men who continue to imagine that the Revolution has been made for themselves alone, and who have sent Louis XVI. to the Temple, in order that they may be enthroned at the Tuileries! * It is time to break these disgraceful chains to crush this new despotism. It is time that those who have made honest men tremble should be made to tremble in their turn. I am not ignorant that they have poniards at their service. On the night of the second of September — that night of proscription!-did they not seek to turn them against several deputies, and myself among the number? Were we not denounced to the People as traitors? Fortunately, it was the People into whose hands we fell. The assassins were elsewhere occupied. The voice of calumny failed of its effect. If my voice may yet make itself heard from this place, I call you all to witness, it shall not cease to thunder, with all its energy, against tyrants, whether of high or low degree. What to me their ruffians and their poniards? What his own life to the representative of the People, while the safety of the country is at stake? When William Tell adjusted the arrow which was to pierce the fatal apple that a tyrant had placed on his son's head, he exclaimed, "Perish my name, and perish my memory, provided Switzerland may be free!" And we, also,- we will say, "Perish the National Assembly and its memory, provided France may be free!"† Ay, perish the National Assembly and its memory, so by its death it may save the Nation from a course of crime that would affix an eternal stigma to the French name; so, by its action, it may show the Nations of Europe that, despite the calumnies by which it is sought to dishonor France, there is still in the very bosom of that momentary anarchy where the brigands have plunged us there is still in our country some public virtue, some respect for humanity left! Perish the National Assembly and its memory, if upon our ashes our more fortunate successors may establish the edifice of a Constitution, which shall assure the happiness of France, and consolidate the reign of liberty and equality! 21. AGAINST WAR, JAN. 13, 1792.-Robespierre. Original Translation. SHALL we await the orders of the War Office to overturn Thrones? Shall we await the signal of the Court? In this war against aristocrats and Kings, shall we look to be commanded by these same Patricians, these eternal favorites of Despotism? No! Alone let us *Pronounced Tweelree. The deputies here rose, as by an unanimous impulse, and repeated, with enthusiasm, the oath of Vergniaud. The audience, who occupied the galleries, also ningled their voices with those of the deputies. To appreciate fully the intrepid eloquence of this speech, it should be remembered that France was, at that moment, virtually under the sanguinary dictatorship of the Jacobin Club; and that their proscriptions and massacres threatened to involve all who did not acquiesce in their measures. Vergniaud soon afterward paid the penalty of his courage; and justified his bold words by a bold death on the scaffold. secure. march! Our own leaders let us be! If it is the war of the Court, that we must accept, the war of the Ministers, of Patricians shamming patriotism, then, alas! far from anticipating the enfranchisement of the world, I shall not even believe that your own liberty is Our wisest course now is to defend it against the perfidy of those internal enemies who would beguile you with these heroic illusions. I have proved that liberty has no more mortal enemy than war. I have proved that war, recommended by men of doubtful stamp, will be, in the Executive hands, but a means of annihilating the Constitution but the issue of a plot against the Revolution. favor these projects of war, under whatever pretext, is, then, to join a conspiracy against the Revolution. To recommend confidence in the Executive, to invoke public favor in behalf of the Generals, is, then, to deprive the Revolution of its last security, the vigilance and energy of the Nation. - Το If, then, the moment of emancipation for the Nations be not yet arrived, we should have the patience to await it. If this generation be destined only to struggle on in the slough of those vices, where Despotism has plunged it, - if the theatre of our Revolution be doomed to present to the world no other spectacle than the miserable contests of perfidy and imbecility, egotism and ambition, then to the rising generation will be bequeathed the task of purifying the polluted earth. That generation shall bring-not the peace of Despotism, not the sterile agitations of intrigue, but the torch and the sword, to consume Thrones, and exterminate oppressors! Thou art not alien to us, O more fortunate posterity! For thee we brave these storms, for thee defy the plots of tyranny. Disheartened ofttimes by the obstacles that surround us, towards thee we yearn! For by thee shall our work be finished! O! cherish in thy memory the names of the martyrs of liberty! 22. MORALITY THE BASIS OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY-BELIEF IN GOD THE BASIS OF MORALITY. - Robespierre. Original Translation. The name of Maximilien Robespierre is associated with all that is sanguinary and atrocious in the history of the French Revolution. Whatever his own practice may have been, he had the sagacity to see that there is no security in a Republic which is not based on principle,and no security in principle which is not based on belief in God and the immortality of the soul. The extract we here give is froin his Report, read to the French National Convention, the 7th of May, 1794. THE idea of a Supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul is a continual call to justice. It is therefore a social and republican principle. Who has.authorized you to declare that a Deity does not exist? O, you who support so arid a doctrine, what advantage do you expect to derive from the principle that a blind fatality regulates the affairs of men, and that the soul is nothing but a breath of air impelled towards the tomb? Will the idea of nonentity inspire man with more elevated sentiments than that of immortality? Will it awaken more respect for others or himself, more devotion to country, more courage to resist tyranny, greater contempt for pleasure or death? You, who regret a virtuous friend, can you endure the thought that his noblest part has not escaped dissolution? You, who weep over the remains of a child or a wife, are you consoled by the thought that a handful of dust is all that is left of the beloved object? You, the unfortunate, who expire under the stroke of the assassin, is not your last sigh an appeal to the justice of the Most High? Innocence on the scaffold makes the tyrant turn pale on his triumphal car. Would such an ascendency be felt, if the tomb levelled alike the oppressor and the oppressed? The more a man is gifted with sensibility and genius, the more does he attach himself to those ideas which aggrandize his being and exalt his aspirations; and the doctrine of men of this stamp becomes the doctrine of all mankind. A great man, a veritable hero, knows his own worth too well to experience complacency in the thought of his nonentity. A wretch, despicable in his own eyes, repulsive in those of others, feels that nature but gives him his deserts in annihilation. Confusion to those who seek, by their desolating doctrines, to extinguish this sublime enthusiasm, and to stifle this moral instinct of the People, which is the principle of all great actions! To you, Representatives of the People, it belongs to hasten the triumph of the truths we have developed. If we lack the courage to proclaim them, then deep, indeed, must be the depravity, with which we are environed! Defy the insensate clamors of presumptuous ignorance and of stubborn hypocrisy! Will posterity credit it, that the vanquished factions have carried their audacity so far as to charge us with lukewarmness and aristocracy for having restored to the Nation's heart the idea of the Divinity, the fundamental principle of all morality? Will it be believed that they have dared, even in this place, to assert that we have thereby thrown back human reason centuries in its progress? O, be not surprised that the wretches, leagued against us, are so eager to put the hemlock to our lips! But, before we quaff it, we will save the country! 