Up to the last he advocates surgical operations. (No. for July 12, 1793, the eve of his death.) Observe what he says on the anti-revolutionaries. "To prevent them from entering into any new military body I had proposed at that time, as an indispensable prudent measure, cutting off their ears, or rather their thumbs." He likewise had his imitators. (Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 186, Session of the Convention, April 4, 1796.) Deputies from the popular club of Cette "regret that they had not followed his advice and cut off three hundred thousand heads.">[
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[ Danton never wrote or printed a speech. "I am no writer," he says. (Garat, Memoires, 31.)]
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[ Garat, "Memoires," III.: "Danton had given no serious study to those philosophers who, for a century past, had detected the principles of social art in human nature. He had not sought in his own organization for the vast and simple combinations which a great empire demands. He had that instinct for the grand which constitutes genius and that silent circumspection which constitutes judgment.">[
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[ Garat, ibid., 311, 312.]
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[ The head of a State may be considered in the same light as the superintendent of an asylum for the sick, the demented and the infirm. In the government of his asylum he undoubtedly does well to consult the moralist and the physiologist; but, before following out their instructions he must remember that in his asylum its inmates, including the keepers and himself, are more or less ill, demented or infirm.]