From that time[3457] he preaches universal sans-culotterie, a form of government in which the poor will rule and the rich will pay, in short, the restoration of privileges in an inverse sense.

The later expression of Sieyes which has already come true: the problem is no longer how to apply the principles of the Revolution, but the salvation of its men.

Faced with this more and more distressing imperative, many of undecided deputies go with the tide, letting the Montagnards have their own way and separate themselves from the Girondists.
And, what is graver still, the Girondists, apart from all these defections, are untrue to themselves.

Not only are they ignorant of how to draw a line, of how to form themselves into a compact body: not only "is the very idea of a collective proceeding repulsive, each member desiring to keep himself independent.

and act as he thinks best,"[3458] make motions without consulting others, and vote as the occasion calls for against his party, but, through its abstract principle, they are in accord with their adversaries, and, on the fatal declivity whereon their honorable and humane instincts still retain them, this common dogma, like a concealed weight, causes them to sink lower and lower down, even into the bottomless pit, where the State, according to the formula of Jean Jacques, omnipotent, philosophic, anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, despotic, leveling, intolerant, and propagandist, seizes education, levels fortunes, persecutes the Church, oppresses consciences, crushes out the individual, and, by military foice, imposes its structures abroad.[3459] Basically, apart from the Jacobin excess of brutality and of precipitation, the Girondists, setting out from the same principles as the Jacobin "Mountain," march forward to the same end along with them.