552

THE JACOBINS PERSECUTE THE OTHER CLUBS.

would be necessary to fathom an unknown ocean,—that of the sufferings of the people.

We have noted the exterior,-the newspapers, and lower than the newspapers, the clubs. But beneath this noisy surface is the unfathomable, mute abyss, an infinitude of suffering, an increasing suffering, aggravated morally by the bitterness of so much hope deceived, and materially by the sudden disappearance of every kind of resource.

The first result of the acts of violence was to cause the departure not only of the nobles, but of many rich people and others in easy circumstances, by no means hostile to the Revolution, but scared away by fear. Such as remained durst neither stir, speculate, sell, buy, fabricate, nor spend. People, being alarmed, kept their money in their purse; and every kind of speculation and work suddenly stopped.

It was most strange to behold the Revolution opening a career for the peasants and closing it against the workmen. The former listened with delight to the decrees that put up the ecclesiastical estates for sale. The latter, silent and melancholy, and out of work, lounged about with folded arms all day long, listening to the conversations of animated groups of people, and thronging the clubs, the galleries and passages of the Assembly. Every riot, whether paid or not, found in the street an army of workmen infuriated by misery, labourers worn out by despair and inactivity, too happy to find any occupation, for at least one day.

In such a position of things, the responsibility of the great political society, the Jacobins, was truly immense. What part was it to play? Only one; to remain firm even against its own passions, to enlighten public opinion, to avoid the brutal system of terror which was about to raise up innumerable enemies against the Revolution, but, at the same time, to watch the counter-revolutionists so closely, that on the very first really just opportunity, it might be able to chastise them.

But, so far from doing so, it powerfully assisted them by its own awkwardness. It caused their party to multiply, and strengthened them by persecution and by advancing their interests. It was the means of propagating their cause in the most active and energetic manner. By annihilating them in Paris, it extended them in France and throughout Europe; it destroyed a few hundreds, but it gave birth to millions of others.

The Jacobins seem to conduct themselves as the immediate heirs of the priests: they imitate the vexatious intolerance by which the clergy has occasioned so many heresies; and they boldly follow the old dogma: "Out of our community, no salvation." Excepting the Cordeliers, whom they treat gently, speaking of them as little as possible; they persecute the clubs, even those of a revolutionary character. The club called the Cercle Social, for instance, a free-masonic meeting,-which could hardly be reproached with anything but ridicule,-politically timid, but socially much more enlightened than the Jacobins, is severely attacked by them. Laclos, the agent of the Orleans party, who, as we have seen, published the correspondence of the Jacobins, denounced the Cercle Social, both in his journal and at the club. Chabroud, the Jacobin, who had been appointed president of the Cercle the very preceding evening durst not defend it. Camille Desmoulins ventured to do so, but was stopped short,

JACOBINS AND THE MONARCHICAL CLUB.

553

at the very first words, by the unanimous disapprobation of the Jacobins. He took his revenge on the morrow by writing his admirable number 54, an immortal manifesto of political tolerance.

A still more violent attack was made by the Jacobins against the club of the Friends of the Monarchical Constitution, by which the constitutional party were attempting to renew their Club des Impartiaux. These men, for the most part distinguished characters (Clermont-Tonnerre, Malouet, Fontanes, and others), were, it is true, suspected, less for their doctrines than for the dangerous organisation of their club. Far different from the Club of 89 (composed of Mirabeau, Sièyes, Lafayette, and others), full in number, and not active, the Monarchical Club admitted workmen, and distributed bread-tickets; these tickets were not given to beggars, but to hard-working men; neither was the bread given altogether gratuitously. This was a very strong basis for the influence of this club; nor was there any means of preventing it. These Monarchical members were acting legally: they had demanded and obtained from the town the necessary authorisation which could not be refused; as several decrees, among others a recent one of the 30th of November, solicited by the Jacobins themselves, for the interest of their provincial societies, recognised the right of citizens meeting to confer on public affairs, much more the right of societies corresponding together. In spite of this, the Jacobins did not hesitate to pursue the Monarchists from street to street, and from house to house, intimidating by their threats the proprietors of the rooms where they held their meetings. The municipal authorities were weak enough to grant the Jacobins an order which suspended the meeting of the members of the Monarchical Club; but the latter having protested against this extremely illegal act, they durst not maintain their prohibition. Then the Jacobins had recourse to more unworthy means, -to atrocious calumny. There had been, just before, a sanguinary collision between the paid chasseurs and the people of La Villette, who were accused of smuggling; so a report was spread in Paris that the members of the Monarchical Club had paid these soldiers to assassinate the people. Barnave vented against them from the national tribune the cruelly equivocal words "that they were distributing poisonous bread to the people." They were not allowed to protest, or to ask for any explanation of this language; so they applied to the tribunals; but then, arming hired or infuriated people against them, the Jacobins settled the matter with sticks and stone; and the wounded parties, far from being pitied, were in great danger; for it was impudently asserted and rumoured among the people that they wore white cockades.

