He comprehended from the first the ultimate object and definite result of the Revolution, that is to say, the dictatorship of the violent minority.

Immediately after the 14th of July," 1789, he organized in his quarter of the city[3163] a small independent republic, aggressive and predominant, the center of the faction, a refuge for the riff-raff and a rendezvous for fanatics, a pandemonium composed of every available madcap, every rogue, visionary, shoulder-hitter, newspaper scribbler and stump-speaker, either a secret or avowed plotter of murder, Camille Desmoulins, Freron, Hebert, Chaumette, Clootz, Theroigne, Marat,--while, in this more than Jacobin State, the model in anticipation of that he is to establish later, he reigns, as he will afterwards reign, the permanent president of the district, commander of the battalion, orator of the club, and the concocter of bold undertakings.

Here, usurpation is the rule there is no recognition of legal authority; they brave the King, the ministers, the judges, the Assembly, the municipality, the mayor, the commandant of the National Guard.

Nature and principle raise them above the law; the district takes Marat under its protection, posts two sentinels at his door to protect him from prosecutions, and uses arms against the armed force sent with a warrant to arrest him.[3164] yet more, in the name of the city of Paris, "chief sentinel of the nation," they assume to govern France: Danton betakes himself to the National Assembly and declares that the citizens of Paris are the natural representatives of the eighty-three departments, and summons it, on their injunction, to cancel an act it has passed.[3165]--The entire Jacobin conception is therein expressed: Danton, with his keen insight, took it all in and proclaimed it in appropriate terms; to apply it at the present time on a grand scale,[3166] he has merely to pass from the small theatre to the large one, from the Cordeliers club to the Commune, to the Ministry, and the Committee of Public Safety, and, in all these theatres, he plays the same part with the same end in view and the same results.

A despotism formed by conquest and maintained by terror, the despotism of the Jacobin Parisian rabble, is the end to which he directly marches.