Such is the pressure under which voting takes place in France during the summer and fall of 1791. Domiciliary visits2130 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.
2101 (return)
[ 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.]
2102 (return)
[ Bucher Ct Roux, XII.
33.—Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire de la Terreur," II. 205, 348.—Sauzay,
II. ch. XVIII—Albert Babeau, I. ch. XX.]
2103 (return)
[ Lenin repeated this
performance in 1917 and Stalin attempted to do the same in the rest of the
World. (SR)..]
2104 (return)
[ 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."]
2105 (return)
[ 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.)]
2106 (return)
[ 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."]
2107 (return)
[ 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,"]
2108 (return)
[ 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."]
2109 (return)
[ "The French
Revolution," Vol. I. p. 182 and following pages.]
2110 (return)
[ "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"]
2111 (return)
[ 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.]
2112 (return)
[ "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).]
2113 (return)
[ Decree of Sept 29,
30, 1791, with report and instructions of the Committee on the
Constitution.]
2114 (return)
[ 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."]
2115 (return)
[ A few months after
this, on the election of a mayor for Paris, the court voted against
Lafayette, and for Pétion]
2116 (return)
[ 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."]
2117 (return)
[ This is what is,
today in 1998, taking place whenever any political faction, disliked by
the Socialists, try to arrange a meeting. (SR).]
2118 (return)
[ Malout, II. 50.—Mercure
de France, Jan. 7, Feb. 5, and April 9, 1791 (letter of a member of the
Monarchical Club)]
2119 (return)
[ 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."]
2120 (return)
[ "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.]
2121 (return)
[ "The French
Revolution," I. pp. 243, 324.]
2122 (return)
[ 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).]
2123 (return)
[ "The French
Revolution," I. 256, 307.]
2124 (return)
[ Mercure de France,
Dec. 14, 1790 (letter from Villeneuve-St.-Georges, Nov.29).]
2125 (return)
[ "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"]
2126 (return)
[ "Archives
Nationales," F7, 3,249. Memorial on the actual condition of the town and
district of Mortagne, department of Orne (November, 1791).]
2127 (return)
[ Revolutionary song
with the refrain: "Les aristocrates, à la lanterne, tous les aristocrates
on les pendra" (all the aristocrats will hang). (SR)]
2128 (return)
[ 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.]
2129 (return)
[ 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.]
2130 (return)
[ Police searches of
private homes. (SR).]
2131 (return)
[ "The French
Revolution," pp. 159, 160, 310, 323, 324.—Lauvergne, "Histoire du
département du Var," (August 23).]
2132 (return)
[ '"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."]
2133 (return)
[ 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.]
2134 (return)
[ 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."]
2135 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, X.
223 (l'Ami du Peuple, June 17, 19, 21, 1791)]
2136 (return)
[ "'Archives
Nationales,' F7, 3204. letter by M. Melon de Tradou, royal commissary at
Tulle, Sept. 8, 1791]
If it be true that a nation should be represented by its superior men, France was strangely represented during the Revolution. From one Assembly to another we see the level steadily declining; especially is the fall very great from the Constituent to the Legislative Assembly. The actors entitled to perform withdraw just as they begin to understand their parts; and yet more, they have excluded themselves from the theatre, while the stage is surrendered to their substitutes.
"The preceding Assembly," writes an ambassador,2201 "contained men of great talent, large fortune, and honorable name, a combination which had an imposing effect on the people, although violently opposed to personal distinctions. The actual Assembly is but little more than a council of lawyers, got together from every town and village in France."
In actual fact, out of 745 deputies, indeed, "400 lawyers belong, for the most part, to the dregs of the profession"; there are about twenty constitutional priests, "as many poets and literary men of but little reputation, almost all without any fortune," the greater number being less than thirty years old, sixty being less than twenty-six,2202 nearly all of them trained in the clubs and the popular assemblies". There is not one noble or prelate belonging to the ancient régime, no great landed proprietor,2203 no head of a service, no eminent specialist in diplomacy, in finance, in the administrative or military arts. But three general officers are found there, and these are of the lower rank,2204 one of them having held his appointment but three months, and the other two being wholly unknown.—At the head of the diplomatic committee stands Brissot, itinerant journalist, lately traveling about in England and the United States. He is supposed to be competent in the affairs of both worlds; in reality he is one of those presuming, threadbare, talkative fellows, who, living in a garret, lecture foreign cabinets and reconstruct all Europe. Things, to them, seem to be as easily worked out as words and sentences: one day,2205 to entice the English into an alliance with France, Brissot proposes to place two towns, Dunkirk and Calais, in their hands as security; another day, he proposes "to make a descent on Spain, and, at the same time, to send a fleet to conquer Mexico."—The leading member on the committee on finances is Cambon, a merchant from Montpellier, a good accountant, who, at a later period, is to simplify accounting and regulate the Grand Livre of the public debt, which means public bankruptcy. Mean-while, he hastens this on with all his might by encouraging the Assembly to undertake the ruinous and terrible war that is to last for twenty-three years; according to him, "there is more money than is needed for it."2206 In actual fact, the guarantee of assignats is used up and the taxes do not come in. They live only on the paper money they issue. The assignats lose forty per centum, and the ascertained deficit for 1792 is four hundred millions.2207 But this revolutionary financier relies upon the confiscations which he instigates in France, and which are to be set agoing in Belgium; here lies all his invention, a systematic robbery on a grand scale within and without the kingdom.
