The French Revolution - Volume 2

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.