Chapter I: The Oppressed (2)

Below the nobles and the clergy, a third class of notables, the bourgeoisie, almost entirely confined to the towns,[4174] verged on the former classes through its upper circles, while its diverse groups, ranging from the parliamentarian to the rich merchant or manufacturer, comprised the remainder of those who were tolerably well educated, say 100 000 families, recruited on the same conditions as the bourgeoisie of the present day: they were "bourgeois living nobly," meaning by this, living on their incomes, large manufacturers and traders, engaged in liberal pursuits-lawyers, notaries, procureurs, physicians, architects, engineers, artists, professors, and especially the government officials; the latter, however, very numerous, differed from ours in two essential points. On the one hand, their office, as nowadays with the notaries' étude, or a membership of the stock-board, was personal property. Their places, and many others, such as posts in the judiciary, in the finances, in bailiwicks, in the Présidial, in the Election,[4175] in the salt-department, in the customs, in the Mint, in the department of forests and streams, in presidencies, in councils, as procureurs du roi in various civil, administrative and criminal courts, holding places in the treasury, auditors and collectors of the various branches of the revenue--all of which offices, and many others, had been alienated for more than a century by the State in return for specified sums of ready money; thenceforth, they fell into the hands of special purchasers; the title of each possessor was as good as that of a piece of real property, and he could legally sell his title, the same as he had bought it, at a given price, on due advertisement![4176] On the other hand, the different groups of local functionaries in each town formed their own associations, similar to our notarial chambers, or those of our stock-brokers; these small associations had their own by-laws, meetings and treasury, frequently a civil status and the right of pleading, often a political status and the right of electing to the municipal council;[4177] consequently, besides his personal interests, each member cherished the professional interests of his guild. Thus was his situation different from what it now is, and, through a natural reaction, his character, manners and tastes were different. First, he was much more independent; he was not afraid of being discharged or transferred elsewhere, suddenly, unawares, on the strength of an intendant's report, for political reasons, to make room for a deputy's candidate or a minister's tool. This would have cost too much it would have required first of all a reimbursement of the sum paid for his office, and at a rate of purchase ten times, at least, the revenue of the office.[4178] Besides, in defending himself, in protesting against and forestalling his disgrace, he would have been supported by his entire professional guild, oftentimes by other similar bodies, and frequently by the whole town, filled with his relations, clients and comrades. The entire hive protected the bee against the caprices of favoritism and the brutalities of despotism. At Paris, a certain procureur, supported by his colleagues, is known to have imposed on a noble who had insulted him, the most humiliating atonement.[4179] In fact, under the ancient régime, it was almost impossible for a functionary to be removed; hence, he could fulfill his duties securely and with dignity, without being obliged to keep daily watch of the capital, of going to Paris to see how the official wind blew, to look after all the influences in his favor, to nurse his relations with the government and live like a bird on a branch.--In the second place, there was a limit to his ambition; he did not keep constantly thinking of mounting a step higher in the hierarchy; or how to pass from a small town to a large one and hold on to his title; this would have been a too troublesome and complicated matter; he would first have had to find a purchaser and then sell his place, and next find a seller and buy another at a higher price; a stock broker at Bordeaux, a notary at Lyons, is not an aspirant for the post of stock broker or notary at Paris.--Nothing then bore any resemblance to the itinerant groups of functionaries of the present day which, in obedience to orders from above, travels about governing each of our towns, strangers on the wing, with no personal standing, without local landed property, interests or means, encamped in some hired apartment, often in a furnished room, sometimes stopping at a hotel, eternal nomads awaiting a telegram, always prepared to pack up and leave for another place a hundred leagues off in consideration of a hundred crowns extra pay, and doing the same detached work over again. Their predecessor, belonging to the country, was a stable fixture and contented; he was not tormented by a craving for promotion; he had a career within the bounds of his corporation and town; cherishing no wish or idea of leaving it, he accommodated himself to it; he became proud of his office and professional brethren, and rose above the egoism of the individual; his self-love was bent on maintaining every prerogative and interest belonging to his guild. Established for life in his native town, in the midst of old colleagues, numerous relatives and youthful companions, he esteemed their good opinion. Exempt from vexatious or burdensome taxes, tolerably well off, owning at least his own office, he was above sordid preoccupations and common necessities. Used to old fashioned habits of simplicity, soberness and economy, he was not tormented by a disproportion between his income and expenses, by the requirements of show and luxury, by the necessity of annually adding to his revenue.--Thus guided and free, the instincts of vanity and generosity, the essence of French character, took the ascendant; the councilor or comptroller, the King's agent, regarded himself as a man above the common run, as a noble of the Third-Estate; he thought less of making money than of gaining esteem; his chief desire was to be honored and honorable; "he passed life comfortably and was looked up to,... in the discharge of his duty,... with no other ambition than to transmit to his children.... along with their inheritance an unsullied reputation."[4180] Among the other groups of the bourgeoisie the same corporate system, the same settled habits, the same security, the same frugality, the same institutions, the same customs,[4181] promoted the growth of nearly the same sentiments, while the intellectual culture of these men was not insignificant. Having leisure, they were given to reading; as they were not overwhelmed with newspapers they read books worth reading; I have found in old libraries in the provinces, in the houses of the descendants of a manufacturer or lawyer in a small town, complete editions of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon and Condillac, with marks in each volume showing that the volume had been read by someone in the house before the close of the eighteenth century. Nowhere else, likewise, had all that was sound and liberal in the philosophy of the eighteenth century found such a welcome; it is from this class that the patriots of 1789 were recruited; it had furnished not only the majority of the Constituent Assembly, but again all the honest men who, from July, 1789 to the end of 1791 performed their administrative duties so disinterestedly, and with such devotion and zeal, amidst so many difficulties, dangers and disappointments. Composed of Feuillants or Monarchists, possessing such types of men as Huez of Troyes or Dietrich of Strasbourg, and for representatives such leaders as Lafayette and Bailly, it comprised the superior intelligence and most substantial integrity of the Third-Estate. It is evident that, along with the nobles and clergy, the best fruits of history were gathered in it, and most of the mental and moral capital accumulated, not only by the century, but, again, by preceding centuries.

