IX. National Disgust.

Previous
National antipathy to the established order of things.
—Paralysis of the State.—Internal discords of the Jacobin
party.—Coup d'État of FlorÉal 22, year VI.—Coup d'État of
Prairial 30, year VII.—Impossibility of establishing a
viable government.—Plans of Barras and SiÉyÈs.

Once again has triumphant Jacobinism shown its anti-social nature, its capacity for destruction, its impotence to re-construct.—The nation, vanquished and discouraged, no longer resists, but, if it submits it is as to a pestilence, while its transportations, its administrative purifications, its decrees placing towns in a state of siege, its daily violence, only exasperate the mute antipathy.

"Everything has been done," says an honest Jacobin,51130 "to alienate the immense majority of citizens from the Revolution and the Republic, even those who had contributed to the downfall of the monarchy... Instead of seeing the friends of the Revolution increase as we have advanced on the revolutionary path.... we see our ranks thinning out and the early defenders of liberty deserting our cause."

It is impossible for the Jacobins to rally France and reconcile her to their ways and dogmas, and on this point their own agents leave no illusion.

"Here," writes the Troyes agent,51131 "public spirit not only needs to be revived, but it needs to be re-created. Scarcely one-fifth of the citizens side with the government, and this fifth is hated and despised by the majority.... Who attend upon and celebrate the national fÊtes? Public functionaries whom the law summons to them, and many of these fÊtes often dispense with them. It is the same public spirit which does not allow honest folks to take part in them and in the addresses made at them, and which keeps those women away who ought to be their principal ornament.... The same public spirit looks only with indifference and contempt on the republican, heroic actions given on the stage, and welcomes with transport all that bears any allusion to royalty and the ancient rÉgime. The parvenus themselves of the Revolution, the generals, the deputies, dislike Jacobin institutions;51132 they place children in the chapel schools and send them to the confessional, while the deputies who, in '92 and '93, showed the most animosity to priests, do not consider their daughter well brought up unless she has made her first communion. "—

The little are still more hostile than the great.

"A fact unfortunately too true," writes the commissary of a rural canton,51133 "is that the people en masse seem not to want any of our institutions.... It is considered well-bred, even among country folks, to show disdain for everything characteristic of republican usages... Our rich farmers, who have profited most by the Revolution, are the bitterest enemies of its forms: any citizen who depended on them for the slightest favor and thought it well to address them as citizen, would be turned out of their houses."

To call someone Citizen is an insult, and patriot a still greater one; for this term signifies Jacobin, partisan, murderer, robber51134 and, as they were then styled, "man-eaters." What is worse is that a falsification of the word has brought discredit on the thing.—Nobody, say the reports, troubles himself about the general interest;51135 nobody will serve as national guard or mayor.

"Public spirit has fallen into such a lethargic slumber as to make one fear its complete collapse. Our successes or our failures excite neither uneasiness nor pleasure.51136 It seems, on reading the accounts of battles, as if it were the history of another people. The changes that take place within our borders no longer excite any emotion; one asks out of curiosity, one is answered without any interest, one learns with indifference."

"The pleasures of Paris51137 are not disturbed a moment by any the Crises which succeed each other, nor by those which are feared. Never were the theatres and public entertainments more frequented. At the 'Tivoli,' it is said that it is going to be worse than ever; the country (patrie) is called la patraque, and dancing goes on."

This is understandable enough; how can one interest one's self in the public weal when there is none, when the common patrimony of all has become the private property of a gang, when this gang is devouring or wasting all in the interior and outside the frontier, where it is playing heads or tails? The Jacobins, through their final victory, have dried patriotism up, that is to say, the deep inward spring which supplies the substance, the vitality and the force of the State.—In vain do they multiply rigorous decrees and imperious prescriptions; each energetic blow is absorbed by the general and mute resistance of intentional passivity and of insurmountable disgust. They do not obtain from their subjects any of that unconscious obedience, that degree of passive co-operation, without which the law remains a dead letter.51138 Their Republic, so young,

"is attacked by that nameless malady which commonly attacks only old governments, a species of senile consumption to which one can give no other definition than that of the difficulty of living; nobody strives to overthrow it, although it seems to have lost the power of standing erect."51139

