If the representatives delight in killing prisoners--let them do it themselves, and eat them, too, savages as they are!" The sergeant, an ordinary man, is not on a level with the Committee, or with Barere; and yet Barere did his best in a bill of indictment of twenty-seven pages, full of grand flourishes, every possible ritornello, glaring falsehood and silly inflation, explaining how "the Britannic leopard" paid assassins to murder the representatives; how the London cabinet had armed little Cecile Renault, "the new Corday," against Robespierre; how the Englishman, naturally barbarous, "is unable to deny his origins; how he descends from the Carthaginians and Phenicians, and formerly dealt in the skins of wild beasts and slaves; how his trading occupation is not changed; how Cesar, formerly, on landing in the country, found nothing but a ferocious tribe battling with wolves in the forest and threatening to burn every vessel which would try to land there; and how he still remains like that." A lecture from a fairground surgeon who, using bombastic words, recommends extensive amputations, a fairground-prospectus so crude that it does not even deceive a poor sergeant,--such is the exposition of motives by a government for the purpose of enforcing a decree that might have been drawn up by redskins; to horrible acts he adds debased language, and employs the inept to justify their atrocities.
VI.

Commissars of the Revolution.
Representatives on Mission .-- Their absolute power .-- Their perils and their fear .-- Fit for their work .-- Effect of this situation.
A hundred or so representatives of the Committee of Public Safety, are sent to the provinces, "with unlimited power," to establish, enforce or exacerbate the revolutionary government, and their proclamations at once explain the nature of this government.[3279]--"Brave and vigorous sans-culottes!" writes a deputy on leaving a mission and announcing his successor,[3280] "You seem to have desired a good b...

of a representative, who has never swerved from his principles, that is to say, a regular Montagnard.

I have fulfilled your wishes, and you will have the same thing in citizen Ingrand.

Remember, brave sans-culottes, that, with the patriot Ingrand, you can do everything, get anything, cancel whatever you please, imprison, bring to trial, deport and guillotine every-body and regenerate society.