VI. The Demi-notables.

Where recruited.--Village and trade syndics.--Competency of
their electors.--Their interest in making good selections.
--Their capacity and integrity.--The sorting of men under the
ancient regime.--Conditions of a family's maintenance and
advancement.--Hereditary and individual right of the Notable
to his property and rank.

Like a fire lit on a hilltop overlooking a cold and obscure countryside, a civilization, kept alive with much expense on peaks in a sea of human barbarity, radiating while its rays grow dim; its light and warmth fading just as its gleams reach remoter and deeper strata. Nevertheless, both penetrate yet sufficiently far and deep before wholly dying out. If we want to appraise their power in France at the close of the eighteenth century we must add to the notables the half-notables of society, namely, the men who, like the people, were devoted to manual labor, but who, among the people, led the way, say one hundred and fifty thousand families, consisting of well-to-do farmers, small rural proprietors, shopkeepers, retailers, foremen and master-workmen, village syndics and guild syndics,[4182] those who were established and had some capital, owning a plot of land and a house, with a business or stock of tools, and a set of customers, that is to say, with something ahead and credit, not being obliged to live from hand to mouth, and therefore, beginning to be independent and more influential, in short, the overseers of the great social work-house, the sergeants and corporals of the social army.--They, too, were not unworthy of their rank. In the village or trade community, the syndic, elected by his equals and neighbors, was not blindly nominated; all his electors in relation to him were competent; if peasants, they had seen him turning up the soil; if blacksmiths or joiners, they had seen him at work in his forge, or at the bench. And, as their direct, present and obvious interests were concerned, they chose him for the best, not on the strength of a newspaper recommendation, in deference to a vague declamatory platform or sounding, empty phrases, but according to their personal experiences, and the thorough knowledge they had of him. The man sent by the village to represent them to the intendant and selected by the guild to sit in the town council, was its most capable, and most creditable man, one of those, probably, who, through his application, intelligence, honesty and economy, had proved the most prosperous, some master-workman or farmer that had gained experience through long years of assiduity, familiar with details and precedents, of good judgment and repute, more interested than anybody else in supporting the interests of the community and with more leisure than others to attend to public affairs.[4183] This man, through the nature of things, imposed himself on the attention, confidence, and deference of his peers, and, because he was their natural representative, he was their legal representative.

