* "Les rois, les aristocrates, les tyrants qu'ils soient,
sont des esclaves révoltas contre le souverain de la terre,
qui est le genre humain, et contre le législateur de
l'univers, qui est la nature."—Robespierre's final article
of "Rights," adopted by the Jacobins, April 21,1793. Should
not slaves revolt?
The Constitution was adopted by the Convention on June 25th; it was ratified by the Communes August 10th. When it was proposed to organize a government under it, and dissolve the Convention, Robespierre remarked: That sounds like a suggestion of Pitt! Thereupon the Constitution was suspended until universal peace, and the Revolution superseded the Republic as end and aim of France.*
* "I observed in the french revolutions that they always
proceeded by stages, and made each stage a stepping stone to
another. The Convention, to amuse the people, voted a
constitution, and then voted to suspend the practical
establishment of it till after the war, and in the meantime
to carry on a revolutionary government. When Robespierre
fell they proposed bringing forward the suspended
Constitution, and apparently for this purpose appointed a
committee to frame what they called organic laws, and these
organic laws turned out to be a new Constitution (the
Directory Constitution which was in general a good one).
When Bonaparte overthrew this Constitution he got himself
appointed first Consul for ten years, then for life, and now
Emperor with an hereditary succession."—Paine to Jefferson.
MS. (Dec. 27, 1804). The Paine-Condorcet Constitution is
printed in OEuvres Completes de Condorcet, vol. xviii. That
which superseded it may be read (the Declaration of Rights
omitted) in the "Constitutional History of France. By Henry
C. Lockwood." (New York, 1890). It is, inter alia, a
sufficient reason for describing the latter as
revolutionary, that it provides that a Convention, elected
by a majority of the departments, and a tenth part of the
primaries, to revise or alter the Constitution, shall be
"formed in like manner as the legislatures, and unite in
itself the highest power." In other words, instead of being
limited to constitutional revision, may exercise all
legislative and other functions, just as the existing
Convention was doing.
Some have ascribed to Robespierre a phrase he borrowed, on one occasion, from Voltaire, Si Dieu n' existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer. Robespierre's originality was that he did invent a god, made in his own image, and to that idol offered human sacrifices,—beginning with his own humanity. That he was genuinely superstitious is suggested by the plausibility with which his enemies connected him with the "prophetess," Catharine Théot, who pronounced him the reincarnate "Word of God," Certain it is that he revived the old forces of fanaticism, and largely by their aid crushed the Girondins, who were rationalists. Condorcet had said that in preparing a Constitution for France they had not consulted Numa's nymph or the pigeon of Mahomet; they had found human reason sufficient. Corruption of best is worst. In the proportion that a humane deity would be a potent sanction for righteous laws, an inhuman deity is the sanction of inhuman laws. He who summoned a nature-god to the French Convention let loose the scourge on France. Nature inflicts on mankind, every day, a hundred-fold the agonies of the Reign of Terror. Robespierre had projected into nature a sentimental conception of his own, but he had no power to master the force he had evoked. That had to take the shape of the nature-gods of all time, and straightway dragged the Convention down to the savage plane where discussion becomes an exchange of thunder-stones. Such relapses are not very difficult to effect in revolutionary times. By killing off sceptical variations, and cultivating conformity, a cerebral evolution proceeded for ages by which kind-hearted people were led to worship jealous and cruel gods, who, should they appear in human form, would be dealt with as criminals. Unfortunately, however, the nature-god does not so appear; it is represented in euphemisms, while at the same time it coerces the social and human standard. Since the nature-god punishes hereditarily, kills every man at last, and so tortures millions that the suggestion of hell seems only too probable to those sufferers, a political system formed under the legitimacy of such a superstition must subordinate crimes to sins, regard atheism as worse than theft, acknowledge the arbitrary principle, and confuse retaliation with justice. From the time that the shekinah of the nature-god settled on the Mountain, offences were measured, not by their injury to man, but as insults to the Mountain-god, or to his anointed. In the mysterious counsels of the Committee of Public Safety the rewards are as little harmonious with the human standard as in the ages when sabbath-breaking and murder met the same doom. Under the paralyzing splendor of a divine authority, any such considerations as the suffering or death of men become petty. The average Mountaineer was unable to imagine that those who tried to save Louis had other than royalist motives. In this Armageddon the Girondins were far above their opponents in humanity and intelligence, but the conditions did not admit of an entire adherence to their honorable weapons of argument and eloquence. They too often used deadly threats, without meaning them; the Mountaineers, who did mean them, took such phrases seriously, and believed the struggle to be one of life and death. Such phenomena of bloodshed, connected with absurdly inadequate causes, are known in history only where gods mingle in the fray. Reign of Terror? What is the ancient reign of the god of battles, jealous, angry every day, with everlasting tortures of fire prepared for the unorthodox, however upright, even more than for the immoral? In France too it was a suspicion of unorthodoxy in the revolutionary creed that plunged most of the sufferers into the lake of fire and brimstone.
