CHAPTER XII.

INTOLERANCE OF THE TWO PARTIES.-ROBESPIERRE'S PROGRESS.

On the 7th of April, five days after the death of Mirabeau, Robespierre proposed and caused to be decreed that no member of the Assembly could be raised to the ministry during the four years following the session.

No deputy of any importance durst make any objection; no protestation was made, either by the usual framers of the constitution (Thouret, Chapelier, &c.); or by the agitators on the left (Duport, Lameth, Bar. nave, and their party); but, without saying a word, they allowed themselves to be deprived of all the advantage that they might have expected from the death of Mirabeau ; and the entrance to power, which seemed to open before them, was closed against them for ever.

Five weeks later, May 16th, Robespierre proposed and caused to be decreed that the members of the present Assembly could not be elected for the next legislature.

Twice did the constituent Assembly vote by acclamation against itself; and each time on the motion of the deputy the least agreeable to the Assembly, of one whose motions and amendments it had invariably rejected!

We have here a great change which we must endeavour to explain. And, first, a very surprising symptom that we perceive of it is, that on the very day after Mirabeau's death, Robespierre assumed a new, audacious, and almost imperious tone. On the 6th of April, he violently reproached the constitutional committee with having unexpectedly presented a plan for the organisation of the ministry (presented two months before); and he spoke of the "dread with which the spirit which prevailed at their deliberations inspired him." He concluded with this dogmatical sentence: "Here is the essential instruction which I lay before the Assembly." And the Assembly showed no disapprobation. It granted him an adjournment to the next day for the substance of the law; and it was on the morrow, the 7th of April, that, being probably assured of a strong majority, he made the motion of prohibiting the ministry to the deputies for four years.

Robespierre was no longer a hesitating timid deputy; he had assumed authority. This was perceptible on the 16th of May, when he developed seriously, and often eloquently, this thesis of political morality, that the legislator ought to make it his duty to retire to his rank as a private citizen, and even to shun public gratitude. The Assembly, tired of its constitutional committee,-a decemvirate ever speaking and laying down laws,—felt grateful to Robespierre for having been the first to express a just and true idea, which may be reduced to this formula: "The constitution did not issue from the brain of this or that orator, but from the

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ROBESPIERRE SUCCEEDS THE LAMETHS.

very principle of the opinion that preceded and has supported us. After two years of superhuman labours, it only remains for us to give our successors an example of indifference for our immense power, and for every other interest than that of the public good. Let us go and breathe, in our departments, the air of equality."

And he added these imperious and hasty words: "It seems to me that, for the honour of the principles of the Assembly, this motion ought not to be decreed in too dilatory a manner." Far from being offended by this language, the Assembly applauded, ordered it to be printed, and wanted to vote immediately. In vain did Chapelier ask permission to speak, the motion was voted almost unanimously.

Camille Desmoulins, the habitual and very zealous trumpeter of Robespierre, says very truly that he considers this decree as a masterpiece of policy: "We can easily imagine that he carried things thus with a high hand only because he was in secret intelligence with the selfrespect of the great majority, who, unable to be re-elected, eagerly seized this opportunity of levelling all the honourable members. Our trusty friend had calculated right well," &c.

What he had calculated, but what Desmoulins cannot tell, is, that for the two extreme parties, the Jacobins and the aristocrats, the common enemy to be destroyed was the constitution and the constitutional party, the parents and natural defenders of their weakly child.

But Robespierre was too great a politician for us to believe that he trusted entirely to this calculation of probabilities, to this hypothesis founded on a general knowledge of human nature. When we behold him speaking so forcibly, and with so much authority and certainty, we cannot doubt but he was most positively informed of the support that his motion would meet with from the right side of the Assembly. The priests, in favour of whom he had lately ventured so far, and almost compromised himself (March 12th) were able to give him perfect information on the opinions of their party.