Not only does their domination paralyze instead of animating the State, but, with their own hands, they undermine the order they themselves have established. Whether legal or extra-legal, it makes no difference: under their rule, no constitution, made and remade, no government, not even that of their leaders, can survive. Once masters of France, they quarrel over it amongst themselves, each claiming for himself the whole of the prey. Those who are in office want to stay there; those who are out want to get in. Thus is formed two factions, while each repeats against the other the coup d'État which both have together carried out against the nation.—According to the ruling clique, its adversaries are simply "anarchists," former Septembriseurs, Robespierre's confederates, the accomplices of Babeuf, eternal conspirators. Now, as in the year VI., the five regents still keep the saber-hilt firm in their grasp, and can therefore make the Legislative Corps to vote as they please. On the 22nd of FlorÉal, the government cancels, in whole or in part, in forty-five departments, the new elections, not alone those of representatives, but again those of judges, public prosecutors, and the grand-jurymen. Then it dismisses the terrorist administrations in the departments and towns.51140—According to their adversaries (la coterie gouvernÉe), the Directory and its agents are false patriots, usurpers, oppressors, despisers of the law, squanderers and inept politicians. As all this is true, and as the Directory, in the year VIII., used up through its twenty-one months of omnipotence, out of credit on account of its reverses, despised by its generals, hated by the beaten and unpaid army, dares no longer and can no longer raise the sword, the ultra Jacobins resume the offensive, have themselves elected through their kith and kin, re-conquer the majority in the Legislative Corps, and, in their turn, purge the Directory on the 30 of Prairial. Treilhard, Merlin de Douai, and La RevelliÈre-Lepaux are driven out; narrow fanatics replace them, Gohier, Moulins and Roger Ducos. Ghosts from the period of the Terror install themselves in the ministries, Robert Lindet in the Treasury, FouchÉ in the Police. Everywhere, in the departments, they put in or restore "the exclusives," that is to say, the resolute scoundrels who have proved their capacity.51141 The Jacobins re-open their Club under its old name in the hall of the ManÉge. Two directors and one hundred and fifty members of the Legislative Corps fraternize with "all that the dregs of the people provide that is vilest and most disgusting." Eulogies are here pronounced on Robespierre and on Babeuf himself; they demand the levy en masse and the disarming of "suspects." Jourdan exclaims in a toast, "Here's to the resurrection of pikes! May they in the people's hands crush out all its enemies!" In the council of the Five Hundred, the same Jourdan proposes in the tribune to declare the "country in danger," while the gang of shouting politicians, the bull-dogs of the streets and tribunes, gather around the hesitating representatives and howl and threaten as in 1793.

Is it, then, the rÉgime of 1793 which is about to be set up in France?—Not even that one. Immediately after the victory, the victors 30 of Prairial separated and formed two camps of enemies, watching each other with arms in hand, entrenched and making sorties on each other:

On one side are the simple bandits and the lowest of the populace, the followers of Marat, incorrigible monomaniacs, headstrong, conceited spirits proud of their crimes and disposed to repeat them rather than admit their guilt, the dogmatic simpletons who go ahead with their eyes shut and who have forgotten everything and learnt nothing. On the other side, men still possessing common sense, and who have profited somewhat by experience, who know what a government of clubs and pikes leads to, who fear for themselves and are unwilling to begin again, step by step, the mad course on which at each stage, they have come near perishing.

On one side two members of the Directory, the minority of the Ancients, the majority of the Five Hundred, and the vilest of the Parisian rabble. On the other, the majority of the Ancients, the minority of the Five Hundred and three members of the Directory, the latter supported by their executive staff.51142

Which of the two troops will crush the other? Nobody knows; for most of them are ready to pass from one to the other camp according as the chances for success appear more or less great. And, from day to day, any defection amongst the Five Hundred, amongst the Ancients or in the Directory, foreseen or not, may change a minority into a majority. Where will the majority be to-morrow? From which side is the next coup d'État to come—Who will make it? Will it be the ultra Jacobins, and, through another 9th of Thermidor, will they declare the mitigated Jacobins "outlaws?" Will it be the mitigated Jacobins, and, through another 18th of Fructidor, will they put the ultras under lock and key? If one or the other of these blows is struck, will it succeed? And if it succeeds will a stable government be at last established? SiÉyÈs well knows that it will not; he is farseeing in his acts, although chimerical in his theories. In power himself, titular Director, counselor and guardian of the intelligent republic against the stupid republic, he well knows that all of them, so long as they are republicans of both bands, take a road without an issue.51143 Barras is of the same opinion, and taking time by the forelock, turns around and promises Louis XVIII. his co-operation in restoring the legitimate monarchy in exchange he receives letters patent granting him full pardon, exemption from all future prosecution and a promise of twelve millions.—SiÉyÈs, more sagacious, seeks force where it exists, in the army; he prepares Joubert, sounds Moreati, thinks of Jourdan, of Bernadotte and of Macdonald, before surrendering himself to Bonaparte; "he requires a sword." Boulay de la Meurthe, comparing in a pamphlet the English revolution with the French revolution, announces and brings on the establishment of a military protectorate.—"The Constitution of the year III. will not work," said Baudin, one of the Five Hundred, to Cornet, one of the Ancients, "only I do not see where to find the executive arm." The Jacobin republic still lives, and its servants, its doctors, already speak aloud of its interment the same as strangers and heirs in the room of a dying man who has become unconscious, like Tiberius when sinking in his palace at Misene.51144—If the expiring man does not go fast enough some one will help him. The old monster, borne down with crimes and rotten with vices, rattles in his throat on his purple cushions; his eyes are closed, his pulse is feeble, and he gasps for breath. Here and there, around is bed, stand groups of those who minister to his debauches at Capri and his murders at Rome, his minions and executioners who publicly take part in the new reign; the old one is finished; one need no longer be circumspect and mute before corpse. Suddenly the dying man opens his eyes, speaks and asks for food. The military tribune, " the executive arm," boldly clears the apartment; he throws a pile of bedclothes over the old man's head and quickens the last sigh. Such is the final blow; an hour later and breathing stops.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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