Upon the whole, if, in this old society, the pressure was unequally distributed, if the general equilibrium was unstable, if the upper parts bore down too heavily on the lower ones, the sorting, at least, which goes on in every civilized State, constantly separating the wheat from the chaff, went on tolerably well; except at the center and at the Court, where the winnowing machine had worked haphazard and, frequently, in an opposite sense for a century, the separation proceeded regularly, undoubtedly slower, but, perhaps, more equitably than in our contemporary democracy. The chance that a notable by right could become a notable de facto was then much greater: it was less difficult, and the inclination to found, maintain and perpetuate a family or a business was much stronger; people looked more often beyond themselves; the eyes naturally turned outside the narrow circle of one's personality, looking backward as well as beyond this present life. The (later) institution of an equal partition of property, the (later) system of obligatory partition and the rule of partition in kind, with other prescriptions of the (new) civil code, did not split up an heritage and ruin the home.[4184] Parental negligence and the children's lack of respect and consideration had not yet upset the authority and abolished respect in the family. Useful and natural associations were not yet stifled in the germ nor arrested in their development by the systematic hostility of the law. The ease and cheapness of transportation, the promiscuity of schools, the excitement of competition, everyone's rush to placement and office, the increasing excitement of ambition and greed, had not (yet) immeasurably multiplied the class of irresponsible malcontents and mischievous nomads. In the political order of things, inaptitude, envy, brutality were not sovereign; universal suffrage did not exclude from power the men, born, bred and qualified to exercise it; countless public posts were not offered as a prey to charlatanism and to the intrigues of politicians. France was not then, as now-a-days, on a way to become a vast lodging-house administered by casual managers, condemned to periodical failures, inhabited by anonymous residents, indifferent to each other, lacking local ties, lacking engagements and having no corporate loyalties, merely tenants and passing consumers, placed in numerical order around a common mess-table where each thinks only of himself, gets served quickly, consumes what he can lay his hands on, and ends by finding out that, in a place of this sort, the best condition, the wisest course, is to put all one's property into an annuity and live a bachelor.--Formerly, among all classes and in all the provinces, there were a large number of families that had taken root on the spot, living there a hundred years and more. Not only among the nobles, but among the bourgeoisie and the Third-Estate, the heir of any enterprise was expected to continue his calling. This was so with the seignorial chateau and extensive domain, as with the bourgeois dwelling and patrimonial office, the humble rural domain, farm, shop and factory, all were transmitted intact from one generation to another.[4185] Great or small, the individual was not exclusively interested in himself; his thoughts also traveled forward to the future and back to the past, on the side of ancestors and on that of descendants, along the endless chain of which his own life was but a link; he possessed traditions, he felt bound to set examples. Under this twofold title, his domestic authority was uncontested;[4186] his household and all his employees followed his instructions without swerving and without resistance. When, by virtue of this domestic discipline, a family had maintained itself upright and respected on the same spot for a century, it could easily advance a degree; it could introduce one of its members into the upper class, pass from the plow or trade to petty offices, and from these to the higher ones and to parliamentary dignities, from the four thousand posts that ennoble to the legalized nobility, from the lately made nobles to the old nobility. Apart from the two or three thousand gilded drones living on the public honey at Versailles, apart from the court parasites and their valets, three or four hundred thousand notables and half-notables of France thus acquired and kept their offices, consideration and fortune; they were therefore their legitimate possessors. The peasant-proprietor and master-artisan had risen from father to son, at four o'clock in the morning, toiled all day and never drank. From father to son, the trader, notary, lawyer and office-holder, had been careful, economical, skillful and attentive to business, correct in their papers, precise in their accounts. From father to son, the nobleman had served bravely, the parliamentarian had judged equitably, as a point of honor, with a salary inferior to the interest of the sum paid by him to acquire his rank or post. Each of these men received no more than his due; his possessions and his rank were the savings of his ascendants, the price of social services rendered by the long file of deserving dead, all that his ancestors, his father and himself had created or preserved of any stable value; each piece of gold that remained in the hereditary purse represented the balance of a lifetime, the enduring labor of some one belonging to his line, while among these gold pieces, he himself had provided his share.--For, personal services counted, even among the upper nobility; and all the more among the lower class, in the Third-Estate, and among the people. Among the notables of every degree just described, most of them, in 1789, were fully grown men, many of them mature, a goodly number advanced in years, and some quite aged; consequently, in justification of his rank and emoluments, or of his gains and his fortune, each could allege fifteen, twenty, thirty and forty years of labor and honorability in private or public situations, the grand-vicar of the diocese as well as the chief-clerk of the ministry, the intendant of the généralité as well as the president of the royal tribunal, the village curé, the noble officer, the office-holder, the lawyer, the procureur, the large manufacturer, the wholesale dealer, as well as the well-to-do farmer, and the well-known handicraftsman.--Thus, not only were they an élite corps, the most valuable portion of the nation, the best timber of the forest, but again, the wood of each branch belonged to that trunk; it grew there, and was the product of its own vegetation; it sprung out of the trunk wholly through the unceasing and spontaneous effort of the native sap, through time-honored and recent labor, and, on this account, it merited respect.--Through a double onslaught, at once against each human branch and against the entire French forest, the Jacobin wood-choppers seek to clear the ground. Their theory results in this precept, that not one of the noble trees of this forest, not one valuable trunk from the finest oak to the smallest sapling, should be left standing.

