It is true that Pitt had no agent in France whom he might not have disavowed, and that after the fury with which the Painophobia Parliament, under lead of Burke, inspired by the King, had opened, could hardly have maintained any peaceful terms. Nevertheless, the friends of peace in France secretly acted on this information, which Gouverneur Morris no doubt received from Paine. A grand dinner was given by Paine, at the Hôtel de Ville, to Dumouriez, where this brilliant General met Brissot, Condorcet, Santerre, and several eminent English radicals, among them Sampson Perry. At this time it was proposed to send Dumouriez secretly to London, to negotiate with Pitt, but this was abandoned. Maret went, and he found Pitt gracious and pacific. Chauvelin, however, advised the French government of this illicit negotiation, and Maret was ordered to return. Such was the situation when Louis was executed. That execution, as we have seen, might have been prevented had Pitt provided the money; but it need not be supposed that, with Burke now on the Treasury bench, the refusal is to be ascribed to anything more than his inability to cope with his own majority, whom the King was patronizing. So completely convinced of Pitt's pacific disposition were Maret and his allies in France that the clandestine ambassador again departed for London. But on arriving at Dover, he learned that Chauvelin had been expelled, and at once returned to France.*
* See Louis Blanc's "Histoire," etc., tome viii.f p. 100,
for the principal authorities concerning this incident.—
Annual Register, 1793, ch. vi.; "Mémoires tirés des papiers
d'un homme d'État.," ii., p. 157; "Mémoires de Dumouriez,"
t. iii., p. 384.
Paine now held more firmly than ever the first article of his faith as to practical politics: the chief task of republicanism is to break the Anglo-German sceptre. France is now committed to war; it must be elevated to that European aim. Lord North and America reappear in Burke and France. Meanwhile what is said of Britain in his "Rights of Man" was now more terribly true of France—it had no Constitution. The Committee on the Constitution had declared themselves ready to report early in the winter, but the Mountaineers managed that the matter should be postponed until after the King's trial. As an American who prized his citizenship, Paine felt chagrined and compromised at being compelled to act as a legislator and a judge because of his connection with a Convention elected for the purpose of framing a legislative and judicial machinery. He and Con-dorcet continued to add touches to this Constitution, the Committee approving, and on the first opportunity it was reported again. This was February 15, 1793. But, says the Moniteur, "the struggles between the Girondins and the Mountain caused the examination and discussion to be postponed." It was, however, distributed.
Gouverneur Morris, in a letter to Jefferson (March 7th), says this Constitution "was read to the Convention, but I learnt the next morning that a Council had been held on it overnight, by which it was condemned." Here is evidence in our American archives of a meeting or "Council" condemning the Constitution on the night of its submission. It must have been secret, for it does not appear in French histories, so far as I can discover. Durand de Maillane says that "the exclusion of Robespierre and Couthon from this eminent task [framing a Constitution] was a new matter for discontent and jealousy against the party of Pétion "—a leading Girondin,—and that Robespierre and his men desired "to render their work useless."* No indication of this secret condemnation of the Paine-Condorcet Constitution, by a conclave appeared on March 1st, when the document was again submitted. The Convention now set April 15th for its discussion, and the Mountaineers fixed that day for the opening of their attack on the Girondins. The Mayor of Paris appeared with a petition, adopted by the Communal Council of the thirty-five sections of Paris, for the arrest of twenty-two members of the Convention, as slanderers of Paris,—"presenting the Parisians to Europe as men of blood,"—friends of Roland, accomplices of the traitor Dumouriez, enemies of the clubs. The deputies named were: Brissot, Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Grangeneuve, Buzot, Barbaroux, Salles, Biroteau, Pontécoulant, Pétion, Lanjuinais, Valaze, Hardy, Louvet, Lehardy, Gor-sas, Abbé Fauchet, Lanthenas, Lasource, Valady, Chambon. Of this list five were members of the Committee on the Constitution, and two supplementary members.** Besides this, two of the arraigned—Louvet and Lasource—had been especially active in pressing forward the Constitution. The Mountaineers turned the discord they thus caused into a reason for deferring discussion of the Constitution.
* "Histoire de la Convention Nationale," p. 50. Durand-
Maillane was "the silent member" of the Convention, but a
careful observer and well-informed witness. I follow him and
Louis Blanc in relating the fate of the Paine-Condorcet
Constitution.
** See vol. i., p. 357.
They declared also that important members were absent, levying troops, and especially that Marat's trial had been ordered. The discussion on the petition against the Girondins, and whether the Constitution should be considered, proceeded together for two days, when the Mountaineers were routed on both issues. The Convention returned the petition to the Mayor, pronouncing it "calumnious," and it made the Constitution the order of the day. Robespierre, according to Du-rand-Maillane, showed much spite at this defeat. He adroitly secured a decision that the preliminary "Declaration of Rights" should be discussed first, as there could be endless talk on those generalities.*
* This Declaration, submitted by Condorcet, April 17th,
being largely the work of Paine, is here translated: The
end of all union of men in society being maintenance of
their natural rights, civil and political, these rights
should be the basis of the social pact: their recognition
and their declaration ought to precede the Constitution
which secures and guarantees them. 1. The natural rights,
civil and political, of men are liberty, equality, security,
property, social protection, and resistance to oppression.
2. Liberty consists in the power to do whatever is not
contrary to the rights of others; thus, the natural rights
of each man has no limits other than those which secure to
other members of society enjoyment of the same rights. 3.
The preservation of liberty depends on the sovereignty of
the Law, which is the expression of the general will.
Nothing unforbidden by law can be impeached, and none may be
constrained to do what it does not command. 4. Every man is
free to make known his thought and his opinions. 5. Freedom
of the press (and every other means of publishing one's
thoughts) cannot be prohibited, suspended, or limited. 6.
