members to be elected to the Convention, under the controul of the Commons of Paris, whether they shall take their seat or not, is curious, and ought to give us the clearest conviction, that the Jacobins want no Duke of Brunswick to be the avenger of the crimes of Paris. None can be such adepts in national misery, such founders of national ruin, as the people themselves, whose exertions are, with singular ingenuity, forming a system in which regulation shall produce disorder, and decrees blood, That the people design to legislate personally for themselves cannot be doubted; they mean the Convention to have no power, but an initiative to propose to the sovereign, who will accept or reject by the organ of clubs." "October 5, a deputation from Paris, thus speak at the bar, demanding the speedy trial of the King: The men of the 10th of August will never suffer that those they have invested with their confidence shall despise for an instant the sovereignty of the people; courage is the virtue of a free people; and we will not depart from the principle, that, if it is just to obey laws, it is just also to resist despots, under whatever masque they may conceal themselves: we think it for our interest to make our elections viva voce (a haut voix)! The Minister of the Interior is forced to write the same day to the Convention I pray you to take measures to prevent being null and without effect all the demands and requisitions quisitions which I daily make, IN THE NAME OF THE LAW, to the Commons of Paris.' The Minister, in the name of the Convention, applied for law; but found the Commons of Paris stronger than both. 'I have seen,' says Cambon, September 25th, these Commons rob the national edifices of all their most precious effects, without the least register or note; and when we decreed that these effects should be carried to the national treasure, that decree remained without execution.' ' "The Council General of the Commons of Paris,' says Barre, Nov. 10th, has sought to depress, by every possible method, the national representation. The Legislative Body said, that that germ of new revolutions ought to disappear, and the next day it was obliged to withdraw its decree. It said also, that the gates of Paris ought to be opened, that every man might travel freely through the interior of the empire; but the Council General ordered them to be shut. The Legislature decreed, that no more passports should be necessary. The Council General directly ordered, that none shoul stir without a passport*.? The constitutional dignity of the National Assembly,' says Paine, cannot debase itself.' Paris is the best judge of the debasement of that assembly." "The Commissioners of the Sections of Paris, Moniteur, Oct. 28. at at the bar of the Convention, bully it in these terms: The time presses-the storm forms itself. Thus overturning the government that had been formed on the Rights of Man, which, instead of yielding peace and tranquillity, produced storms only, the eternal products of such Revolutions; and the blood that has been so lavishly spilled for the public repose, afforded so little, that the Minister Rolland, writing to the Commons of Paris, says, I hear of nothing but conspiracies, and projects of murder and assassination*. The wicked preached yesterday, at the same moment, in different parts of Paris, pillage and assassination†. And being ordered by the Convention to report the state of Paris, his expression is, the Administrative Bodies without powers; the Commons despotic; the People deceived; such is Paris! But deceived and ignorant as they were, they thought their lights sufficient to instruct the nominal legislature; as Marat and his gang were daily declaring, that cutting off heads was the genuine employment of a people; and denouncing so many members of the Convention in the Jacobin Clubs, it was debated in the Convention, whether a guard ought not to be drawn from all the eighty-three departments? On this project, the Commissioners of the Fortyeight Sections of Paris thus speak (Oct. 19) to the Convention: Proxies of the sovereign! You * Moniteur, Nov. 3. Nov. 1. Oct. 30. see see before you the Deputies of the Sections of Paris, They come to make you understand eternal truths. Not words-but things! It is proposed to place you on a level with tyrants-to surround you with a distinct guard. The Sections of Paris weighing the principles on which the sovereignty of the people resides, declare to you that this project is odious and dangerous. We will attack in front such a principle. What audaciousness, to conjecture that the people will consent to such a decree! What! they propose to you constitutional decrees, before the existence of the constitution! Wait till the law exists, and the people have sanctioned it, Paris has made the Revolution, Paris has given liberty to the rest of France, Paris knows how to maintain it.*? "Here Paris expressly declares to the Con, vention, that their decrees were waste paper, tilĮ the people sanction them: such is the personał representation; an assembly is so elected, and the people no sooner possess such representatives, than, intoxicated with power, they declare their deputies things of straw, and their decrees null, till sanctioned by the people themselves! What a lesson to the friends of reform! In all the public places, say Louvett, at the Thuilleries, in the Palais de la Revolution, and elsewhere, you hear them preach continually insurrection against the National Convention. The Deputies of the * Monit. Oct. 21. + Oct. 29. Department Department of Loire tell the Convention at the bar-Your scandalous debates are known in every corner of France! The afflicted people sent you to make laws, and you know not how to make a regu lation; they sent you to render France respected, and you know not how to respect it yourselves; they sent you to establish liberty, and you have not known how to maintain your own. You tremble before these tribunes*. The nation is tired of beholding perfidious representatives,' say the Fortyeight Sections of Paris at the bart. "The National Convention, says Marat himself, offers the most afflicting and scandalous spectacle. Could an American savage be brought into it, he would believe the French legislators an assembly of madmen and furies. Unworthy men! You are without knowledge, virtue, patriotism, or shame! and are led by a band of vile wicked rascals devoted to ambition, and trembling lest their crimes should be revealed. "Paine is of opinion directly contrary, they sprang not from the filth of rotten boroughs they debate in the language of gentlemen-their dignity is serene-they preserve the right-angled character of man.' We well know what their language is; and if a right-angled character produces right-angled actions, we know what those are also. For the serenity of their dig * Monit. Jan. 10, 1793. + April 11. nity!!! |