VII. Principle of socialist Equality.

All superiorities of rank are illegitimate.--Bearing of this
principle.--Incivique benefits and enjoyments.--How
revolutionary laws reach the lower class.--Whole populations
affected in a mass.--proportion of the lowly in the
proscription lists. How the revolutionary laws specially
affect those who are prominent among the people.

Not that the ravages which they make stop there! The principle extended far beyond that. The fundamental rule, according to Jacobin maxims, is that every public or private advantage which any citizen enjoys and which is not enjoyed by another citizen, is illegitimate.--On Ventôse 19, year II., Henriot, general in command, having surrounded the Palais Royal and made a sweep of "suspects," renders an account of his expedition as follows:[4187] "One hundred and thirty muscadins have been arrested.... These gentlemen are transferred to the Petits-Pêres. Being well-fed and plump, they cannot be sans-culottes." Henriot was right, for, to live well is incivique. Whoever lays in stores of provisions is criminal, even if he has gone a good ways for them, even if he has not overpaid the butcher of his quarter, even if he has not diminished by an ounce of meat the ration of his neighbor; when he is found out, he is punished and his hoard confiscated. "A citizen[4188] had a little pig brought to him from a place six leagues from Paris, and killed it at once. Three hours afterwards, the pig was seized by commissioners and distributed among the people, without the owner getting a bit of it;" moreover, the said owner "was imprisoned."--He is a monopolist! To Jacobin people, to empty stomachs, there is no greater crime; this misdeed, to their imaginations, explains the arrest of Hébert, their favorite: "It is said at the Halle (the covered Paris market)[4189] that he has monopolized a brother of the order of Saint-Antoine[4190] as well as a pot of twenty-five pounds of Brittany butter," which is enough; they immediately and "unanimously consign Père Duchesne to the guillotine." (Note that the Père Duchesne, founded by Hébert, was the most radical and revolutionary journal. (SR.)--Of all privileges, accordingly, that of having a supply of food is the most offensive; "it is now necessary for one who has two dishes to give one of them to him who has none;"[4191] every man who manages to eat more than another is a robber; for, in the first place, he robs the community, the sole legitimate owner of aliments, and next, he robs, and personally, all who have less to eat than he has.