From the time of Paine's speeches on the King's fate he was conscious that Marat's evil eye was on him. The American's inflexible republicanism had inspired the vigilance of the powerful journals of Brissot and Bonneville, which barred the way to any dictatorship. Paine was even propagating a doctrine against presidency, thus marring the example of the United States, on which ambitious Frenchmen, from Marat to the Napoleons, have depended for their stepping-stone to despotism. Marat could not have any doubt of Paine's devotion to the Republic, but knew well his weariness of the Revolution. In the simplicity of his republican faith Paine had made a great point of the near adoption of the Constitution, and dissolution of the Convention in five or six months, little dreaming that the Mountaineers were concentrating themselves on the aim of becoming masters of the existing Convention and then rendering it permanent. Marat regarded Paine's influence as dangerous to revolutionary government, and, as he afterwards admitted, desired to crush him. The proposed victim had several vulnerable points: he had been intimate with Gouverneur Morris, whose hostility to France was known; he had been intimate with Dumouriez, declared a traitor; and he had no connection with any of the Clubs, in which so many found asylum. He might have joined one of them had he known the French language, and perhaps it would have been prudent to unite himself with the "Cordeliers," in whose esprit de corps some of his friends found refuge.
However, the time of intimidation did not come for two months after the King's death, and Paine was busy with Condorcet on the task assigned them, of preparing an Address to the People of England concerning the war of their government against France. This work, if ever completed, does not appear to have been published. It was entrusted (February 1st) to Barrère, Paine, Condorcet, and M. Faber. As Frédéric Masson, the learned librarian and historian of the Office of Foreign Affairs, has found some trace of its being assigned to Paine and Condorcet, it may be that further research will bring to light the Address. It could hardly have been completed before the warfare broke out between the Mountain and the Girondins, when anything emanating from Condorcet and Paine would have been delayed, if not suppressed. There are one or two brief essays in Condorcet's works—notably "The French Republic to Free Men"—which suggest collaboration with Paine, and may be fragments of their Address.*
* "OEuvres Complètes de Condorcet," Paris, 1804, t. xvi., p.
16: "La République Françoise aux homines libres." In 1794,
when Paine was in prison, a pamphlet was issued by the
revolutionary government, entitled: "An Answer to the
Declaration of the King of England, respecting his Motives
for Carrying on the Present War, and his Conduct towards
France." This anonymous pamphlet, which is in English,
replies to the royal proclamation of October 29th, and bears
evidence of being written while the English still occupied
Toulon or early in November, 1793. There are passages in it
that suggest the hand of Paine, along with others which he
could not have written. It is possible that some composition
of his, in pursuance of the task assigned him and Condorcet,
was utilized by the Committee of Public Safety in its answer
to George III.
At this time the long friendship between Paine and Condorcet, and the Marchioness too, had become very intimate. The two men had acted together on the King's trial at every step, and their speeches on bringing Louis to trial suggest previous consultations between them.
Early in April Paine was made aware of Marat's hostility to him. General Thomas Ward reported to him a conversation in which Marat had said: "Frenchmen are mad to allow foreigners to live among them. They should cut off their ears, let them bleed a few days, and then cut off their heads." "But you yourself are a foreigner," Ward had replied, in allusion to Marat's Swiss birth.* The answer is not reported. At length a tragical incident occurred, just before the trial of Marat (April 13th), which brought Paine face to face with this enemy. A wealthy young Englishman, named Johnson, with whom Paine had been intimate in London, had followed him to Paris, where he lived in the same house with his friend. His love of Paine amounted to worship. Having heard of Marat's intention to have Paine's life taken, such was the young enthusiast's despair, and so terrible the wreck of his republican dreams, that he resolved on suicide. He made a will bequeathing his property to Paine, and stabbed himself. Fortunately he was saved by some one who entered just as he was about to give himself the third blow. It may have been Paine himself who then saved his friend's life; at any rate, he did so eventually.
* "Englishmen in the French Revolution." By John G. Alger.
London, 1889, p. 176. (A book of many blunders.)