[The Origins of Contemporary France Volume 2 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link bookThe Origins of Contemporary France Volume 2 (of 6) CHAPTER IV 14/52
With the full weight of their inexperience, incapacity, and improvidence, of their fears, credulity, and dogmatic obstinacy, they urge on popular attacks, and their newspaper articles or discourses are all summed up in the following phrases: "Fellow-citizens, you, the people of the lower class, you who listen to me, you have enemies in the Court and the aristocracy.
The Hotel-de-Ville and the National Assembly are your servants.
Seize your enemies with a strong hand, and hang them, and let your servants know that they must quicken their steps!" Desmoulins styles himself "District-attorney of the gallows,"[1420] and if he at all regrets the murders of Foulon and Berthier, it is because this too expeditious judgment has allowed the proofs of conspiracy to perish, thereby saving a number of traitors: he himself mentions twenty of them haphazard, and little does he care whether he makes mistakes. "We are in the dark, and it is well that faithful dogs should bark, even at all who pass by, so that there may be no fear of robbers." From this time forth Marat[1421] denounces the King, the ministers, the administration, the bench, the bar, the financial system and the academies, all as "suspicious;" at all events the people only suffer on their account. "The Government is monopolizing grain, to make us to pay through the nose for a poisonous bread." The Government, again, through a new conspiracy is about to blockade Paris, so as to starve it with greater ease.
Utterances of this kind, at such a time, are firebrands thrown upon fear and hunger to kindle the flames of rage and cruelty.
To this frightened and fasting crowd the agitators and newspaper writers continue to repeat that it must act, and act alongside of the authorities, and, if need be, against them. In other words, We will do as we please; we are the sole legitimate masters; "in a well-constituted government, the people as a body are the real sovereign: our delegates are appointed only to execute our orders; what right has the clay to rebel against the potter ?" On the strength of such principles, the tumultuous club which occupies the Palais-Royal substitutes itself for the Assembly at Versailles. Has it not all the titles for this office? The Palais-Royal "saved the nation" on the 12th and 13th of July.
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