The same rule applies to other things of which the possession is either agreeable or useful: in an equalizing social system, that now established, every article of food possessed by one individual to the exclusion of others, is a dish abstracted from the common table and held by him to another's detriment. On the strength of this, the theorists who govern agree with the reigning ragamuffins. Whoever has two good coats is an aristocrat, for there are many who have only one poor one.[4192] Whoever has good shoes is an aristocrat, for many wear wooden ones, and others go barefoot. Whoever owns and rents lodgings is an aristocrat, for others, his tenants, instead of receiving money, pay it out. The tenant who furnishes his own rooms is an aristocrat, for many lodge in boarding-houses and others sleep in the open air. Whoever possesses capital is an aristocrat, even the smallest amount in money or in kind, a field, a roof over his head, half-a-dozen silver spoons given to him by his parents on his wedding-day, an old woollen stocking into which twenty or thirty crowns have been dropped one by one, all one's savings, whatever has been laid by or economized, a petty assortment of eatables or merchandise, one's crop for the year and stock of groceries, especially if, disliking to give them up and letting his dissatisfaction be seen, he, through revolutionary taxation and requisitions, through the maximum and the confiscation of the precious metals, is constrained to surrender his small savings gratis, or at half their value.--Fundamentally, it is only those who have nothing of their own that are held to be patriots, those who live from day to day,[4193] "the wretched," the poor, vagabonds, and the famished; the humblest laborer, the least instructed, the most ill at his ease, is treated as criminal, as an enemy, as soon as he is suspected of having some resources; in vain does he show his scarified or callous hands; he escapes neither spoliation, the prison, nor the guillotine. At Troyes, a poor shop-girl who had set up a small business on borrowed money, but who is ruined by a bankruptcy and completely so by the maximum, infirm, and consuming piecemeal the rest of her stock, is taxed five hundred livres.[4194] In the villages of Alsace, an order is issued to arrest the five, six or seven richest persons in the commune, even if there are no rich; consequently, they seize the least poor, simply because they are so; for instance, at Heiligenberg, six "farmers" one of whom is a day-laborer, "or journey-man," "suspect," says the register of the jail, "because he is comfortably off."[4195] On this account nowhere are there so many "suspects" as among the people; the shop, the farm and the work-room harbor more aristocrats than the rectory and the chateau. In effect, according to the Jacobins,[4196] "nearly all farmers are aristocrats;" "the merchants are all essentially anti-revolutionary,"[4197] and especially all dealers in articles of prime necessity, wine-merchants, bakers and butchers; the latter especially are open "conspirators," enemies "of the interior," and "whose aristocracy is insupportable." Such, already, among the lower class of people, are the many delinquents who are punished.

But there are still more of them to punish, for, besides the crime of not being destitute, of possessing some property, of withholding articles necessary for existence, there is the crime of aristocracy, necessarily so called, namely, repugnance to, lack of zeal, or even indifference for the established régime, regret for the old one, relationship or intercourse with a condemned or imprisoned émigré of the upper class, services rendered to some outlaw, the resort to some priest; now, numbers of poor farmers, mechanics, domestics and women servants, have committed this crime;[4198] and in many provinces and in many of the large cities nearly the whole of the laboring population commits it and persists in it; such is the case, according to Jacobin reports, in Alsace, Franche-Comté, Provence, Vaucluse, Anjou, Poitou, Vendée, Brittany, Picardie and Flanders, and in Marseilles, Bordeaux and Lyons. In Lyons alone, writes Collot d'Herbois, "there are sixty thousand persons who never will become republicans. They should be dealt with, that is made redundant, and prudently distributed all over the surface of the Republic."[4199]--Finally, add to the persons of the lower class, prosecuted on public grounds, those who are prosecuted on private grounds. Among peasants in the same village, workmen of the same trade and shopkeepers in the same quarter, there is always envy, enmities and spites; those who are Jacobins become local pashas and are able to gratify local jealousies with impunity, something they never fail to do.[41100]

Hence, on the lists of the guillotined, the incarcerated and of emigrés, the men and women of inferior condition are in much greater number, far greater than their companions of the superior and middle classes all put together. Out of 12,000 condemned to death whose rank and professions have been ascertained, 7,545[41101] are peasants, cultivators, ploughmen, workmen of various sorts, innkeepers, wine-dealers, soldiers and sailors, domestics, women, young girls, servants and seamstresses. Out of 1,900 emigrés from Doubs, nearly 1,100 belong to the lower class. Towards the month of April, 1794, all the prisons in France overflow with farmers;[41102] in the Paris prisons alone, two months before Thermidor 9, there are 2 000 of them.[41103] Without mentioning the eleven western departments in which four or five hundred square leagues of territory are devastated and twenty towns and one thousand eight hundred villages destroyed,[41104] where the avowed purpose of the Jacobin policy is a systematic and total destruction of the country, man and beast, buildings, crops, and even trees, there are cantons and even provinces where the entire rural and working population is arrested or put to flight. In the Pyrenees, the old Basque populations "torn from their natal soil, crowded into the churches with no means of subsistence but that of charity," in the middle of winter, so that sixteen hundred of those incarcerated die "mostly of cold and hunger;"[41105] at Bédouin, a town of two thousand souls, in which a tree of liberty is cut down by some unknown persons, four hundred and thirty-three houses are demolished or burned, sixteen persons guillotined and forty-seven shot, while the rest of the inhabitants are driven out, reduced to living like vagabonds on the mountain, or in holes which they dig in the ground;[41106] in Alsace, fifty thousand farmers who, in the winter of 1793, take refuge with their wives and children on the other side of the Rhine.[41107] In short, the revolutionary operation is a complete prostration of people of all classes, the trunks as well as the saplings being felled, and often in such a way as to clear the ground entirely.