23. ROBESPIERRE'S LAST SPEECH. — Original Translation. The day after this speech,- delivered July 28th, 1794, and addressed to an assembly bent on his destruction,-Robespierre was executed, at the early age of thirty-five, under circumstances of accumulated horror. His fate is a warning to rulers who would cement even the best of Governments with blood. Robespierre's character is still an enigma; some regarding him as an honest fanatic, and others as a crafty demagogue. Perhaps the traits of either predominated at times. "Destitute," says Lamartine, "of exterior graces, and of that gift of extemporaneous speaking which pours forth the unpremeditated inspirations of natural eloquence, Robespierre had taken so much pains with himself, he had meditated so much, written and erased so much, he had so often braved the inattention and the sarcasms of his audiences, that, in the end, he succeeded in giving warmth and suppleness to his style, and in transforming his whole person, despite his stiff and meagre figure, his shrill voice and abrupt gesticulation, into an engine of eloquence, of conviction and of passion." THE enemies of the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such, they would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, - I should grant them impunity for their crimes, and they would be grateful! Were I such, the Kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support. There would be a Covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have tools. But the enemies of tyranny, - whither does their path tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my protector? To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and annihilated so many detected traitors? You, the People, our principles, - -are that faction! A faction to which I am devoted, and against which all the scoundrelism of the day is banded! The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis of morality. Against me, and against those who hold kindred principles, the league is formed. My life? O! my life, I abandon without a regret! I have seen the Past; AND I FORESEE THE FUTURE. What friend of his country would wish to survive the moment when he could no longer serve it, when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the most abject, or fears the most absurd, override the sacred interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have sometimes feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who had thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends of humanity; and I rejoice that these conspirators against my country have now, by their reckless rage, traced deep the line of demarcation between themselves and all true men. Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in all times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers died also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth; but in very different conditions. O, Frenchmen! O, my countrymen! Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade your souls, and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette,* no! Death is not "an eternal sleep"! Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors of the People a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful truth, "Thou shalt die!" 24. ADDRESS TO THE CHAMBER OF PEERS, 1835. - Trélat. I HAVE long felt that it was necessary - we should meet face to face: we do so now. * Chaumette was a member of the Convention, who was opposed to the public recognition of a God and a future state. our mutual enmity is not the birth of yesterday. In 1814, in common with many, many others, I cursed the power which called you or your predecessors to help it in chaining down liberty. In 1815 I took up arms to oppose the return of your gracious master of that day. In 1830 I did my duty in promoting the successful issue of the event which then occurred; and eight days after the Revolution, I again took up my musket, though but little in the habit of handling warlike instruments, and went to the post which General Lafayette had assigned us for the purpose of marching against you personally, Gentlemen Peers! It was in the presence of my friends and myself that one of your number was received; and it is not impossible that we had some influence in occasioning the very limited success of his embassy. It was then he who appeared before us, imploring, beseeching, with tears in his eyes; it is now our turn to appear before you, but we do so without imploring, or beseeching, or weeping, or bending the knee. We had utterly vanquished your Kings; and, they being gone, you had nothing left. As for you, you have not vanquished the People; and, whether you hold us as hostages for it or not, our personal position troubles us very, very little; - rely upon that. Your prisons open to receive within their dungeons all who retain a free heart in their bosoms. He who first placed the tri-colored flag on the palace of your old Kings - they who drove Charles the Tenth from France are handed over to you as victims, on account of your new King. Your sergeant has touched with his black wand the courageous deputy who first, among you all, opened his door to the Revolution. The whole thing is summed up in these facts: It is the Revolution struggling with the counter-revolution; the Past with the Present, with the Future; selfishness with fraternity; tyranny with liberty. Tyranny has on her side bayonets, prisons, and your embroidered collars, Gentlemen Peers. Liberty has God on her side, -the Power which enlightens the reason of man, and impels him forward in the great work of human advancement. It will be seen with whom victory will abide. This will be seen, not to-morrow, not the day after to-morrow, nor the day after that, it may not be seen by us at all; what matters that? It is the human race which engages our thoughts, and not ourselves. Everything manifests that the hour of deliverance is not far distant. It will then be seen whether God will permit the lie to be given Him with impunity. Gentlemen Peers, I did not stand up with the purpose of defending myself. You are my political enemies, not my judges. In a fair trial, it is necessary that the judge and the accused should understand, - should, to a certain extent, sympathize with each other. In the present case, this is quite out of the question. We do not feel alike; we do not speak the same language. The land we inhabit, humanity itself, its laws, its requirements, duty, religion, the sciences, the arts, industry, all that constitutes society,-Heaven, earth,-nothing appears to us in the same light that it does to you. There is a world between You may condemn me; but I accept you not as judges, for you are unable to comprehend me. us. |