At last, Brissot rose to reply. "I am here to defend myself," he said. "What are my crimes? I am said to have made seven ministers—I keep up a connection with La Fayette—I desire to make a protector of him. Certainly great power is thus assigned to me by those who think that from my fourth story I have dictated laws to the Château of the Tuileries. But if it even were true that I had made ministers, how long has it been a crime to have confided the interests of the people to the hands of the people? This minister is about, it is said, to distribute all his favours to the Jacobins! Ah! would to heaven that all the places were filled by Jacobins!"
At these words Camille Desmoulins, Brissot's enemy, concealed in the chamber, bowing towards his neighbour, said aloud with a sneering laugh, "What a cunning rogue! Cicero and Demosthenes never uttered more eloquent insinuations." Cries of angry feeling burst from the ranks of Brissot's friends, who clamoured for Camille Desmoulins' expulsion. A censor of the chamber declared that the remarks of the pamphleteer were disgraceful, and order was restored. Brissot proceeded. "Denunciation is the weapon of the people: I do not complain of this. Do you know who are its bitterest enemies? Those who prostitute denunciation. Yes; but where are the proofs? Treat with the deepest contempt him who denounces, but does not prove. How long have a protector or a protectorate been talked of? Do you know why? Is it to accustom the ear to the name of tribuneship and tribune. They do not see that a tribuneship can never exist. Who would dare to dethrone the constitutional king? Who would dare to place the crown on his head? Who can imagine that the race of Brutus is extinct? And if there were no Brutus, where is the man who has ten times the ability of Cromwell? Do you believe that Cromwell himself would have succeeded in a revolution like ours? There were for him two easy roads to usurpation, which are to-day closed—ignorance and fanaticism. You think you see a Cromwell in a La Fayette. You neither know La Fayette nor your times. Cromwell had character—La Fayette has none. A man does not become protector without boldness and decision; and when he has both, this society comprises a crowd of friends of liberty, who would rather perish than support him. I first make the oath, that either equality shall reign, or I will die contending against protectors and tribunes. Tribunes! they are the worst enemies of the people. They flatter to enchain it. They spread suspicions of virtue, which will not debase itself. Remember who were Aristides and Phocion,—they did not always sit in the tribune."
Brissot, as he darted this sarcasm, looked towards Robespierre, for whom he meant it. Robespierre turned pale, and raised his head suddenly. "They did not always sit in the tribune," continued Brissot; "they were at their posts in the camp, or at the tribunals," (a sneering laugh came from the Girondist benches, accusing Robespierre of abandoning his post at the moment of danger). "They did not disdain any charge, however humble it might be, when it was assigned them by the people: they spoke seldom; they did not flatter demagogues; they never denounced without proofs! The calumniators did not spare Phocion. He was the victim of an adulator of the people! Ah! this reminds me of the horrible calumny uttered against Condorcet! Who are you who dare to slander this great man? What have you done? What are your labours, your writings? Can you quote, as he can, so many assaults during three years by himself with Voltaire and D'Alembert against the throne, superstition, prejudices, and the aristocracy? Where would you be, where this tribune, were it not for these gentlemen? They are your masters; and you insult those who gain you the voices of the people. You assail Condorcet, as though his life had not been a series of sacrifices! A philosopher, he became a politician; academician, he became a newspaper writer; a courtier, he became one of the people; noble, he became a Jacobin! Beware! you are following the concealed impulses of the court. Ah, I will not imitate my adversaries, I would not repeat those rumours which assert they are paid by the civil list." (There was a report that Robespierre had been gained over to oppose the war.) "I shall not say a word of a secret committee which they frequent, and in which are concerted the means of influencing this society; but I will say that they follow in the track of the promoters of civil war. I will say, that without meaning it, they do more harm to the patriots than the court. And at what moment do they throw division amongst us? At the moment when we have a foreign war, and when an intestine war threatens us. Let us put an end to these disputes, and let us go to the order of the day, leaving our contempt for odious and injurious denunciations."
XX.
At this, Robespierre and Guadet, equally provoked, wished to enter the tribune. "It is forty-eight hours," said Guadet, "that the desire of justifying myself has weighed upon my heart; it is only a few minutes that this want has affected Robespierre. I request to be heard." Leave was accorded, and he briefly exculpated himself. "Be especially on your guard," he said, as he concluded, and pointed to Robespierre, "against empirical orators, who have incessantly in their mouths the words of liberty, tyranny, conspiracy—always mixing up their own praises with the deceit they impose upon the people. Do justice to such men!" "Order!" cried Fréron, Robespierre's friend; "this is insult and sarcasm." The tribune resounded with applause and hooting. The chamber itself was divided into two camps, separated by a wide space. Harsh names were exchanged, threatening gesticulations used, and hats were raised and shaken about on the tops of canes. "I am called a wretch," (scelerat) continued Guadet, "and yet I am not allowed to denounce a man who invariably thrusts his personal pride in advance of the public welfare. A man who, incessantly talking of patriotism, abandons the post to which he was called! Yes, I denounce to you a man who, either from ambition or misfortune, has become the idol of the people!" Here the tumult reached its height, and drowned the voice of Guadet.