Amid this brutal struggle, the Jacobins proclaimed a principle which had been their own from the very beginning, but which they had never avowed. They swore, on the 24th of January, "to defend with their fortunes and lives whosoever should denounce the conspirators."

All this would lead one to suppose that the society possessed even at that time the inveterate fanaticism of which it later gave proofs. Should any one think so, he would be mistaken.

It is true that the society had acquired many enthusiastic men, who afterwards attached themselves to Robespierre; but the majority still belonged to two very different elements :

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THE DUKE OF ORLEANS.

1st. To the Primitive founders,-the party of Duport, Barnave, and Lameth. These endeavoured to maintain themselves, in presence of the new comers, by a display of violence and fanaticism; and, sad to relate, they differed from the Monarchical Club, which they persecuted, only in a want of candour; but the more they perceived a similarity between the two parties, the more they declaimed against them. We may judge of the extremity to which unjust violence may be carried, by the equivocally murderous expression that fell from Barnave about the poisonous bread.

2ndly. An element still less pure of the Jacobin's Club was the Orleans party. We have seen Laclos' attack against the Cercle Social, and the shameless trick by which popularity was sought for in a display of hypocritical fury. The Orleans party had just received a very serious blow, from which they much needed to recover. And by whom was that blow given? Strange to say, by the Duke of Orleans, who was himself destroying his own party.

Let us go back a little; for the subject is important enough to deserve an explanation.

The Orleans partisans believed themselves on the point of realising their projects. The majority of the journalists, whether bribed or not, were working on their side; by Laclos they influenced the journal of the Jacobins; at the club of the Cordeliers, Danton and Desmoulins were favourably disposed towards them; and so was even Marat, on almost every occasion. The head of the house of Orleans, was, it is true, an unworthy character; but the children, and also the ladies, Madame de Genlis and Madame de Montesson, were frequently mentioned with praise. The Duke de Chartres* was a pleasing person, and gained a great number of friends. Desmoulins assures us that this prince treated him "as a brother."

This young man had been received member of the Jacobin Club, with more noise and ceremony than his age would have led people to expect. It was like a day of rejoicing. Care had been taken to publish in the most advantageous light the amiable qualities of this pupil of Madame de Genlis. Desmoulins headed one of his Numbers with an interesting engraving, representing the youthful prince in the hospital (Hôtel-Dieu) bleeding a patient in bed.

The Orleanists were going on prosperously, had it not been for the Duke of Orleans. In vain did his party strive to make him ambitious ; avarice was his ruling passion, which caused him to undo on the one hand what his friends were doing for him on the other. The first use he made of his reviving popularity, was to extort from the committee of finances a promise to pay him the capital of a sum of which his family had received the interest ever since the time of the Regent. This Regent, who is represented only as a prodigal, most assuredly deserved this name; but what is less known, was his avidity. Wishing, without paying anything himself, to induce the Duke of Modena to marry his daughter (who was in great disrepute) this prince applied to the king, his

* Afterwards Louis-Philippe, ex-king of the French.-C. C.

FIRST IDEAS OF A REPUBLIC.

555

ward, and made this little boy, only eleven years of age and dependent on him, sign a dowry of four millions to be paid out of the royal Treasury.

The Treasury was empty; and in the deplorable distress caused by a bankruptcy of three millions, and by Law's system, it was able to pay only the interest. Yet now, at the end of seventy years, in a most miserable period, and in the extreme winter of 1791, the Duke of Orleans lays claim to the capital; and this without any kind of right; for the dowry had been given to the daughter only, on the condition that she should renounce all her rights in favour of her eldest brother and his descendants. Now the Duke of Orleans was one of those descendants, those representatives of the eldest brother in whose favour the renunciation had been made. How could he at the same time make himself the representative of her who had renounced?