As to the legislators and manufacturers of constitutions, we have Condorcet, a cold-blooded fanatic and systematic leveler, satisfied that a mathematical method suits the social sciences fed on abstractions, blinded by formuloe, and the most chimerical of perverted intellects. Never was a man versed in books more ignorant of mankind; never did a lover of scientific precision better succeed in changing the character of facts. It was he who, two days before the 20th of June, amidst the most brutal public excitement, admired "the calmness" and rationality of the multitude; "considering the way people interpret events, it might be supposed that they had given some hours of each day to the study of analysis." It is he who, two days after the 20th of June, extolled the red cap in which the head of Louis XVI. had been muffled. "That crown is as good as any other. Marcus Aurelius would not have despised it."2208—Such is the discernment and practical judgment of the leaders; from these one can form an opinion of the flock. It consists of novices arriving from the provinces and bringing with them the principles and prejudices of the newspaper. So remote from the center, having no knowledge of general affairs or of their unity, they are two years behind their brethren of the Constituent Assembly. They are described in the following manner by Malouet,2209
"Most of them, without having decided against a monarchy, had decided against the court, the aristocracy, and the clergy, ever imagining conspiracies and believing that defense consisted solely in attack. There were still many men of talent among them, but with no experience; they even lacked that which we had obtained. Our patriot deputies, in great part, were aware of their errors; the novices were not, they were ready to begin all over again."
Moreover, they have their own political bent, for nearly all of them are upstarts of the new régime. We find in their ranks 264 department administrators, 109 district administrators, 125 justices and prosecuting-attorneys, 68 mayors and town officers, besides about twenty officers of the National Guard, constitutional bishops and curés. The whole amounting to 566 of the elected functionaries, who, for the past twenty months, have carried on the government under the direction of their electors. We have seen how this was done and under what conditions, with what compliances and with what complicity, with what deference to clamorous opinion, with what docility in the presence of rioters, with what submission to the orders of the mob, with what a deluge of sentimental phrases and commonplace abstractions. Sent to Paris as deputies, through the choice or toleration of the clubs, they bear along with them their politics and their rhetoric. The result is an assemblage of narrow, perverted, hasty, inflated and feeble minds; at each daily session, twenty word-mills turn to no purpose, the greatest of public powers at once becoming a manufactory of nonsense, a school of extravagancies, and a theatre for declamation.
Is it possible that serious men could have listened to such weird nonsense until the bitter end?
"I am a tiller of the soil,"2210 says one deputy, "I now dare speak of the antique nobility of my plow. A yoke of oxen once constituted the pure, incorruptible legal worthies before whom my good ancestors executed their contracts, the authenticity of which, far better recorded on the soil than on flimsy parchment, is protected from any species of revolution whatever."
Is it conceivable that the reporter of a law, that is about to exile or imprison forty thousand priests, should employ in an argument such silly bombast as the following?2211
"I have seen in the rural districts the hymeneal torch diffusing only pale and somber rays, or, transformed into the flambeaux of furies, the hideous skeleton of superstition seated even on the nuptial couch, placed between nature and the wedded, and arresting, etc.... Oh Rome, art thou satisfied? Art thou then like Saturn, to whom fresh holocausts were daily imperative?... Depart, ye creators of discord! The soil of liberty is weary of bearing you. Would ye breathe the atmosphere of the Aventine mount? The national ship is already prepared for you. I hear on the shore the impatient cries of the crew; I see the breezes of liberty swelling its sails. Like Telemachus, ye will go forth on the waters to seek your father; but never will you have to dread the Sicilian rocks, nor the seductions of a Eucharis."
Courtesies of pedants, rhetorical personifications, and the invective of maniacs is the prevailing tone. The same defect characterizes the best speeches, namely, an overexcited brain, a passion for high-sounding terms, the constant use of stilts and an incapacity for seeing things as they are and of so describing them. Men of talent, Isnard, Guadet, Vergniaud himself, are carried away by hollow sonorous phrases like a ship with too much canvas for its ballast. Their minds are stimulated by souvenirs of their school lessons, the modern world revealing itself to them only through their Latin reminiscences.—François de Nantes is exasperated at the pope "who holds in servitude the posterity of Cato and of Scoevola."—Isnard proposes to follow the example of the Roman senate which, to allay discord at home, got up an outside war: between old Rome and France of 1792, indeed, there is a striking resemblance.—Roux insists that the Emperor (of Austria) should give satisfaction before the 1st of March; "in a case like this the Roman people would have fixed the term of delay; why shouldn't the French people fix one?..." "The circle of Popilius" should be drawn around those petty, hesitating German princes. When money is needed to establish camps around Paris and the large towns, Lasource proposes to dispose of the national forests and is amazed at any objection to the measure. "Coesar's soldiers," he exclaims, "believing that an ancient forest in Gaul was sacred, dared not lay the axe to it; are we to share their superstitious respect?"2212—Add to this collegiate lore the philosophic dregs deposited in all minds by the great sophist then in vogue. Larivière reads in the tribune2213 that page of the "Contrat Social," where Rousseau declares that the sovereign may banish members "of an unsocial religion," and punish with death "one who, having publicly recognized the dogmas of civil religion, acts as if he did not believe in them." On which, another hissing parrot, M. Filassier, exclaims, "I put J. J. Rousseau's proposition into the form of a motion and demand a vote on it."—In like manner it is proposed to grant very young girls the right of marrying in spite of their parents by stating, according to the "Nouvelle Héloise"
"that a girl thirteen or fourteen years old begins to sigh for the union which nature dictates. She struggles between passion and duty, so that, if she triumphs, she becomes a martyr, something that is rare in nature. It may happen that a young person prefers the serene shame of defeat to a wearisome eight year long struggle."
