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[ Buchez et Roux, XXV. 156 (extract from the Patriote Français, March 30, 1793).Speech by Chasles at the Jacobin Club, March 27: "We have announced to our fellow-citizens in the country that by means of the war-tax the poor could be fed by the rich, and that they would find in the purses of those egoists the wherewithal to live on." Ibid., 269. Speech by Rose Lacombe: "Let us make sure of the aristocrats; let us force them to meet the enemies which Dumouriez is bringing against Paris. Let us give them to understand that if they prove treacherous their wives and children shall have their throats cut, and that we will burn their houses.. I do not want patriots to leave the city; I want them to guard Paris. And if we are beaten, the first man who hesitates to apply the torch, let him be stabbed at once. I want all the owners of property who have grabbed everything and excited the people's anger, to kill the tyrants themselves or else be killed." Applause—April 3.:—Ibid., 302 (in the Convention, April 8): "Marat demands that 100,000 relatives and friends of the émigrés be seized as hostages for the safety of the commissioners in the hands of the enemy."—Cf. Balleydier, 117, 122. At Lyons, Jan. 26, 1793, Challier addresses the central club: "Sans-culottes, rejoice! the blood of the royal tiger has flowed in sight of his den! But full justice is not yet done to the people There are still 500 among you deserving of the tyrant's fate!"—He proposes on the 5th of February a revolutionary tribunal for trying arrested persons in a revolutionary manner. "It is the only way to force it (the Revolution) on royal and aristocratic factionists, the only rational way to avenge the sovereignty of the brave sans-culottes, who belong only to us."——Hydens, a national commissioner adds: "Let 25,000,000 of Frenchmen perish a hundred times over rather than one single indivisible Republic!">[
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[ Mallet du Pan, the last expression.]
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[ Buzot, 64.]
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[ Michelet, IV. 6 (according to an oral statement by Daunou).—Buchez et Roux, 101 (Letter of Louvet to Roland): "At the moment of the presentation of their petition against armed force (departmental) by the so-called commissioners of the 48 sections of Paris, I heard Santerre say in a loud tone to those around him, somewhat in these words: 'You see, now, these deputies are not up to the Revolution... That all comes from fifty, a hundred two hundred leagues off; they don't understand one word you say!'">[
CHAPTER IV. PRECARIOUS SITUATION OF A CENTRAL GOVERNMENT LOCKED UP WITHIN A LOCAL JURISDICTION.
"Citizen Danton," wrote the deputy Thomas Paine,[3401] "the danger, every day increasing, is of a rupture between Paris and departments. The departments did not send their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and every insult shown to them is an insult to the department that elected them. I see but one effective plan to prevent this rupture taking place, and that is to fix the residence of the Convention and of the future assemblies at a distance from Paris.... I saw, during the American Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience that arose from having the government of Congress within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and, after a residence of four years, it found it necessary to leave it. It then adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to New York. It again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and, after experiencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of a government within a government, it formed the project of building a town not within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction for the future residence of Congress. In every one of the places where Congress resided, the municipal authority privately or publicly opposed itself to the authority of Congress, and the people of each of those places expected more attention from Congress than their equal share with the other States amounted to. The same thing now takes place in France, but in a greater excess."