On the other hand, if Robespierre's voice seems suddenly more commanding, it is because it is no longer that of a single man; a whole nation speaks with him,—that of the Jacobin societies. The society in Paris, as we have seen, founded by deputies, and at first possessing as many as four hundred in October, 1789, has at most but a hundred and fifty on the 28th of February, 1791, the day when Mirabeau was annihilated by the Lameths. Who then are the predominant members of the Jacobin club? Those who are not deputies, but wish to be so,—those who desire that the constituent Assembly may not be re-elected. It was the secret thought, the desire, and the interest of the Jacobins that Robespierre had expressed; and he becomes their organ. He speaks for them and before them; and he is supported by them; for they are the persons who now fill the galleries. This upper assembly, as I have already called it, begins to overawe the constituent Assembly from above; and this reason is not one of the least which induce the latter to desire repose. The galleries interpose more and more, accompanying the speeches of the orators with exclamations, applause, and hootings. In the question on the colonies, for instance, a defender of the colonists was hissed outrageously.

THE LAMETHS ADVISERS OF THE COURT.

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The secret history of the Jacobin society is extremely difficult to unravel. Their pretended journal, edited by Laclos, far from throwing any light on the subject only renders it more obscure. What is nevertheless very evident, is, that of the two primitive fractions of the society, the Orleans party now declines, discredited by its chief in the affair of the four millions, and by the republican warfare directed against it by Brissot and others. The other fraction (Duport, Barnave, and Lameth) appears also worn out and exhausted; as though in mortally wounding Mirabeau on the evening of the 28th of February, it had left its sting and its life in the wound. But whether it still acts in the violent riot by which the Jacobins completely destroyed the monarchical club with sticks and stones, is what we cannot positively know. However, what we may say in general of the triumvirs is, that their bad reputation for intrigues and violence, and the ominous (though unjust) reports current against them on the occasion of Mirabeau's death, induced the Jacobins to follow preferably a poor, austere man, free from corruption, and of an irreproachable character. The remarkable scene, noticed by all, at Mirabeau's funeral (Lameth walking arm in arm with Sieyès, and shielded by him from the suspicion of the people,-a Jacobin protected, as it were, in face of the people by the unpopular abbé !) was enough to cause the Jacobin society to reflect. It abandoned the Lameths and attached itself to

Robespierre.

The affair of the Jacobins of Lons-le-Saulnier, decided against the Lameths by the society of Paris, about the end of March, seems to be the date of their downfall. One might almost say that they expire with Mirabeau; both the conquerors and the conquered disappear almost at the same time.

Nothing had more contributed to hasten their ruin than their illiberal opinion on the rights of men of colour. The Lameths had houses and slaves in the colonies; and Barnave spoke manfully in favour of the planters. The Assembly, wavering between the too evident question of right and the fear of exciting a general conflagration, made this strange decree: "That it would never deliberate on the state of persons not born of a free father and mother, unless it was required to do so by the colonies." They were very sure that this demand would never come; so it was prohibiting itself from ever deliberating on the slavery of the blacks. The planters wanted to raise a statue to Barnave, as if he were already dead, which was but too true.

Independently of these interests, a secret influence, we must say, contributed likewise to neutralise the Lameths.

He

Shortly after Mirabeau's death, at a time when it was imputed to them by many persons, a little insignificant man asked, at a very early hour, to speak to Alexander de Lameth, who was still in bed, and he was admitted. This was M. de Montmorin, the minister for foreign affairs. -The minister sits down by the bedside, and begins his confession. speaks ill of Mirabeau (a sure way of pleasing the Lameths), reproaches imself be evil course upon which he had entered, and the large pent, in order to penetrate the secrets of the Jacobins. says he, "I had the letters they had received from I read them to the king, who often admired the

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THE NATIONAL GUARD THE CLUBS.

wisdom of your replies." The conclusion of this conversation, which Lameth forgets to give us, but which is perfectly well known, is, that Lameth, in one respect, succeeded Mirabeau, and became what Barnave had been ever since the month of December, one of the secret advisers of the Court.*

On the 28th of April, the Assembly took a formidable step, and decided that none but active citizens could be National Guards. Robespierre protested, but Duport and Barnave remained silent; and Charles de Lameth spoke only on a point of little importance.

The real touchstone, the fatal ordeal, was the prohibition of Clubs, now solemnly attacked before the Assembly by the department of Paris,—the prohibition of popular assemblies in general, whether communes, seetions, or free associations, their right of making collective petitions and addresses, that of publishing notices, &c. Chapelier proposed a law which deprived them of this right; and it was indeed voted, but not carried into execution. He declared that, without this law, the Clubs would be corporations, and the most formidable of all. Robespierre and Petion stood forward as defenders of the Clubs. But were not Duport, Barnave, and Lameth, the founders of the Jacobins, and their leaders for so long a time, about to speak also? Everybody expected it... But no; they remained silent, utterly silent. They were evidently abdicating.

