory of truth over deception and the rights of public interest over private interests; our weakness, because it rallies against us all men who are vicious, all those who in their hearts plan to despoil the people, and all those who have despoiled them and want impunity, and those who reject liberty as a personal calamity, and those who have embraced the revolution as a livelihood and the Republic as if it were an object of prey. Hence the defection of so many ambitious or greedy men who since the beginning have abandoned us along the way, because they had not begun the voyage in order to reach the same goal. One could say that the two contrary geniuses that have been depicted competing for control of the realm of nature, are fighting in this great epoch of human history to shape irrevocably the destiny of the world, and that France is the theater of this mighty struggle. Without, all the tyrants encircle you; within, all the friends of tyranny conspire—they will conspire until crime has been robbed of hope. We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish, in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror.
If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, amid revolution it is at the same time [both] virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue. It is less a special principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most pressing needs.
It has been said that terror was the mainspring of despotic government. Does your government, then, resemble a despotism? Yes, as the sword which glitters in the hands of liberty's heroes resembles the one with which tyranny's lackeys are armed. Let the despot govern his brutalized subjects by terror; he is right to do this, as a despot. Subdue liberty's enemies by terror, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime? And is it not to strike the heads of the proud that lightning is destined?
Nature imposes upon every physical and moral being the law of providing for its own preservation. Crime slaughters innocence in order to reign, and innocence in the hands of crime fights with all its strength.
Let tyranny reign for a single day, and on the morrow not one patriot will be left. How long will the despots' fury be called justice, and the people's justice barbarism or rebellion? How tender one is to the oppressors and how inexorable against the oppressed! And how natural whoever has no hatred for crime cannot love virtue. . . .
Social protection is due only to peaceful citizens; there are no citizens in the Republic but the republicans. The royalists, the conspirators are, in its eyes, only strangers or, rather, enemies. Is not the terrible war, which liberty sustains against tyranny, indivisible? Are not the enemies within the allies of those without? The murderers who tear our country apart internally; the intriguers who purchase the consciences of the people's agents; the traitors who sell them; the mercenary libelers subsidized to dishonor the popular cause, to kill public virtue, to stir up the fires of civil discord, and to prepare political counterrevolution by means of moral counterrevolution—are all these men less to blame or less dangerous than the tyrants whom they serve? All those who interpose their parricidal gentleness to protect the wicked from the avenging blade of national justice are like those who would throw themselves between the tyrants' henchmen and our soldiers' bayonets. All the outbursts of their false sensitivity seem to me only longing sighs for England and Austria.
Aristocracy defends itself better by its intrigues than patriotism does by its services. Some people would like to govern revolutions by the quibbles of the law courts and treat conspiracies against the Republic like legal proceedings against private persons. Tyranny kills; liberty argues. And the code made by the conspirators themselves is the law by which they are judged.
There are few patriots who today would say that the right cause was triumphant, and that the aristocracy is forever beaten. Where there was a king devoted to the happiness of his people and was a faithful executor of the decrees of the legislative body; where there was a legislative body fully committed to both monarchal principles and to the king; where the National Assembly and the royal family were the focus of patriotism and enlightenment . . . now there are fugitive courtiers, hunted conspirators, cabals uncovered and disgraced, and working-class ministers (or they are forced to appear as such). There have been two great and terrible lessons delivered by the Parisians to the aristocrats, and every community in the kingdom demonstrated an equal amount of effort in unraveling political and individual freedoms. Are these reasons sufficient enough to believe that the Revolution has been carried out? That a counterrevolution is impossible? That would be a fatal error, a dangerous belief! The aristocracy again rises with a superb disguise. The barbarous gaiety that comes from being sure of a quick revenge has been replaced by the tears that we had attributed to a belated repentant, and from us spilled a then-powerless rage.
Citizens! Let us count our enemies, gauge their resources and see if that does not give us several reasons to keep on our guard. The nobles have to recover all of the benefits of an abusive regime where their name alone swept away merit, virtue, talent, and even justice. The clerics are forced to sell off their immense assets that had provided them with much credit and many pleasures. The magistrates are stripped of their titles as legislators, defenders of the people, and advisers of kings. The judges see the end to this judicial tyranny that, down to the smallest village, was so beneficial to their wealth and so flattering to their vanity. The money lenders can no longer hope to continue their atrocious business. Financiers have no doubt that their businesses will be suppressed. The infinite number of the breed known as clerks does not mean that there remains the resources for them to take on a useful profession. Add to this so impressive a group of anti-patriots, those that never do anything but what pleases them, those who have no homeland, and who cannot have one, and you will have an idea of the army of enemies that the state holds within its breast. But this is merely the body of the army, it has leaders. Where are they? Does it need saying? In part they are in the National Assembly, for which, through treacherous tactics, they fetter or corrupt the deliberations.
