"Brother and Friend, Sir," write those of Rouen, "not to be always at the feet of the municipality, we have declared ourselves permanent, deliberative sections of the Commune."[32110]
Let the so-called constituted authorities, the formalists and pedants of the Executive Council and the Minister of the Interior, look twice before censuring the exercise of popular sovereignty. This sovereign raises his voice and drives his clerks back into their holes; spoliation and murder, all this is just.
"Can you have forgotten that, after the tempest, as you yourself declared in the height of the storm, it is the nation which saves itself? Well, sir, this is what we have done.[32111].. What! when all France was resounding with that long expected proclamation of the abolition of tyranny, you were willing that the traitors, who strove to reestablish it, should escape public prosecution! My God, what century is this in which we find such Ministers!"
Arbitrary taxes, penalties, confiscations, revolutionary expeditions, nomadic garrisons, pillage, what fault can be found with all that?
"We do not pretend that these are legal methods; but, drawing nearer to nature, we demand what object the oppressed have in view in invoking justice. Is it to lag behind and vainly pursue an equitable adjustment which is rendered fleeting by judicial forms? Correct these abuses or do not complain of the sovereign people suppressing them in advance.... You, sir, with so many reasons for it, would do well to recall your insults and redeem the wrongs you have inflicted before we happen to render them public."... "Citizen Minister, people flatter you; you are told too often that you are virtuous; the moment this gives you pleasure you cease to be so.... Discard the astute brigands who surround you, listen to the people, and remember that a citizen Minister is merely the executor of the sovereign will of the people."
However narrow Roland's outlook may be, he must finally comprehend that the innumerable robberies and murders which he has just noted over are not a thoughtless eruption, a passing crisis of delirium, but a manifesto of the victorious party, the beginning of an established system of government. Under this system, write the Marseilles Jacobins,
"to-day, in our happy region, the good rule over the bad, and constitute a party which allows no contamination; whatever is vicious has gone into hiding or has been exterminated." The programme is very precise, and acts form its commentary. This is the programme which the faction, throughout the interregnum, sets openly before the electors.
3201 ([return])
[ Guillon de Montléon, I. 122. Letter of Laussel, dated Paris, 28th of August, 1792, to the Jacobins of Lyons: "Tell me how many heads have been cut off at home. It would be infamous to let our enemies escape." (1792).]