History of the Girondists, Volume I / Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution

by Alphonse de Lamartine

Grégoire supported the accusation party. Salles defended the recommendation of the committee.

Barnave at length spoke, and in support of Salles' opinion. He said: "The French nation has just undergone a violent shock; but if we are to believe all the auguries which are delivered, this recent event, like all others which have preceded it, will only serve to advance the period, to confirm the solidity of the revolution we have effected. I will not dilate on the advantages of monarchical government: you have proved your conviction by establishing it in your country: I will only say that every government, to be good, should comprise within itself the principles of its stability: for otherwise, instead of prosperity there would be before us only the perspective of a series of changes. Some men, whose motives I shall not impugn, seeking for examples to adduce, have found, in America, a people occupying a vast territory with a scanty population, nowhere surrounded by very powerful neighbours, having forests for their boundaries, and having for customs the feelings of a new race, and who are wholly ignorant of those factitious passions and impulses which effect revolutions of government. They have seen a republican government established in that land, and have thence drawn the conclusion that a similar government was suitable for us. These men are the same who at this moment are contesting the inviolability of the king. But, if it be true that in our territory there is a vast population spread,—if it be true that there are amongst them a multitude of men exclusively given up to those intellectual speculations which excite ambition and the love of fame,—if it be true that around us powerful neighbours compel us to form but one compact body in order to resist them,—if it be true that all these circumstances are irresistible, and are wholly independent of ourselves, it is undeniable that the sole existing remedy lies in a monarchical government. When a country is populous and extensive, there are—and political experience proves it—but two modes of assuring to it a solid and permanent existence. Either you must organise those parts separately;—you must place in each section of the empire a portion of the government, and thus you will maintain security at the expense of unity, strength, and all the advantages which result from a great and homogeneous association:—or else you will be forced to centralise an unchangeable power, which, never renewed by the law, presenting incessantly obstacles to ambition, resists with advantage the shocks, rivalries, and rapid vibrations of an immense population, agitated by all the passions engendered by long established society. These facts decide our position. We can only be strong through a federative government, which no one here has the madness to propose, or by a monarchical government, such as you have established; that is to say, by confiding the reins of the executive power to a family having the right of hereditary succession. You have intrusted to an inviolable king the exclusive function of naming the agents of his power, but you have made those agents responsible. To be independent the king must be inviolable: do not let us set aside this axiom. We have never failed to observe this as regards individuals, let us regard it as respects the monarch. Our principles, the constitution, the law, declare that he has not forfeited (qu'il n'est pas déchu): thus, then, we have to choose between our attachment to the constitution and our resentment against an individual. Yes, I demand at this moment from him amongst you all, who may have conceived against the head of the executive power prejudices however strong, and resentment however deep; I ask at his hands whether he is more irritated against the king than he is attached to the laws of his country? I would say to those who rage so furiously against an individual who has done wrong,—I would say, Then you would be at his feet if you were content with him? (Loud and lengthened applause.) Those who would thus sacrifice the constitution to their anger against one man, seem to me too much inclined to sacrifice liberty from their enthusiasm for some other man; and since they love a republic, it is, indeed, the moment to say to them, What, would you wish a republic in such a nation? How is it you do not fear that the same variableness of the people, which to-day manifests itself by hatred, may on another day be displayed by enthusiasm in favour of some great man? Enthusiasm even more dangerous than hatred: for the French nation, you know, understands better how to love than to hate. I neither fear the attacks of foreign nations nor of emigrants: I have already said so; but I now repeat it with the more truth, as I fear the continuation of uneasiness and agitation, which will not cease to exist and affect us until the Revolution be wholly and pacifically concluded. We need fear no mischief from without; but vast injury is done to us from within, when we are disturbed by painful ideas—when chimerical dangers, excited around us, create with the people some consistency and some credit for the men who use them as a means of unceasing agitation. Immense damage is done to us when that revolutionary impetus, which has destroyed every thing there was to destroy, and which has urged us to the point where we must at last pause, is perpetuated. If the Revolution advance one step further it cannot do so without danger. In the line of liberty, the first act which can follow is the annihilation of royalty; in the line of equality, the first act which must follow is an attempt on all property. Revolutions are not effected with metaphysical maxims—there must be an actual tangible prey to offer to the multitude that is led astray. It is time, therefore, to end the Revolution. It ought to stop at the moment when the nation is free, and when all Frenchmen are equal. If it continue in trouble, it is dishonoured, and we with it; yes, all the world ought to agree that the common interest is involved in the close of the Revolution. Those who have lost ought to perceive that it is impossible to make it retrograde. Those who fashioned it must see that it is at its consummation. Kings themselves—if from, time to time profound truths can penetrate to the councils of kings—if occasionally the prejudices which surround them will permit the sound views of a great and philosophical policy to reach them—kings themselves must learn that there is for them a wide difference between the example of a great reform in the government and that of the abolition of royalty: that if we pause here, where we are, they are still kings! but be their conduct what it may, let the fault come from them and not from us. Regenerators of the empire! follow straightly your undeviating line; you have been courageous and potent—be to-day wise and moderate. In this will consist the glorious termination of your efforts. Then, again returning to your domestic hearths, you will obtain from all, if not blessings, at least the silence of calumny." This address, the most eloquent ever delivered by Barnave, carried the report in the affirmative; and for several days checked all attempts at republic and forfeiture in the clubs of the Cordeliers and Jacobins. The king's inviolability was consecrated in fact as well as in principle. M. de Bouillé, his accomplices and adherents, were sent for trial to the high national court of Orleans.