But in this ruthless felling, however, the notables of the people, making all due allowances, suffer more than the ordinary people. It is obvious that the Jacobin wood-chopper persecutes, insistently and selectively, the veterans of labor and savings, the large cultivators who from father to son and for many generations have possessed the same farm, the master-craftsmen whose shops are well stocked and who have good customers, the respectable, well-patronized retailers, who owe nothing; the village-syndics and trades-syndics, all those showing more deeply and visibly than the rest of their class, the five or six blazes which summon the ax. They are better off, better provided with desirable comforts and conveniences, which is of itself an offense against equality. Having accumulated a small hoard, a few pieces of plate, sometimes a few crowns,[41108] a store of linen and clothes, a stock of provisions or goods, they do not willingly submit to being plundered, which is the offense of egoism. Being egoists, it is presumed that they are hostile to the system of fraternity, at least indifferent to it, as well as lukewarm towards the Republic, that is to say, Moderates, which is the worst offense of all.[41109] Being the foremost of their class, they are haughty like the nobles or the bourgeois and regard themselves as superior to a poor man, to a vagabond, to a genuine sans-culotte, the fourth and most inexcusable of all offenses. Moreover, from the fact of their superior condition, they have contracted familiarities and formed connections with the proscribed class; the farmer, the intendant, the overseer is often attached to his noble proprietor or patron;[41110] many of the farmers, shopkeepers and craftsmen belonging to old families are considered as affiliated with the bourgeoisie or the clergy,[41111] through a son or brother who has risen a degree in trade, or by some industrial pursuit, or who, having completed his studies, has become a curé or lawyer, or else through some daughter, or well-married sister, or through one who has become a nun: now, this relation, ally, friend or comrade of a "suspect "is himself a "suspect,"--the last anti-revolutionary and decisive barrier. Sober and well-behaved persons, having prospered or maintained themselves under the ancient régime, must naturally cherish respect for former institutions; they must involuntarily retain a deep feeling of veneration for the King, and especially for religion; they are devout Catholics, and therefore are chagrined to see the churches shut up, worship prohibited and ecclesiastics persecuted, and would again be glad to go to Mass, honor Easter, and have an orthodox curé who could administer to them available sacraments, a baptism, an absolution, a marriage-rite, a genuine extreme unction.[41112]--Under all these headings, they have made personal enemies of the rascals who hold office; on all these grounds, they are struck down; what was once meritorious with them is now disgraceful. Thus, the principal swath consists of the élite of the people, selected from amongst the people itself; it is against the "subordinate aristocracy," those most capable of doing and conducting manual labor, the most creditable workmen, through their activity, frugality and good habits, that the Revolution, in its rigor against the inferior class, rages with the greatest fury.

VIII. Rigor against the Upper Classes.

The rigor of the revolutionary laws increase according to
the elevation of the class.--The Notables properly so called
attacked because of their being Notables.--Orders of
Taillefer, Milhaud, and Lefiot.--The public atonement of
Montargis.