If we are not in agreement on the way to do right, at least they are not any more in agreement on how to do wrong. But if some scheming, persuasive, deceptive mind came and unified them, or at least made them act in a uniform manner (although for a different goal), the least misfortune that we have to fear is a war . . . a civil war.
Bankruptcy would be the inevitable conclusion to a civil war. Commerce and agriculture, both of which are already stagnant, would be destroyed. For the next century authority would be in convulsion and the people in agony before the complicated wheels of government of the old regime would once again be in working order. Liberty, that spark that glinted in our eyes, would, from time to time, light fires that we would only be able to extinguish by the spilling of blood. The aristocrats would not enjoy any of the advantages that established norms assured them they possessed. They would have to fight endlessly for them with brandished swords. Finally, in the place of a popular anarchy, which by its nature would be short since the majority are interested in order, we would have an aristocratic anarchy. This would be a hundred times worse than the autocratic regime, and would last until the current generation would be able to forget everything it had learned in the past three months, or had given way to another generation.
You pitiful priests, you villainous and stupid clowns, do you not see that your God would not have been eligible [to vote?] Jesus-Christ, who you make to be God incarnate, would have been among the scum under the law you yourself have just helped to pass. How can we respect you, preachers of a proletarian God, who is not even an active citizen! You should respect the poverty that Christ himself ennobled. . . . The true active citizens are those who captured the Bastille, those who cleared the fields while the feeble clergy and the Court, despite their immense wealth, acted like plants. . . .
Despite the most profound respect for the holy decrees of the National Assembly . . . I do not consider this law [on citizenship] to be a valid decree. As I have written repeatedly, there are in the National Assembly 600 members [i.e., noble and clerical deputies] who have no more right to vote on laws than I do. Certainly the clergy and the nobility should have the same number of representatives as the rest of the Nation, that is one for each 20,000. Yet the nobles and the clergy number 300,000 individuals and thus should choose 15 representatives from among their 600. The rest should be sent to the observation galleries with only a consultative vote.
It is from among these 600 that the majority of votes to pass the decree on silver currency came [and the law on citizenship]. . . . So these decrees should be ignored, because the minority [i.e., the First and Second Estates] became the majority in these cases, . . . so it is right to say that the Decree that should be obeyed is that which was rejected [against the silver currency and against passive citizenship]!
In the centre of the hall, under a statue of justice, holding scales in one hand, and a sword in the other, with the book of laws by her side, sat Dumas, the president, with the other judges. Under them were seated the public accuser, Fouquier-Tinville, and his scribes. Three coloured ostrich plumes waved over their turned-up hats, à la Henri IV, and they wore a tri-coloured scarf. To the right were benches on which the accused were placed in several rows, and gendarmes, with carbines and fixed bayonets by their sides. To the left was the jury.
Never can I forget the mournful appearance of these funereal processions to the place of execution. The march was opened by a detachment of mounted gendarmes—the carts followed; they were the same carts as those used in Paris for carrying wood; four boards were placed across them for seats, and on each board sat two, and sometimes three victims; their hands were tied behind their backs, and the constant jolting of the cart made them nod their heads up and down, to the great amusement of the spectators. On the front of the cart stood Samson, the executioner, or one of his sons or assistants; gendarmes on foot marched by the side; then followed a hackney-coach, in which was the Rapporteur [recorder] and his clerk, whose duty it was to witness the execution, and then return to Fouquier-Tinville, the Accusateur Public [public prosecutor], to report the execution of what they called the law.
The process of execution was also a sad and heart-rending spectacle. In the middle of the Place de la Révolution was erected a guillotine, in front of a colossal statue of Liberty, represented seated on a rock, a Phrygian cap on her head, a spear in her hand, the other reposing on a shield. On one side of the scaffold were drawn out a sufficient number of carts, with large baskets painted red, to receive the heads and bodies of the victims. Those bearing the condemned moved on slowly to the foot of the guillotine; the culprits were led out in turn, and, if necessary, supported by two of the executioner's valets, as they were formerly called, but now denominated élèves de l'Executeur des hautes oeuvres de la justice [students of the executor of the great works of justice]; but their assistance was rarely required. Most of these unfortunates ascended the scaffold with a determined step—many of them looked up firmly on the menacing instrument of death, beholding for the last time the rays of the glorious sun, beaming on the polished axe; and I have seen some young men actually dance a few steps before they went up to be strapped to the perpendicular plane, which was then tilted to a horizontal plane in a moment, and ran on the grooves until the neck was secured and closed in by a moving board, when the head passed through what was called in derision, la lunette republicaine [the republican telescope]; the weighty knife was then dropped with a heavy fall; and, with incredible dexterity and rapidity, two executioners tossed the body into the basket, while another threw the head after it.