Notes

So long as danger threatened from without public opinion tolerated the guillotine, and at the period at which we have arrived the greatest activity of that famous instrument began. The “law of the suspect,” which enabled the committees of the sections to arrest all suspected persons and incarcerate them prior to their being brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, speedily filled the prisons to overflowing. After conviction and death the property of the executed was confiscated to the State. The commune was the virtual head of the revolutionary committees of the sections in the provinces as welt as in Paris. The National Guard was under its orders, and it had flying columns in its pay scouring different parts of the country. The Commune may be taken as the representative in the revolution of the proletarian interest, pure and simple. Though the circumstances of the time caused it to be unhappily an instrument of the Terror, its activity was by no means confined to this. The Commune made it pretty soon evident that in its eyes the existence of a commercial middle-class was quite as incompatible with the welfare of the people as that of an aristocracy.

Economical equality was the avowed end of the revolution for the Commune. Hébert and Chaumette nevertheless busied themselves with various projects of a palliative character, such as hospital and prison reform. They attempted to introduce primary and secular education into every village n France. The law of maximum (and compulsory sale) was at their suggestion enlarged in scope, being applied to almost all articles of common .consumption. Forestalling was forbidden under the heaviest penalties. A maximum was even applied to wages at this time (a proceeding calculated in a society not yet out of the small production to make considerable havoc with what some people call the “rent of ability,” though it was enacted solely with a view to government employment for the national defence. The Bourse was closed. Financial and commercial syndicates were dissolved. The paper money, or assignats, were made compulsory tender at their nominal value.

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But the work for which the Commune is most famous is the establishment of the new Cultus – the Worship of Reason. The Hébertists, as the party of the Commune were called, and among whom was Anarcharsis Clootz, were rightly convinced that deliverance from the dogmas of supernatural religion was the necessary complement of deliverance from the thraldom of privilege and wealth. In accordance with 18th century habits of thought, and especially French 18th century thought, with its classicism, the idea naturally suggested itself of initiating a worship of Reason as personified, on the ruins of God, Christ and the Virgin. For some time past, stimulated by the missionaries of the Commune, numbers of priests had been sending in their demissions declaring they would no longer preach a lie, and that Liberty and the public welfare was their only God. The church plate in every part of France was melted down for patriotic uses, vestments, bibles, and breviaries made bonfires, to the accompaniment of the “Carmagnole.” Early in November Gobel, the Archbishop of Paris, together with his chapter, entered the Convention-hall to publicly renounce the Christian faith. Christian rites and worship were now proscribed, and a Festival of Reason was decreed by the Commune at the instance proscribed, and a Festival of was decreed by the Commune at the instance of Chaumette. A few days later, and a procession of citizens and citoyennes, in priestly vestments and other fantastic costumes, followed by mules and barrows laden with church furniture, defiled into the Convention, and after chanting strophes to Reason, proceeded to dance the “Carmagnole,” many of the legislators taking part. Later on the same day, Procureur Chaumette, at the head of the Commune and the presidents of sections, arrived bearing in their midst, on a palaquin, Mlle Candeille, the danseuse, in bonnet rouge and blue mantle; garlanded with oak, as the Goddess of Reason. The bulk of the Convention then rose, and after giving the goddess the; formal kiss, proceeded in a body to Notre Dame where the new worship was inaugurated amid music, tricolour, and virgins dressed is white. A similar ceremony with other goddesses, took place at St. Eustache, and other of the principal churches of Paris. Commissioners soon established the new worship throughout the length and breadth of French territory, from Antwerp in the north to Marseilles in the south. In place of the mass the old cathedrals re-echoed to strophes in honour of Reason and in praise of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” Old things had passed away, and all things had become new.

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Robespierre, after some hesitation ranged himself on the side of his committee alike against the Dantonists, with whom he had, up till now, been friendly, and the Hebertists, to whom he had been always more or less hostile. The struggle lasted between three and four months. Since the reconstitution of the Committee of Public Safety in July, when Billaud and Collot came into it, the Dantonists had had no influence on either of the committees. The attack on the Hebertist’s was begun by the suppression of the revolutionary armies in the provinces, and a decree forbidden the sending of agents into the provinces by the Commune, and this was followed up in inside and outside the Convention by attacks on every action of the commune from the Dantonists and the mountain, and from the committees. The Jacobins’ Club continued to be the battle-ground between Robespierre and the Hébertists. Then Robespierre thundered nightly against atheistic intolerance, said that atheism was aristocratic, on the logical ground that certain aristocrats had been atheists, just as though anyone were to argue that Socialism couldn’t be Secularistic because Mr. Bradlaugh is a Secularist. He maundered about the necessity of a supreme being as the avenger of injured innocence, &c.

At last the compact between Robespierre and his fellow committee men, Billaud and Collot, was struck. They were to surrender the Hébertists while he was to surrender the Dantonists. Accordingly Hébert, Ronsin, Vincent, Clootz, Momoro, &c., already expelled from the Jacobins club were arrested, and after a mock trial, in which they here accused of taking money from the English Government to discredit the Republic by their excesses were, on March 24th, 1794, sent to the guillotine. Poor Chaumette’s turn came a few days later. A week afterwards Danton. who had come back to Paris at the earnest solicitation of his friends, and had sought ineffectually to compromise matters with Robespierre, was sent before the revolutionary tribunal. His oratory was nearly securing his acquittal when Robespierre got a special law hurried through the Convention which closed his mouth, and he, too, went his way in company with Camille Desmoulins, Phillipeaux, Herault de Sechelles and others, to the Place de la Revolution. Thus was the revolution, indeed, like Saturn, devouring its own children.