The reporter of the affair was the irreproachable, austere, and inflexible Camus, the Jansenist, who was accustomed every day to cancel and postpone paltry petty pensions of three or four hundred francs; what means were employed with such a man to render him tame and easy, or how powerfully and pressingly he must have been courted, can only be guessed. Did they make him believe that it was the only natural means of paying back to the prince the sums he had generously spent in the service of freedom?.. However this may be, Camus proposed to pay! and to pay immediately, in the course of the year, by four instalments.

Luckily, the press was extremely indignant. Brissot, although formerly an employé in the establishment of the Duke of Orleans, nevertheless gave the alarm; and Desmoulins, although he called himself the prince's friend and brother, branded this shameful affair in two or three terrible sentences, consenting, said he, that the Duke of Orleans should be recompensed," but without employing vile means to misdirect money of the citizens, and exhaust the public treasury in the underhand manœuvres of a committee." He disowned the flattering engraving, and

imputed it to his editor.

This large sum thus escaped the greedy clutches of the party of the Duke of Orleans. What remained, was a considerable diminution of their credit, their patron in disrepute for a long time, and a very serious prejudice created against the kingly power, however citizen-like it might be. A vast number of revolutionists, friendly to the royal party, favourably disposed towards the monarchical institution, and prejudiced in favour of the English routine of calling the younger branches to the throne, were unroyalised.

Robespierre is wrong in saying, "The republic slipped in between the parties without anybody knowing how." We know very well the way by which it entered into this extremely monarchical country, so passionately fond of kings. History had done nothing towards it; in vain had Camille Desmoulins proved, in his admirable pamphlet of La France libre, in July, 1789, that, from reign to reign, the ancient monarchy had scarcely ever performed what the blind devotion of the people had expected from it; he spoke to the wind. His objection did not seem to apply to the new ideal of democratical royalty which many people had imagined. But this ideal was annihilated by royalty in embryo: for its

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AN INQUISITION WITHOUT A RELIGION.

candidate led people to believe that with him the public treasury would be an empty cash-box.

The principal founder of the republic was the Duke of Orleans.

The republican idea first started by Camille Desmoulins was taken up by Robert, also a member of the Cordeliers. He again laid down the idea of a Republic as the only one that could confer a powerful candid simplicity to the Revolution; and he published his pamphlet "Republicanism adapted to France." This question was gradually adopted by Brissot as the predominant one in the state of affairs. It was a question of principle, and not of form, as is still too frequently alleged. No social amelioration was possible, unless the political question was distinctly laid down. Robespierre and Marat, following in this, it is true, the idea of the majority, wrongly supposed that they might postpone this question, or make it a secondary consideration : such a question could not be solved after others. To continue the movement with such an incumbrance as a captive hostile royalty, still powerful enough to do harm,-to make the Revolution march forward with such a terrible thorn in the foot, was most assuredly the way to injure, pervert, cripple, and probably annihilate it.

Laclos, the Orleanist editor of the journal of the Jacobins, did not fail to show himself the advocate of royalty; and even the Club expressly declared itself in favour of the monarchical institution; for, on the 25th of January, a deputy of a section having uttered the word republicans, several exclaimed, "We are not republicans;" and the Assembly engaged the speaker to withdraw the word.

Of the three factions of the Jacobins which may be designated by three names, Lameth, Laclos, and Robespierre, the two former were decidedly royalists, and the third by no means averse to the idea of royalty.

Thus the brutal warfare of the Jacobins against the members of the Monarchical Club, that contempt of order and the law, that foretaste of terror which would never have been excused in fanatics,-all this was applied by politicians, the leaders of the Jacobin majority, who sought in it a remedy for their declining popularity. In reality, they were royalists ill-treating royalists.

The Jacobin inquisition found itself, in fact, in rather unsafe hands: its journal of delation being in those of Laclos, the Orleans agent, and its committee of intrigues and riots under the direction of the Lameth triumvirate.

An inquisition without a religion! Without any precise faith! An inquisition exercised by men the more restless and keen in proportion as they are themselves more suspected.

This power, although ill-founded, ill-authorised, and badly-exercised, had nevertheless an immense influence, for it acted in the name of a society considered as the very focus of patriotism and the Revolution, and by all the multiplied powers of the provincial societies, so docile and fervent, and generally unacquainted with the focus of intrigues which sent them its orders.

But yesterday the Revolution was a religion ; it now becomes a system of police.

And what is this police about to become? O unexpected change! A