The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte

What could be more vague than such a term? What could be more mischievous than such an institution?—Renewed every month, deprived of special agents, composed of credulous and inexperienced deputies, this committee, set to perform the work of a Lenoir or a Fouché, makes up for its incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of the Jacobine inquisition.2149 Alarmist and suspicious, it encourages accusations, and, for lack of plots to discover, it invents them. Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects become accomplished outrages. On the denunciation of a domestic who has listened at a door, on the gossip of a washerwoman who has found a scrap of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false interpretation of a letter, on vague indications which it completes and patches together by the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'état, makes examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises and arrests;2150 it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in public session to denounce the whole affair to the National Assembly. First comes the plot of the Breton nobles to deliver Brest to the English;2151 then the plot for hiring brigands to destroy the crops; then the plot of 14th of July to burn Paris; then the plot of Favras to murder Lafayette, Necker, and Bailly; then the plot of Augeard to carry off the King, and many others, week after week, not counting those which swarm in the brains of the journalists, and which Desmoulins, Fréron, and Marat reveal with a flourish of trumpets in each of their publications.

"All these alarms are cried daily in the streets like cabbages and turnips, the good people of Paris inhaling them along with the pestilential vapors of our mud."2152

… … … . … .Now, in this aspect, as well as in a good many others, the Assembly is the people; satisfied that it is in danger,2153 it makes laws as the former make their insurrections, and protects itself by strokes of legislation as the former protects itself by blows with pikes. Failing to take hold of the motor spring by which it might direct the government machine, it distrusts all the old and all the new wheels. The old ones seem to it an obstacle, and, instead of utilizing them, it breaks them one by one—parliaments, provincial states, religious orders, the church, the nobles, and royalty. The new ones are suspicious, and instead of harmonizing them, it puts them out of gear in advance—the executive power, administrative powers, judicial powers, the police, the gendarmerie, and the army.2154 Thanks to these precautions it is impossible for any of them to be turned against itself; but, also, thanks to these precautions, none of them can perform their functions.2155

      In building, as well as in destroying, the Assembly had two bad counselors, on the one hand fear, on the other hand theory; and on the ruins of the old machine which it had demolished without discernment, the new machine, which it has constructed without forecast, will work only to its own ruin.

      2101 (return) [ Arthur Young, June 15, 1789.—Bailly, passim—Moniteur, IV. 522 (June 2, 1790).—Mercure de France (Feb. 11 1792).]

      2102 (return) [ Moniteur, v. 631 (Sep. 12, 1790), and September 8th (what is said by the Abbé Maury).—Marmontel, book XIII. 237.—Malouet, I. 261.—Bailly, I. 227.]

      2103 (return) [ Sir Samuel Romilly, "Mémoires," I. 102, 354.—Dumont, 158. (The official rules bear are dated July 29, 1789.)]

      2104 (return) [ Cf. Ferrières, I. 3. His repentance is affecting.]

      2105 (return) [ Letter from Morris to Washington, January 24, 1790 See page 382, "A diary of the French revolution", Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 1972.—Dumont 125—Garat, letter to Condorcet.]

      2106 (return) [ Arthur Young, I. 46. "Tame and elegant, uninteresting and polite, the mingled mass of communicated ideas has power neither to offend nor instruct. … . All vigor of thought seems excluded from expression. … . Where there is much polish of character there is little argument."—Cabinet des Estampes. See engravings of the day by Moreau, Prieur, Monet, representing the opening of the States-General. All the figures have a graceful, elegant, and genteel air.]

      2107 (return) [ Marmontel, book XIII. 237.—Malouet, I. 261.—Ferrières, I. 19.]

      2108 (return) [ Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.—Likewise (De Ferrières, I.71) the decree on the abolition of nobility was not the order of the day, and was carried by surprise.]

      2109 (return) [ Ferrières, I. 189.—Dumont, 146.]

      2110 (return) [ Letter of Mirabeau to Sieyès, June 11, 1790. "Our nation of monkeys with the throats of parrots."—Dumont, 146. "Sieyès and Mirabeau always entertained a contemptible opinion of the Constituent Assembly."]

      2111 (return) [ Moniteur, I, 256, 431 (July 16 and 31, 1789).—Journal des Débats et Décrets, 105, July 16th "A member demands that M. de Lally should put his speech in writing. The whole Assembly has repeated this request."]

      2112 (return) [ Moniteur. (March 11, 1790). "A nun of St. Mandé, brought to the bar of the house, thanks the Assembly for the decree by which the cloisters are opened, and denounces the tricks, intrigues, and even violence exercised in the convents to prevent the execution of the decree."—Ibid. March 29, 1790. See the various addresses which are read. "At Lagnon, the mother of a family assembled her ten children, and swore with them and for them to be loyal to the nation and to the King."—Ibid. June 5, 1790. "M. Chambroud reads the letter of the collector of customs of Lannion, in Brittany, to a priest, a member of the National Assembly. He implores his influence to secure the acceptance of his civic oath and that of all his family, ready to wield either the censer, the cart, the scales, the sword, or the pen." On reading a number of these addresses the Assembly appears to be a supplement of the Petites Affiches (a small advertising journal in Paris).]

      2113 (return) [ Moniteur, October 23, 1789.]

      2114 (return) [ A well-known writer of children's