Divorce is inaugurated to "preserve in matrimony that happy peace of mind which renders the sentiments livelier."2214 Henceforth this will no longer be a chain but "the acquittance of an agreeable debt which every citizen owes to his country... Divorce is the protecting spirit of marriage."2215
On a background of classic pedantry, with only vague and narrow notions of ordinary instruction, lacking exact and substantial information, flow obscenities and enlarged commonplaces enveloped in a mythological gauze, spouting in long tirades as maxims from the revolutionary manual. Such is the superficial culture and verbal argumentation from which vulgar and dangerous ingredients the intelligence of the new legislators is formed.2216
From this we can imagine what their sessions were. "More in-coherent and especially more passionate than those of the Constituent Assembly"2217 they present the same but intensified characteristics. The argument is weaker, the invective more violent, and the dogmatism more intemperate. Inflexibility degenerates into insolence, prejudice into fanaticism, and near-sightedness into blindness. Disorder becomes a tumult and constant din an uproar. Suppose, says an eye-witness,
"a classroom with hundreds of pupils quarreling and every instant on the point of seizing each other by the hair. Their dress neglected, their attitudes angry, with sudden transitions from shouting to hooting.. is a sight hard to imagine and to which nothing can be compared."
It lacks nothing for making it a club of the lowest species. Here, in advance, we contemplate the ways of the future revolutionary inquisition. They welcome burlesque denunciations; enter into petty police investigations; weigh the tittle-tattle of porters and the gossip of servant-girls; devote an all-night session to the secrets of a drunkard.2218 They enter on their official report and without any disapproval, the petition of M. Huré, "living at Pont-sur-Yonne, who, over his own signature, offers one hundred francs and his arm to become a killer of tyrants." Repeated and multiplied hurrahs and applause with the felicitations of the president is the sanction of scandalous or ridiculous private misconduct seeking to display itself under the cover of public authority. Anacharsis Clootz, "a Mascarille officially stamped," who proposes a general war and who hawks about maps of Europe cut up in advance into departments beginning with Savoy, Belgium and Holland "and thus onward to the Polar Sea," is thanked and given a seat on the benches of the Assembly.2219 Compliments are made to the Vicar of Sainte-Marguerite and his wife is given a seat in the Assembly and who, introducing "his new family," thunders against clerical celibacy.2220 Crowds of men and women are permitted to traverse the hall letting out political cries. Every sort of indecent, childish and seditious parade is admitted to the bar of the house.2221 To-day it consists of "citoyennes of Paris," desirous of being drilled in military exercises and of having for their commandants "former French guardsmen;" to-morrow children come and express their patriotism with "touching simplicity," regretting that "their trembling feet do not permit them to march, no, fly against the tyrants;" next to these come convicts of the Château—Vieux escorted by a noisy crowd; at another time the artillerymen of Paris, a thousand in number, with drums beating; delegates from the provinces, the faubourgs and the clubs come constantly, with their furious harangues, and imperious remonstrances, their exactions, their threats and their summonses.—In the intervals between the louder racket a continuous hubbub is heard in the clatter of the tribunes.2222 At each session "the representatives are chaffed by the spectators; the nation in the gallery is judge of the nation on the floor;" it interferes in the debates, silences the speakers, insults the president and orders the reporter of a bill to quit the tribune. One interruption, or a simple murmur, is not all; there are twenty, thirty, fifty in an hour, clamoring, stamping, yells and personal abuse. After countless useless entreaties, after repeated calls to order, "received with hooting," after a dozen "regulations that are made, revised, countermanded and posted up" as if better to prove the impotence of the law, of the authorities and of the Assembly itself, the usurpations of these intruders keep on increasing. They have shouted for ten months "Down with the civil list! Down with the ministerials! Down with those curs! Silence, slaves!' On the 26th of July, Brissot himself is to appear lukewarm and be struck on the face with two plums. "Three or four hundred individuals without either property, title, or means of subsistence... have become the auxiliaries, petitioners and umpires of the legislature," their paid violence completely destroying whatever is still left of the Assembly's reason.2223