Two advantages, fortune and education, each involving the other, cause a man to be ranked in the upper class; hence, one or the other, whether each by itself or both together, mark a man out for spoliation, imprisonment and death.—In vain may he have demonstrated his Jacobinism, and Jacobinism of the ultra sort. Hérault-Séchelles, who voted for murdering the King, who belongs to the Committee of Public Safety, who, in the Upper-Rhine, has just carried out the worst revolutionary ordinances,[41119] but who has the misfortune to be rich and a man of the world, is led to the scaffold, and those devoted to the guillotine readily explain his condemnation: he is no patriot,—how could he be, enjoying an income of two hundred thousand livres, and, moreover, is he not a general-advocate?[41120] One of these offenses is sufficient.—Alone and by itself, "opulence," writes Saint-Just, "is a disgrace," and, according to him, a man is opulent "who supports fewer children than he has thousands of livres income; in effect, among the persons confined as "rich and egoists" we find, according to the very declaration of the Revolutionary Committee, persons with incomes of only 4,000, 3,700, 1,500, and even 500 livres.[41121] Moreover, a fortune or a competence, inspires its possessor with anti-revolutionary sentiments; consequently, he is for the moment an obstruction; "You are rich," says Cambon, making use of a personification, "you cherish an opinion, which compels us to be on the defensive; pay then, so as to indemnify us and be thankful for our indulgence which, precautionary and until peace is declared, keeps you under bolt and bar."[41122] Rich, anti-revolutionary, and vicious," according to Robespierre,[41123] "these three traits depend on each other, and, therefore, the possession of the superfluous is an infallible sign of aristocracy, a visible mark of incivism" and, as Fouché says, "a stamp of reprobation." "The superfluous is an evident and unwarrantable violation of the people's rights; every man who has more than his wants call for, cannot use, and therefore he must only abuse."[41124] Whoever does not make over to the masses the excess of what is strictly necessary.... places himself in the rank of 'suspects.' Rich egoists, you are the cause of our misfortunes!"[41125] "You dared to smile contemptuously on the appellation of sans-culottes;[41126] you have enjoyed much more than your brethren alongside of you dying with hunger; you are not fit to associate with them, and since you have disdained to have them eat at your table, they cast you out eternally from their bosom and condemn you, in turn, to wear the shackles prepared for them by your indifference or your maneuvers." In other words, whoever has a good roof over his head, or wears good clothes, man or woman, idler or industrious, noble or commoner, is available for the prison or the guillotine, or, at the very least, he is a taxable and workable serf at pleasure; his capital and accumulations, if not spontaneously and immediately handed over, form a criminal basis and proof of conviction.—The orders of arrest are generally issued against him on account of his wealth; in order to drain a town of these offenders one by one, all are penned together according to their resources; at Strasbourg,[41127] 193 persons are taxed, each from 6,000 to 300,000 livres, in all 9 million livres, payable within twenty-four hours, by the leading men of each profession or trade, bankers, brokers, merchants, manufacturers, professors, pastors, lawyers, physicians, surgeons, publishers, printers, upholsterers, glass-dealers, rope-makers, master-masons, coffee-house and tavern keepers. And let there be no delay in responding to these orders within the prescribed time! Otherwise the delinquents will be placed in the stocks, on the scaffold, face to face with the guillotine. "One of the best citizens in the commune, who had steadily manifested his attachment to the Revolution, being unable to realize a sum of 250,000 livres in one day, was fastened in the pillory."[41128] Sometimes the orders affected an entire class, not alone nobles or priests, but all the members of any bourgeois profession or even of any handicraft. At Strasbourg, a little later, "considering that the thirst for gold has always controlled the brewers of the commune," they are condemned to 250,000 livres fine, to be paid in three days under penalty of being declared rebels, with the confiscation of their possessions;" then, upon another similar consideration, the bakers and flour dealers are taxed three hundred thousand livres.[41129] In addition to this, writes Representative Milhaud, at Guyardin,[41130] "We have ordered the arrest of all bankers, stock-brokers and notaries.... All their wealth is confiscated; we estimate the sums under seal at 2 or 3 millions in coin, and 15 or 16 in assignats." There is the same haul of the net at Paris. By order of Lhuillier, procureur of the department, "seals are placed in the offices of all the bankers, stock-brokers, silversmiths, etc.," and they themselves are shut up in the Madelonettes; a few days after, that they may pay their drafts, they are let out as a favor, but on condition that they remain under arrest in their homes, at their own expense, under guard of two good sans-culottes.[41131] In like manner, at Nantes,[41132] Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, the prisons are filled and the guillotine works according to the categories. At one time they are "all of the Grand Théatre," or the principal merchants, "to the number of more than 200," are incarcerated at Bordeaux in one night.[41133] At another time, Paris provides a haul of farmer-generals or parliamentarians. Carts leave Toulouse conveying its parliamentarians to Paris to undergo capital punishment. At Aix, writes an agent,[41134]
"the guillotine is going to work on former lawyers a few hundred heads legally taken off will do the greatest good."