Robespierre himself requested silence for his enemy. "Well," added Guadet, alarmed or softened by Robespierre's feigned generosity, "I denounce to you a man who, from love of the liberty of his country, ought perhaps to impose upon himself the law of ostracism; for to remove him from his own idolatry is to serve the people!" These words were smothered under peals of affected laughter. Robespierre ascended the steps of the tribune with studied calmness. His impassive brow involuntarily brightened at the smiles and applauses of the Jacobins. "This speech meets all my wishes," said he, looking towards Brissot and his friends; "it includes in itself all the inculpations which the enemies by whom I am surrounded have brought against me. In replying to M. Guadet, I shall reply to all. I am invited to have recourse to ostracism; there would, no doubt, be some excess of vanity in my condemning myself—that is the punishment of great men, and it is only for M. Brissot to class them. I am reproached for being so constantly in the tribune. Ah! let liberty be assured, let equality be confirmed; let the Intrigants disappear, and you will see me as anxious to fly from this tribune, and even this place, as you now see me desirous to be in them. Thus, in effect, my dearest wishes will be accomplished. Happy in the public liberty, I shall pass my peaceful days in the delights of a sweet and obscure privacy."
Robespierre confined himself to these few words, frequently interrupted by the murmurs of fanatical enthusiasm, and then adjourned his answer to the following sittings, when Danton was seated in the arm-chair, and presided over this struggle between his enemies and his rival. Robespierre began by elevating his own cause to the height of a national one. He defended himself for having first provoked his adversaries. He quoted the accusations made, and the injurious things uttered against him, by the Brissot party. "Chief of a party, agitator of the people, secret agent of the Austrian committee," he said, "these are the names thrown in my teeth, and to which they urge me to reply! I shall not make the answer of Scipio or La Fayette, who, when accused in the tribune of the crime of lêze-nation, only replied by their silence. I shall reply by my life.
"A pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau, his doctrines have inspired my soul for the people. The spectacles of the great assemblies in the first days of our Revolution have filled me with hope. I soon understood the difference that exists between those limited assemblies, composed of men of ambitious views, or egotists, and the nation itself. My voice was stifled there; but I preferred rather to excite the murmurs of the enemies of truth, than to obtain applauses that were disgraceful. I threw my glance beyond this limited circle, and my aim was to make myself heard by the nation and the whole human race. It is for this that I have so much frequented the tribune. I have done more than this—it was I who gave Brissot and Condorcet to France. These great philosophers have unquestionably ridiculed and opposed the priests; but they have not the less courted kings and grandees, out of whom they have made a pretty good thing. (Laughter). You do not forget with what eagerness they persecuted the genius of liberty in the person of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the only philosopher who, in my opinion, has deserved the public honours lavished for a long time on so many political charlatans and so many contemptible heroes. Brissot, at least, should feel well inclined towards me. Where was he when I was defending this society from the Jacobins against the Constituent Assembly itself? But for what I did at this epoch, you would not have insulted me in this tribune; for it would not have existed. I the corrupter, the agitator, the tribune of the people! I am none of these, I am the people myself. You reproach me for having quitted my place as public accuser. I did so when I saw that that place gave me no other right than that of accusing citizens for civil offences, and would deprive me of the right of accusing political enemies. And it is for this that the people love me; and yet you desire that I sentence myself to ostracism, in order to withdraw myself from its confidence. Exile! how can you dare to propose it to me? Whither would you have me retire? Amongst what people should I be received? Who is the tyrant who would give me asylum?—Ah! we may abandon a happy, free, and triumphant country; but a country threatened, rent by convulsions, oppressed; we do not flee from that, we save, or perish with it! Heaven, which gave me a soul impassioned for liberty, and gave me birth in a land trampled on by tyrants—Heaven, which placed my life in the midst of the reign of factions and crimes, perhaps calls me to trace with my blood the road to happiness, and the liberty of my fellow men! Do you require from me any other sacrifice? If you would have my good name, I surrender it to you; I only wish for reputation in order to do good to my fellow-creatures. If to preserve it, it be necessary to betray by a cowardly silence the cause of the truth and of the people, take it, sully it,—I will no longer defend it. Now that I have defended myself, I may attack you. I will not do it; I offer you peace. I forget your injuries; I put up with your insults; but on one condition, that is, you join me in opposing the factions which distract our country, and, the most dangerous of all, that of La Fayette: this pseudo-hero of the two worlds, who, after having been present at the revolution of the New World, has only exerted himself here in arresting the progress of liberty in the old hemisphere. You, Brissot, did not you agree with me that this chief was the executioner and assassin of the people, that the massacre of the Champ-de-Mars had caused the Revolution to retrograde for twenty years? Is this man less redoubtable because he is at this time at the head of the army? No. Hasten then! Let the sword of the laws strike horizontally at the heads of great conspirators. The news which has arrived to us from the army is of threatening import. Already it sows division amongst the national guards and the troops of the line; already the blood of citizens has flowed at Metz; already the best patriots are incarcerated at Strasbourg. I tell you, you are accused of all these evils: wipe out these suspicions by uniting with us, and let us be reconciled; but let it be for the sake of saving our common country."