第423章

"You should not run counter to the popular will, for in doing this you preach civil war, bring the assembly's decrees into contempt, and irritate the nation."Evidently, for them, they constitute the nation, or, more or less, they represent it. Through this self-investiture they are at once magistrates, censors, and police, while the scolded journalist is only too glad, in his case, to have them stop at injunctions. -- Three days before this he is advised that a body of rioters in his neighborhood "threatened to treat his house like that of M. de Castries," in which everything had been smashed and thrown out the windows. At another time, apropos of the suspensive or absolute veto; "four savage fellows came to his domicile to warn him, showing him their pistols, that if he dared write in behalf of M. Mounier he should answer for it with his life." Thus, from the outset,"just as the nation begins to enjoy the inestimable right of free thought and free speech, factional tyrants lose no time in depriving citizens of these, proclaiming to all that would maintain the integrity of their consciences: Tremble, die, or believe as we do!"After this, to impose silence on those who express what is offensive, the crowd, the club, the section, decree and execute, each on its own authority,[27] searches, arrests, assaults, and, at length, assassinations. During the month of June, 1792, "three decrees of arrest and fifteen denunciations, two acts of affixing seals, four civic invasions of his premises, and the confiscation of whatever belonged to him in France" is the experience of Mallet du Pan. He passes four years "without knowing with any certainty on going to bed whether he should get out of it in the morning alive and free." Later on, if he escapes the guillotine and the lantern, it is owing to exile. On the 10th of August, Suleau, a conservative journalist, is massacred in the street. -- This shows how the party regards the freedom of the press. Other liberties may be judged of by its encroachments on this domain. Law, in its eyes, is null when it proves an obstacle, and when it affords protection to adversaries;consequently there is no excess which it does not sanction for itself;and no right which it does not refuse to others.

There is no escape from the tyranny of the clubs. "That of Marseilles has forced the city officials to resign;[28] it has summoned the municipal body to appear before it; it has ignored the authority of the department, and has insulted the administrators of the law.

Members of the Orleans club have kept the national Supreme Court under supervision, and taken part in its proceedings. Those of the Caen club have insulted the magistrates, and seized and burnt the records of the proceedings commenced against the destroyers of the statue of Louis XIV. At Alby they have forcibly abstracted from the record-office the papers relating to an assassin's trial, and burnt them." The club at Coutance gives the deputies of its district to understand that "no reflections must be cast on the laws of the people." That of Lyons stops an artillery train, under the pretext that the ministry in office does not enjoy the nation's confidence. -- Thus does the club everywhere govern, or prepare to govern. On the one hand, at the elections, it sets aside or supports candidates; it alone votes, or, at least, controls the voting. In short, the club is the elective power, and practically, if not legally, enjoys the privileges of a political aristocracy. On the other hand, it assumes to be a spontaneous police-board; it prepares and circulates the lists which designate the ill-disposed, suspected, and lukewarm; it lodges information against nobles whose sons have emigrated; against unsworn priests who still reside in their former parishes, and against nuns, "whose conduct is unconstitutional". It prompts, directs, and rebukes local authorities; it is itself a supplemental, superior, and usurping authority. -- All at once, sensible men realize its character, and protest against it.

"A body thus organized," says a petition,[29] "exists solely for arming one citizen against another. . . . Discussions take place there, and denunciations are made under the seal of inviolable secrecy. . . . . Honest citizens, surrendered to the most atrocious calumny, are destroyed without an opportunity of defending themselves.

It is a veritable Inquisition. It is the center of seditious publications, a school of cabals and intrigue. If the citizens have to blush at the selection of unworthy candidates, they are all due to this class of associations . . . Composed of the excited and the incendiary, of those who aim to rule the State," the club everywhere tends"to a mastery of the popular opinion, to thwarting the municipalities, to an intrusion of itself between these and the people," to an usurpation of legal forms and to become a "colossus of despotism."Vain complaints! The National Assembly, ever in alarm on its own account, shields the popular club and accords it its favor or indulgence. A journal of the party had recommended "the people to form themselves into small platoons." These platoons, one by one, are growing. Each borough now has a local oligarchy, an enlisted and governing band. To create an army out of these scattered bands, simply requires a staff and a central rallying-point. The central point and the staff have both for a long time been ready in Paris, it is the association of the "Friends of the Constitution."IV.

Their rallying-points. -- Origin and composition of the Paris Jacobin club. -- It affiliates with provincial clubs. -- Its leaders. --The fanatics. -- The Intriguers. -- Their object. -- Their means.