Robespierre had let fall an expression against them which doubtless contributed to deprive them of every inclination of speaking: "I do not excite a riot... If anybody would accuse me, I wish he would place all his actions parallel with mine." This was defying the former agitators to be able to speak of peace.

In the question on re-eligibility (May 16th), Duport allowed the Assembly to vote against itself; but, on the morrow, when it only remained to vote about the re-eligibility of the following legislatures, he at length broke silence. He seemed to wish to vent, at once, all his vexation and his fears for the future. This speech, full of lofty, strong, and prophetic sentiments, has the greatest blemish that a political speech can have; it is sad and desponding. Duport therein declares-That one step more, and the government no longer exists; or, if it revives, it will exist only to become concentrated in the executive power. Men are unwilling to obey any longer their former despots, but want to make new ones, whose power, more popular, will be a thousandfold more dangerous. Freedom will be lodged in egotistical individuality, and equality in a progressive levelling, even to the division of lands. Even now people are evidently tending to change the form of the government, without foreseeing that it will be necessary first to drown in their blood the last partisans of the throne, &c., &c. Next, alluding specially to Robespierre, he blamed the clever system of certain men who are ever contented with speaking of principles, lofty generalities, without descending to the ways and means, or taking any responsibility; "for it is not one to possess, without interruption, a professorship of natural law.”

Duport, in this long complaint, started from an inexact idea, which he

*Nothing can be more empty, less instructive, or more cleverly void, than Barnave's Memoirs of the year 1791. Lameth cannot equal him in this.

DUPORT AND ROBESPIERRE.

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twice repeated: "The Revolution is completed." This single expression destroyed all the rest. The general uneasiness, the presentiment that there was an infinite number of obstacles to overcome, and the insufficiency of the reforms, altogether forced upon every mind a mute but powerful refutation of such an assertion. Robespierre took good care not to seize the dangerous advantage afforded by his adversary; he did not fall into the snare by saying it was necessary to continue the Revolution. He kept close to the question. Only, as if he had wished to return an idyl for an elegy, he reverted to his former speech, to the peaceful moral ideas" of a retirement prescribed by reason and nature,-a retirement necessary for meditating on principles." He warranted that "there existed in every province of the empire fathers of families, who would willingly come forward to perform the duties of legislators, in order to secure to their children morals and a native land... And should intriguers depart, it would be so much the better; for modest virtue would then receive the reward of which they would have deprived it."

This sentimentality, being translated into political language, meant that Robespierre, having seized the revolutionary lever that had fallen out of the hands of Duport (the lever of the Jacobins), was not afraid of shutting himself out of the official Assembly, in the name of principles, in order to be the better able to sway the only active and efficacious Assembly, the great directing Club. In all probability, the next legislature, having no longer such men as Mirabeau, Duport, and Cazalés, would be feeble and torpid, and that life and strength would be entirely among the Jacobins. That quiet, philosophical retirement which he prescribed for his adversaries he himself intended to find in the real centre of agitation. Duport honoured his downfall by an admirable speech against the pain of death, wherein he reached the very bottom of the subject, this profound objection:-"Does not a society which makes itself a legal murderer teach murder?" This eminent man, whose name remains attached to the establishment of juries in France, and to all our judiciary institutions, had, like Mirabeau, the glory of ending his career on a question of humanity. His speech, superior in every respect to the petty academical discourse which Robespierre also spoke against the pain of death, found nevertheless no echo. Nobody remarked these words, in which we may perceive but too plainly a gloomy presentiment: "Since a continual change in men has rendered a change in things almost necessary, let us at least contrive that our revolutionary scenes be the least tragical... Let us render man respected by man!”

A serious sentence, which unfortunately was but too applicable! Man and human life were no longer respected. Blood was flowing; and a religious warfare was about to break out.

As early as 1790, the obstinate opposition of the clergy to the sale of the ecclesiastical estates had placed the municipalities in the most painful embarrassment. They were loth to be severe against persons, and paused in presence of the passive opposition that was brought against them,-passive only in appearance; for the clergy acted very powerfully by the means of the confessional and the press, by the propagation of libels. They were especially diffusing in Brittany Burke's atrocious book against the Revolution.