For the same reason, as far as the notables, properly so-called, are concerned, it bears down still more heavily, not merely on the nobles because of ancient privileges, not merely on ecclesiastics on the score of being insubordinate Catholics, but on nobles, ecclesiastics and bourgeois in their capacity of notables, that is to say, born and bred above others, and respected by the masses on account of their superior condition.--In the eyes of the genuine Jacobin, the notables of the third class are no less criminal than the members of the two superior classes. "The bourgeois,[41113] the merchants, the large proprietors," writes a popular club in the South, "all have the pretension of the old set (des ci-dévants)." And the club complains of "the law not providing means for opening the eyes of the people with respect to these new tyrants." It is horrible! The stand they take is an offense against equality and they are proud of it! And what is worse, this stand attracts public consideration! Consequently, "the club requests that the revolutionary Tribunal be empowered to consign this proud class to temporary confinement," and then "the people would see the crime it had committed and recover from the sort of esteem in which they had held it."--Incorrigible and contemptuous heretics against the new creed, they are only too lucky to be treated somewhat like infidel Jews in the middle-ages. Accordingly, if they are tolerated, it is on the condition that they let themselves be pillaged at discretion, covered with opprobrium and subdued through fear.--At one time, with insulting irony, they are called upon to prove their dubious civism by forced donations. "Whereas,"[41114] says Representative Milhaud, "all the citizens and citoyennes of Narbonne being in requisition for the discharge and transport of forage; whereas, this morning, the Representative, in person, having inspected the performance of this duty," and having observed on the canal "none but sans-culottes and a few young citizens; whereas, not finding at their posts any muscadin and no muscadine; whereas, the persons, whose hands are no doubt too delicate, even temporarily, for the glorious work of robust sans-culottes, have, on the other hand, greater resources in their fortune, and, desiring to afford to the rich of Narbonne the precious advantage of being equally useful to the republic," hereby orders that "the richest citizens of Narbonne pay within twenty-four hours" a patriotic donation of one hundred thousand livres, one-half to be assigned to the military hospitals, and the other half, on the designation thereof by a "Committee of Charity, composed of three reliable revolutionary sans-culottes," to be distributed among the poor of the Commune. Should any "rich egoist refuse to contribute his contingent he is to be immediately transferred to the jail at Perpignan."--Not to labor with one's own hands, to be disqualified for work demanding physical strength, is of itself a democratic stain, and the man who is sullied by this draws down on himself, not alone an augmentation of pecuniary taxation, but frequently an augmentation of personal compulsory labor. At Villeneuve, Aveyron, and throughout the department of Cantal,[41115] Representative Taillefer and his delegate Deltheil, instruct the Revolutionary Committees to "place under military requisition and conscription all muscadins above the first class," that is to say, all between twenty-five and forty years of age who are not reached by the law. "By muscadins is meant all citizens of that age not married, and exercising no useful profession," in other words, those who live on their income. And, that none of the middle or upper class may escape, the edict subjects to special rigor, supplementary taxes, and arbitrary arrest, not alone property-holders and fund-holders, but again all persons designated under the following heads,--aristocrats, Feuillants, moderates, Girondists, federalists, muscadins, the superstitious, fanatics the abettors of royalism, of superstition and of federation, monopolists, jobbers, egoists, "suspects" of incivism, and, generally, all who are indifferent to the Revolution, of which local committees are to draw up the lists.

Occasionally, in a town, some steps taken collectively, either a vote or petition, furnish a ready-made list;[41116] it suffices to read this to know who are notables, the most upright people of the place; henceforth, under the pretext of political repression, the levellers may give free play to their social hatred.--At Montargis, nine days after the attempt of June 20, 1792,[41117] two hundred and twenty-eight notables sign an address in testimony of their respectful sympathy for the King; a year and nine months later, in consequence of a retroactive stroke, all are hit, and, with the more satisfaction, inasmuch as in their persons the most respected in the town fall beneath the blow, all whom flight and banishment had left there belonging to the noble, ecclesiastic, bourgeois or popular aristocracy. Already, "on the purification of the constituted authorities of Montargis, the representative had withdrawn every signer from places of public trust and kept them out of all offices." But this is not sufficient; the punishment must be more exemplary. Four of them, the ex-mayor, an ex-collector, a district administrator and a notable are sent to the revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, to be guillotined in deference to principles. Thirty-two former officers--chevaliers of St. Louis, mousquetaires, nobles, priests, an ex-procureur-royal, an ex-treasurer of France, a former administrator of the department, and two ladies, one of them designated as "calling herself a former marchioness"--are confined, until peace is secured, in the jail at Montargis. Other former municipal officers and officers in the National Guard--men of the law, notaries and advocates, physicians, surgeons, former collectors, police commissioners, postmasters, merchants and manufacturers, men and women, married or widows and widowers--are to make public apology and be summoned to the Temple of Reason to undergo there the humiliation of a public penance on the 20th of Ventôse at three o'clock in the afternoon. They all go, for the summons says, "whoever does not present himself on the day and hour named will be arrested and confined until peace is declared." On reaching the church, purified by Jacobin adoration, "in the presence of the constituted authorities of the popular club and of the citizens convoked in general assembly," they mount one by one into a tribune raised three steps above the floor," in such a way as to be in full sight. One by one the national agent, or the mayor, reprimands them in the following language:

"You have been base enough to sign a fawning address to Louis XVI., the most odious and the vilest of tyrants, an ogre of the human species guilty of every sort of crime and debauchery. You are hereby censured by the people. You are moreover warned that on committing the first act of incivism, or manifesting any anti-revolutionary conduct, the surveillance of the constituted authorities will be extended to you in the most energetic manner; the tribunals will show you less leniency and the guillotine will insure prompt and imposing justice."