VII.

Whilst these men, exclusively political, each measuring the advance of the Revolution, step by step, with their eyes, desired courageously to stop it, or checked their own views, the Revolution was continually progressing. Its own thought was too vast for any head of public man, orator, or statesman to contain. Its breath was too powerful for any one breast to respire it solely. Its end was too comprehensive to be included in any of the successive views that the ambition of certain factions, or the theories of certain statesmen could propound. Barnave, the Lameths, and La Fayette, like Mirabeau and Necker, endeavoured, in vain, to oppose to it the power and influence they had derived from it. It was destined, before it was appeased or relaxed in its onward career, to frustrate many other systems, make many other breasts pant in vain, and outstrip a multitude of other aims.

Independent of the national assemblies it had given to itself as a government, and in which were, for the most part, concentrated the political instruments of its impulse, it had also given birth to two levers, still more potent and terrible to move and sweep away these political bodies when they attempted to check her when she chose to advance. These two levers were the press and the clubs. The clubs and the press were, to the legal assemblies, what free air is to confined air. Whilst the air of these assemblies became vitiated, and exhausted itself in the circle of the established government, the air of journalism and popular societies was impregnated and incessantly stirred by an inexhaustible principle of vitality and movement. The stagnation within was fully credited, but the current was without.

The press, in the half century which had preceded the Revolution, had been the echo, well organised and calm, of the thoughts of sages and reformers. From the time when the Revolution burst forth, it had become the turbulent and frequently cynical echo of the popular excitement.

It had itself transformed the modes of communicating ideas; it no longer produced books—it had not the time: at first it expended itself in pamphlets, and subsequently in a multitude of flying and diurnal sheets, which, published at a low price amongst the people, or gratuitously placarded in the public thoroughfares, incited the multitude to read and discuss them. The treasury of the national thought, whose pieces of gold were too pure, or too bulky, for the use of the populace, it was, if we may be allowed the expression, converted into a multitude of smaller coins, struck with the impress of the passions of the hour, and often tarnished with the foulest oxides. Journalism, like an irresistible element of the life of a people in revolution, had made its own place, without listening to the law which had been made to restrain it.

Mirabeau, who required that his speeches should echo throughout the departments, had given birth to this speaking trumpet of the Revolution, (despite the orders in council) in his Letters to my Constituents, and in the Courrier de Provence. At the opening of the States General, and at the taking of the Bastille, other journals had appeared. At each new insurrection there was a fresh inundation of newspapers. The leading organs of public agitation were then the Revolution of Paris, edited by Loustalot; a weekly paper, with a circulation of 200,000 copies; the feeling of the man may be seen in the motto of his paper: "The great appear great to us only because we are on our knees—let us rise!" The Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens, subsequently called the Revolutions de France et de Brabant, was the production of Camille Desmoulins. This young student, who became suddenly a political character on a chair in the garden of the Palais Royal, on the first outbreak of the month of July, 1789, preserved in his style, which was frequently very brilliant, something of his early character. It was the sarcastic genius of Voltaire descended from the saloon to the pavement. No man in himself ever personified the people better than did Camille Desmoulins. He was the mob with his turbulent and unexpected movements, his variableness, his unconnectedness, his rages interrupted by laughter, or suddenly sinking into sympathy and sorrow for the very victims he immolated. A man, at the same time so ardent and so trifling, so trivial and so inspired, so indecisive between blood and tears, so ready to crush what he had just deified with enthusiasm, must have the more empire over a people in revolt, in proportion as he resembled them. His character was his nature. He not only aped the people, he was the people himself. His newspapers cried in the public streets, and their sarcasm, bandied from mouth to mouth, has not been swept away with the other impurities of the day. He remains, and will remain, a Menippus, the satirist stained with blood. It was the popular chorus which led the people to their most important movements, and which was frequently stifled by the whistling of the cord of the street lamp, or in the hatchet-stroke of the guillotine. Camille Desmoulins was the remorseless offspring of the Revolution,—Marat was its fury; he had the clumsy tumblings of the brute in his thought, and its gnashing of teeth in his style. His journal (L'Ami du Peuple), the People's Friend, smelt of blood in every line.

VIII.

Marat was born in Switzerland. A writer without talent, a savant without reputation, with a desire for fame without having received from society or nature the means of acquiring either, he revenged himself on all that was great not only in society but in nature. Genius was as hateful to him as aristocracy. Wherever he saw any thing elevated or striking he hunted it down as though it were a deadly enemy. He would have levelled creation. Equality was his mania, because superiority was his martyrdom; he loved the Revolution because it brought down all to his level; he loved it even to blood, because blood washed out the stain of his long-during obscurity; he made himself a public denouncer by the popular title; he knew that denouncement is flattery to all who tremble, and the people are always trembling. A real prophet of demagogueism, inspired by insanity, he gave his nightly dreams to daily conspiracies. The Seid of the people, he interested it by his self-devotion to its interests. He affected mystery like all oracles. He lived in obscurity, and only went out at night; he only communicated with his fellows with the most sinistrous precautions. A subterranean cell was his residence, and there he took refuge safe from poignard and poison. His journal affected the imagination like something supernatural. Marat was wrapped in real fanaticism. The confidence reposed in him nearly amounted to worship. The fumes of the blood he incessantly demanded had mounted to his brain. He was the delirium of the Revolution, himself a living delirium!