The disorder, mover, so repugnant to them as logicians is still more repugnant to them as cultivated, polished men. They have a sense of what is proper,[44] of becoming ways, and their tastes are even refined. They are not familiar with, nor do they desire to imitate, the rude manners of Danton, his coarse language, his oaths, and his low associations with the people. They have not, like Robespierre, gone to lodge with a master joiner, to live him and eat with his family. Unlike Pache, Minister of War, no one among them "feels honored" by "going down to dine with his porter," and by sending his daughters to the club to give a fraternal kiss to drunken Jacobins.[45] At Madame Roland's house there is a salon, although it is stiff and pedantic; Barbaroux send verses to a marchioness, who, after the 2nd of June, elopes with him to Caen.[46] Condorcet has lived in high society, while his wife, a former canoness, possess the charms, the repose, the instruction, and the elegance of an accomplished woman. Men of this stamp cannot endure close alongside of them the inept and gross dictatorship of an armed rabble. In providing for the public treasury they require regular taxes and not tyrannical confiscations.[47] To repress the malevolent they propose "punishment and not banishment."[48] In all State trials they oppose irregular courts, and strive to maintain for those under indictment some of the usual safeguards.[49] On declaring the King guilty they hesitate in pronouncing the sentence of death, and try to lighten their responsibility by appealing to the people. The line "laws and not blood," was a line which, causing a stir in a play of the day, presented in a nutshell their political ideas. And, naturally, the law, especially Republican law, is the law of all; once enacted, nobody, no citizen, no city, no party, can refuse to obey it without being criminal. It is monstrous that one city should arrogate to itself the privilege of ruling the nation; Paris, like other departments, should be reduced to its on-eighty-third proportion of influence. It is monstrous that, in a capital of 700,000 souls, five or six thousand radical Jacobins should oppress the sections and alone elect their candidates; in the sections and at the polls, all citizens, at least all republicans, should enjoy an equal and free vote. It is monstrous that the principle of popular sovereignty should be used to cover up attacks against popular sovereignty, that, under the pretense of saving the State, the first that comes along may kill whom he pleases, that, on the pretext that they are resisting oppression, each mob should have the "Right" to put the government down. -- Hence, this militant "Right" must be pacified, enclosed within legal boundaries, and subjected to a fixed process.[50] Should any individual desire a law, a reform or a public measure, let him state his on paper over his own signature and that of fifty other citizens of the same primary assembly; then the proposition must be submitted to his own primary assembly; then in case it obtains a majority, to the primary assemblies of his arrondissement; then, in case of a majority, to the primary assemblies of his department; then, in case of a majority, to all the primary assemblies of the nation, so that after a second verdict of the same assemblies twice consulted, the Legislative body, yielding to the majority of primary suffrages, may dissolve and a new Legislative body, in which all old members shall be declared ineligible, take its place. -- This is the final expression and the master idea, of the theory. Condorcet, its able constructor, has outdone himself. Impossible to design on paper a more ingenious or complicated mechanism. The Girondists, in the closing article of this faultless constitution, believe that they have discovered a way to muzzle the beast and allow the sovereign people to fully assert their rights.
As if, with some kind of constitution and especially with this one, one could muzzle the beast! As if it was in the mood to crane the neck allowing them to put the muzzle on! Robespierre, on behalf of the Jacobins, counters with a clause radically opposed to the one drafted by Condorcet[51]:
" To submit 'the right to resist oppression' to legal formalities is the ultimate refinement of tyranny. . . When a government violates the people's rights, a general insurrection of the people, as well as portions of the people, is the most sacred of duties."Political orthodoxy, close reasoning, and oratorical talent are, however, no weapon against this ever-muttering insurrection.
"Our philosophers," says a good observer,[52] "want to attain their ends by persuasion; which is equivalent to saying that battles may be won by eloquence, fine speeches, and plans of constitution. Very soon, according to them, . . . . if will suffice to carry complete copies of Macchiavelli, Rousseau and Montesquieu into battle instead of cannon, it never occurring to them that these authors, like their works, never were, and never will be, anything but fools when put up against a cut-throat provided with a good sword."The parliamentary landscape has fallen away; things have returned to a state of nature, that is, to a state of war, and one is no longer concerned with debate but with brute force. To be in the right, to convince the convention, to obtain majorities, to pass decrees, would be appropriate in ordinary times, under a government provided with an armed force and a regular administration, by which, from the summits of public authority, the decrees of a majority descend through submissive functionaries to a sympathetic and obedient population.
But, in times of anarchy, and above all, in the den of the Commune, in Paris, such as the 10th of August and the 2nd of September made it, all this is of no account.
V. The Jacobins forming alone the Sovereign People.