And, as new crimes require new terms to designate them, they add to "incivisme" and "moderantisme," the term "negociantisme," all of which are easily stated and widespread crimes.
"The rich and the merchants," writes an observer,[41135] "are here, as elsewhere, born enemies of equality and lovers of hideous federalism, the only aristocracy that remains to be crushed out."
Barras, with still greater precision, declares in the tribune that, "commerce is usurious, monarchical and anti-revolutionary."[41136] Considered in itself, it may be defined as an appeal to bad instincts; it seems a corrupting, incivique, anti-fraternal institution, many Jacobins having proposed either to interdict it to private persons and attribute it wholly to the State, or suppress it along with the arts and manufactures which nourish it, in order that only a population of agriculturists and soldiers may be left in France.[41137]
The second advantage and the second crime of the notables is superiority of education. "In all respectable assemblages," writes a Dutch traveler in 1795,[41138] "you may be sure that one-half of those present have been in prison. Add the absent, the guillotined, the exiled, emigrés, the deported, and note this, that, in the other favored half, those who did not quaff the prison cup had had a foretaste of it for, each expected daily to receive his warrant of arrest; "the worst thing under Robespierre, as several old gentlemen have told me, was that one never knew in the morning whether one would sleep in one's own bed at night." There was not a well-bred man who did not live in dread of this; examine the lists of "suspects," of the arrested, of exiles, of those executed, in any town, district or department,[41139] and you will see immediately, through their quality and occupations, first, that three-quarters of the cultivated are inscribed on it, and next, that intellectual culture in itself is suspect. "They were equally criminal,"[41140] write the Strasbourg administrators, "whether rich or cultivated.... The (Jacobin) municipality declared the University federalist; it proscribed public instruction and, consequently, the professors, regents, and heads of schools, with all instructors, public as well as private, even those provided with certificates of civism, were arrested;.... every Protestant minister and teacher in the Lower-Rhine department was incarcerated, with a threat of being transferred to the citadel at Besançon."—Fourcroy, in the Jacobin Club at Paris, excusing himself for being a savant, for giving lectures on chemistry, for not devoting his time to the rantings of the Convention and of the clubs, is obliged to declare that he is poor, that he lives by his work, that he supports "his father, a sans-culotte, and his sans-culotte sisters;" although a good republican, he barely escapes, and the same with others like him. All educated men were persecuted," he states a month after Thermidor 9;[41141] "to have acquaintances, to be literary, sufficed for arrest, as an aristocrat.... Robespierre... with devilish ingenuity, abused, calumniated and overwhelmed with gall and bitterness all who were devoted to serious studies, all who professed extensive knowledge;... he felt that cultivated men would never bend the knee to him [41142]..... Instruction was paralyzed; they wanted to burn the libraries..... Must I tell you that at the very door of your assembly errors in orthography are seen? Nobody learns how to read or write."—At Nantes, Carrier boasts of having "dispersed the literary chambers," while in his enumeration of the evil-minded he adds "to the rich and merchants," "all gens d'esprit."[41143] Sometimes on the turnkey's register we read that such an one was confined "for being clever and able to do mischief," another for saying "good-day, gentlemen, to the municipal councillors."[41144]
Politeness has, like other signs of a good education, become a stigma; good manners are considered, not only as a remnant of the ancient régime, but as a revolt against the new institutions; now, as the governing principle of these is, theoretically, abstract equality and, practically, the ascendancy of the low class, one rebels against the established order of things when one repudiates coarse companions, familiar oaths, and the indecent expressions of the common workman and the soldier. In sum, Jacobinism, through its doctrines and deeds, its dungeons and executioners, proclaims to the nation over which it holds the rod:[41145]
"Be rude, that you may become republican, return to barbarism that you may show the superiority of your genius; abandon the customs of civilized people that you may adopt those of galley slaves; mar your language with a view to improve it; use that of the populace under penalty of death. Spanish beggars treat each other in a dignified way; they show respect for humanity although in tatters. We, on the contrary, order you to assume our rags, our patois, our terms of intimacy. Don the carmagnole and tremble; become rustics and dolts, and prove your civism by the absence of all education."
This is true to the letter.
"Education,[41146]" says another contemporary, "amiable qualities, gentle ways, a mild physiognomy, bodily graces, a cultivated mind, all natural endowments are henceforth the inevitable causes of proscription."