Every citizen shall be free in the exercise of his worship
[cultê]. 7. Equality consists in the power of each to enjoy
the same rights. 8. The Law should be equal for all, whether
in recompense, punishment, or restraint. 9. All citizens are
admissible to all public positions, employments, and
functions. Free peoples can recognise no grounds of
preference except talents and virtues. 10. Security consists
in the protection accorded by society to each citizen for
the preservation of his person, property, and rights. 11.
None should be sued, accused, arrested, or detained, save in
cases determined by the law, and in accordance with forms
prescribed by it. Every other act against a citizen is
arbitrary and null. 12. Those who solicit, promote, sign,
execute or cause to be executed such arbitrary acts are
culpable, and should be punished. 13. Citizens against whom
the execution of such acts is attempted have the right of
resistance by force. Every citizen summoned or arrested by
the authority of law, and in the forms prescribed by it,
should instantly obey; he renders himself guilty by
resistance. 14. Every man being presumed innocent until
declared guilty, should his arrest be judged indispensable,
all rigor not necessary to secure his person should be
severely repressed by law. 15. None should be punished save
in virtue of a law established and promulgated previous to
the offence, and legally applied. 16. A law that should
punish offences committed before its existence would be an
arbitrary Act. Retroactive effect given to any law is a
crime. 17. Law should award only penalties strictly and
evidently necessary to the general security; they should be
proportioned to the offence and useful to society. 18. The
right of property consists in a man's being master in the
disposal, at his will, of his goods, capital, income, and
industry. 19. No kind of work, commerce, or culture can be
interdicted for any one; he may make, sell, and transport
every species of production. 20. Every man may engage his
services, and his time; but he cannot sell himself; his
person is not an alienable property. 21. No one may be
deprived of the least portion of his property without his
consent, unless because of public necessity, legally
determined, exacted openly, and under the condition of a
just indemnity in advance. 22. No tax shall be established
except for the general utility, and to relieve public needs.
All citizens have the right to co-operate, personally or by
their representatives, in the establishment of public
contributions. 23. Instruction is the need of all, and
society owes it equally to all its members. 24. Public
succors are a sacred debt of society, and it is for the law
to determine their extent and application. 25. The social
guarantee of the rights of man rests on the national
sovereignty. 26. This sovereignty is one, indivisible,
imprescriptible, and inalienable. 27. It resides essentially
in the whole people, and each citizen has an equal right to
co-operate in its exercise. 28. No partial assemblage of
citizens, and no individual may attribute to themselves
sovereignty, to exercise authority and fill any public
function, without a formal delegation by the law. 29. Social
security cannot exist where the limits of public
administration are not clearly determined by law, and where
the responsibility of all public functionaries is not
assured. 30. All citizens are bound to co-operate in this
guarantee, and to enforce the law when summoned in its name.
31. Men united in society should have legal means of
resisting oppression. In every free government the mode of
resisting different acts of oppression should be regulated
by the Constitution. 32. It is oppression when a law
violates the natural rights, civil and political, which it
should ensure. It is oppression when the law is violated by
public officials in its application to individual cases. It
is oppression when arbitrary acts violate the rights of
citizens against the terms of the law. 33. A people has
always the right to revise, reform, and change its
Constitution. One generation has no right to bind future
generations, and all heredity in offices is absurd and
tyrannical.
It now appears plain that Robespierre, Marat, and the Mountaineers generally were resolved that there should be no new government The difference between them and their opponents was fundamental: to them the Revolution was an end, to the others a means. The Convention was a purely revolutionary body. It had arbitrarily absorbed all legislative and judicial functions, exercising them without responsibility to any code or constitution. For instance, in State Trials French law required three fourths of the voices for condemnation; had the rule been followed Louis XVI. would not have perished. Lanjuinais had pressed the point, and it was answered that the sentence on Louis was political, for the interest of the State; salus populi suprema lex. This implied that the Convention, turning aside from its appointed functions, had, in anticipation of the judicial forms it meant to establish, constituted itself into a Vigilance Committee to save the State in an emergency. But it never turned back again to its proper work. Now when the Constitution was framed, every possible obstruction was placed in the way of its adoption, which would have relegated most of the Mountaineers to private life.
Robespierre and Marat were in luck. The Paine-Condorcet Constitution omitted all mention of a Deity. Here was the immemorial and infallible recipe for discord, of which Robespierre made the most He took the "Supreme Being" under his protection; he also took morality under his protection, insisting that the Paine-Condorcet Constitution gave liberty even to illicit traffic. While these discussions were going on Marat gained his triumphant acquittal from the charges made against him by the Girondins. This damaging blow further demoralized the majority which was eager for the Constitution. By violence, by appeals against atheism, by all crafty tactics, the Mountaineers secured recommitment of the Constitution. To the Committee were added Hérault de Séchelles, Ramel, Mathieu, Couthon, Saint-Just,—all from the Committee of Public Safety. The Constitution as committed was the most republican document of the kind ever drafted, as remade it was a revolutionary instrument; but its preamble read: "In the presence and under the guidance (auspices) of the Supreme Being, the French People declare," etc.
God was in the Constitution; but when it was reported (June 10th) the Mountaineers had their opponents en route for the scaffold. The arraignment of the twenty-two, declared by the Convention "calumnious" six weeks before, was approved on June 2d. It was therefore easy to pass such a constitution as the victors desired. Some had suggested, during the theological debate, that "many crimes had been sanctioned by this King of kings,"—no doubt with emphasis on the discredited royal name. Robespierre identified his "Supreme Being" with nature, of whose ferocities the poor Girondins soon had tragical evidence.*