Each, called by name, receives in turn the threatened admonition, and, descending from the tribune amidst hues and cries, all sign the procès-verbal. But shame and guilt are often absent, and some of them do not seem to be sufficiently penitent. Consequently, at the close of the ceremony, the National Agent calls the attention of the assembly to "the impudence manifested by certain aristocrats, so degraded that even national justice fails to make them blush;" and the Revolutionary Committee, "considering the indifference and derisive conduct of four women and three men, just manifested in this assembly; considering the necessity of punishing an inveterate aristocracy which seems to make sport of corrective acts that bear only (sic) on morals, in a most exemplary manner, decides that the seven delinquents "shall be put under arrest, and confined in the jail of Sainte-Marie." The three who have shown indifference, are to be confined three months; the four who have shown derision, are to be confined until peace is restored. Besides this, the decree of the National Agent and the minutes of the meeting are to be printed and six thousand impressions struck off at the expense of the signers, "the richest and most 'suspect,' "--a former treasurer of France, a notary, a grocer, the wife of the former commandant of the gendarmerie, a widow and another woman,--all, says the agent, "of very solid wealth and aristocracy." "Bravo!" shouts the assembly, at this witticism; applause is given and it sings "the national hymn." It is nine o'clock in the evening. This public penitence lasts six hours and the Jacobins of Montargis retire, proud of their work; having punished as a public affront, an old and legal manifestation of respect for the public magistrate; having sent either to the scaffold or to prison, and fined or disgraced the small local élite; having degraded to the level of prostitutes and felons under surveillance, reputable women and honorable men who are, by law, most esteemed under a normal system of government and who, under the revolutionary system are, by law, the least so.[41118]

IX. The Jacobin Citizen Robot.

Two characteristics of the upper class, wealth and
education.--Each of these is criminal.--Measures against
rich and well-to-do people.--Affected in a mass and by
categories.--Measures against cultivated and polite people.
--Danger of culture and distinction.--Proscription of "honest
folks."

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."

One is self-condemned if one has not converted oneself into a sans-culotte and proletarian, in accordance with affected modes, air, language and dress. Hence,

"through a hypocritical contest hitherto unknown men who were not vicious deemed it necessary to appear so."

And worse still,

"one was even afraid to be oneself; one changed one's name, one went in disguise, wearing a vulgar and tasteless attire; everybody shrunk from being what he was."

For, according to the Jacobin program, all Frenchmen must be recast[41147] in one uniform mold; they must be taken when small; all must be subject to the same enforced education, that of a mechanic, rustic and soldier's boy. Be warned, ye adults, by the guillotine, reform yourselves beforehand according to the prescribed pattern! No more costly, elegant or delicate crystal or gold vases! All are shattered or are still being shattered. Henceforth, only common ware is to be tolerated or ordered to be made, all alike in substance, shape and color, manufactured by thousands at wholesale and in public factories, for the common and plain uses of rural and military life; all original and superior forms are to be rejected.

"The masters of the day," writes Daunou,[41148] "deliberately aimed their sword thrusts at superior talent, at energetic characters; they mowed down as well as they could in so short a time, the flower and hope of the nation."

In this respect they were consistent; equality-socialism[41149] allows none but automatic citizens, mere tools in the hands of the State, all alike, of a rudimentary fashion and easily managed, without personal conscience, spontaneity, curiosity or integrity; whoever has cultivated himself, whoever has thought for himself and exercised his own will and judgment rises above the level and shakes off the yoke; to obtain consideration, to be intelligent and honorable, to belong to the élite, is to be anti-revolutionary. In the popular club of Bourg-en-Bresse,[41150] Representative Javogues declared that,

"the Republic could be established only on the corpse of the last of the respectable men."

X. The Governors and the Governed.

Prisoners in the rue de Sévres and the "Croix-Rouge"
revolutionary committee.--The young Dauphin and Simon his
preceptor.--Judges, and those under their jurisdiction.
--Trenchard and Coffinhal, Lavoisier and André Chénier.