What is the goal toward which we are
heading? The peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign
of that eternal justice whose laws have been inscribed, not in
marble and stone, but in the hearts of all men, even in that of
the slave who forgets them and in that of the tyrant who denies
them.
We seek an order of things in which all the base and cruel
passions are enchained, all the beneficent and generous passions
are awakened by the laws; where ambition becomes the desire to
merit glory and to serve our country; where distinctions are born
only of equality itself; where the citizen is subject to the
magistrate, the magistrate to the people, and the people to
justice; where our country assures the well-being of each
individual, and where each individual proudly enjoys our
country’s prosperity and glory; where every soul grows greater
through the continual flow of republican sentiments, and by the
need of deserving the esteem of a great people; where the arts are
the adornments of the liberty which ennobles them and the commerce
the source of public wealth rather than solely the monstrous
opulence of a few families.
In our land we want to substitute morality for egotism,
integrity for formal codes of honor, principles for customs, a
sense of duty for one of mere propriety, the rule of reason for
the tyranny of fashion, scorn of vice for scorn of the unlucky,
self-respect for insolence, grandeur of soul for vanity, love of
glory for the love of money, good people in place of good society.
We wish to substitute merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth
for glamour, the charm of happiness for sensuous boredom, the
greatness of man for the pettiness of the great, a people who are
magnanimous, powerful, and happy, in place of a kindly frivolous,
and miserable people – which is to say all the virtues and all
the miracles of the republic in place of all the vices and all the
absurdities of the monarchy.
We want, in a word, to fulfill nature’s desires, accomplish
the destiny of humanity, keep the promises of philosophy, absolve
providence from the long reign of crime and tyranny. ...
...
The great purity of the French revolution’s fundamental
elements, the very sublimity of its objective, is precisely what
creates our strength and our weakness: our strength, because it
gives us the victory of truth over deception and the rights of
public interest over private interest; our weakness, because it
rallies against us all men who are vicious, all those who in their
hearts plan to despoil the people, and all those who have
despoiled them and want impunity, and those who reject liberty as
a personal calamity and those who have embraced the revolution as
a livelihood and the Republic as if it were an object of prey.
Hence the defection of so many ambitious or greedy men who since
the beginning have abandoned us along the way, because they had
not begun the voyage in order to reach the same goal. One could
say that the two contrary geniuses that have been depicted
competing for control of the realm of nature, are fighting in this
great epoch of human history to shape irrevocably the destiny of
the world, and that France is the theatre of this mighty struggle.
Without, all the tyrants encircle you; within, all the friends of
tyranny conspire--they will conspire until crime has been robbed
of hope. We must smother the internal and external enemies of the
Republic or perish with them. Now, in this situation, the first
maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and
the people’s enemies by terror.
If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue,
amid revolution it is at the same time [both] virtue and terror:
virtue, without which terror is fatal: terror, without which
virtue is impotent. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe,
inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue. It is
less a special principle than a consequence of the general
principle of democracy applied to our country’s most pressing
needs.
