书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
35302100000625

第625章

To make them do their duty, it has two hands. -- One, the right, which seizes people unawares by the collar, is the Committee of General Security, composed of twelve extreme Montagnards, such as Panis, Vadier, Le Bas, Geoffroy, David, Amar, La Vicomterie, Lebon and Ruhl, all nominated, that is to say, appointed by it, being its confederates and subalterns. They are its lieutenants of police, and once a week they come and take part in its labors, as formerly the Sartines, and the Lenoirs assisted the Comptroller-general. A man who this secret committee deems a "suspect," is suddenly seized, no matter who, whether representative, minister, or general, and finds himself the next morning behind the bars in one of the ten new Bastilles. --There, the other hand seizes him by the throat; this is the revolutionary tribunal, an exceptional court like the extraordinary commissions of the ancient régime, only far more terrible. Aided by its police gang, the Committee of Public Safety itself selects the sixteen judges and sixty jurymen[122] from among the most servile, the most furious, or the most brutal of the fanatics:[123] Fouquier-Tinville, Hermann, Dumas, Payan, Coffinhal, Fleuriot-Lescot, and, lower down on the scale, apostate priests, renegade nobles, disappointed artists, infatuated studio-apprentices, journeymen scarcely able to write their names, shoemakers, joiners, carpenters, tailors, barbers, former lackeys, an idiot like Ganney, a deaf man like Leroy-Dix-Ao?t; their names and professions indicate all that is necessary to be told: these men are licensed and paid murderers. The Jurymen themselves are allowed eighteen francs a day, so that they may attend to their business more leisurely. This business consists in condemning without proof, without any pleadings, and scarcely any examination, in a hurry, in batches, whoever the Committee of Public Safety might send to them, even the most confirmed Montagnards:

Danton, who contrived the tribunal, will soon discover this. - it is through these two government institutions that the Committee of Public Safety keeps every head under the cleaver and each head, to avoid being struck off, bows down,[124] in the provinces as well as in Paris.

This has happened when the existing local hierarchy was replaced by new authorities ****** the omnipotent will of the Committee present everywhere. Directly or indirectly, "for all government measures or measures of public safety, all that relates to persons and the general and internal police, all constituted bodies and all public functionaries, are placed under its inspection."[125] You may imagine how the risk of being guillotined weighed upon them.

To suppress in advance any tendency to administrative inertia, it has had withdrawn from the too powerful, too much respected, department governments, "too inclined to federalism," their departmental dominance and their "political influence."[126] It reduces these to the levying of taxes and the supervision of roads and canals; it purges them out through its agents; it even purges out the governments of municipalities and districts. To suppress beforehand all probability of popular opposition, it has had the sessions of the sections reduced to two per week; it installs in these sections, for about forty sous a day, a majority of sans-culottes ; it orders the suspension "until further directives" of all municipal elections.[127]

Finally, to have full control on the spot, it appoints its own men, first, the commissioners and the representatives on missions, a sort of temporary corps of directors sent into each department with unlimited powers;[128] next, a body of national agents, a sort of permanent body of sub-delegates, through whom in each district and municipality it replaces the procureurs-syndics.[129] To this army of functionaries is added in each town, bourg or large village, a revolutionary committee, paid three francs a day per member, charged with the application of its decrees, and required to make reports thereon. Never before was such a vast and closely woven network cast from above to envelope and keep captive twenty-six million people.

Such is the real constitution which the Jacobins substitute for the constitution they have prepared for show. In the arsenal of the monarchy which they destroyed they took the most despotic institutions - centralization, Royal Council, lieutenants of police, special tribunals, intendants and sub-delegates; they disinterred the antique Roman law of lèse-majesty, refurbished old blades which civilization had dulled, aiming them at every throat and now wielded at random against liberties, property and lives. It is called the "revolutionary government;" according to official statements it is to last until peace is secured; in the minds of genuine Jacobins it must continue until all the French have been regenerated in accordance with the formula.

____________________________________________________________________Notes:

[1] Titus Flavious Clemens, (Greek writer born in Athens around 150and dead in Cappadoce in 250) He lived in Alexandria. (SR).

[2] The words of Marat.

[3] After the Constitution is completed, said Legendre, in the Jacobin club, we will make the federalists dance.