Maximillien Robespierre

“ But if in the beginnings of the revolution, and when I was barely glimpsed in the National Assembly, if when only my conscience was seen I sacrificed my life to the truth, to freedom, to the fatherland, then today, when the suffrage of my fellow citizens, when universal benevolence, when too much indulgence, recognition and attachment have paid me well for my sacrifice, I would receive death almost as a benefit that would prevent me from witnessing the evils that I see to be inevitable. ”

“ The government sometimes subjects the very commerce of luxury items to the modifications that healthy policy calls for. Why would that which deals with the subsistence of the people be necessarily freed of this?
Doubtless if all men were just and virtuous, if cupidity was never tempted to devour the people’s substance, if the rich, docile to the voice of reason and nature, looked upon themselves as the economists of society, or as the brothers of the poor it would be possible to recognize no other law than that of the most unlimited liberty. ”

“ A victor who kills his captive enemies is called a barbarian! A grown man who kills a child that he could disarm and punish seems to us a monster! An accused man condemned by society is nothing else for it but a defeated and powerless enemy. Before it, he is weaker than a child before a grown man.
Thus, in the eyes of truth and justice these scenes of death that it orders with so much ceremony, are nothing but cowardly assassinations, nothing but solemn crimes committed not by individuals but by entire nations using legal forms. ”

“ Citizens, have I demonstrated enough the depths of the abyss that is going to swallow up our freedom?
Do you see clearly enough the coalition of ministers of the king, some of whom, if not all, I will never believe did not know of his flight? Do you see clearly enough the coalition of your civil and military chiefs? It is such that I can’t not believe that it didn’t favor that escape, which they confess to have known about. Do you see that coalition with your committees, with the National Assembly? ”

“ Cowardice will not triumph over courage. The genius of intrigue must flee before the genius of freedom. And you, legislators, remember that you are not representatives of a privileged caste, but that of the French people; don’t forget that justice is the source of order; that the surest guarantee of public tranquility is the happiness of citizens, and that the long convulsions that tear states apart are nothing but the combat of prejudices against principles, of egoism against general interest, of the pride and passions of powerful men against the rights and needs of the weak. ”

“ It has been observed that in free countries crime was more rare and penal laws more gentle. All ideas hold together. Free countries are those where the rights of man are respected and where, consequently, the laws are just. Where they offend humanity by an excess of rigor this is a proof that the dignity of man is not known there, that that of the citizen doesn’t exist. It is a proof that the legislator is nothing but a master who commands slaves and who pitilessly punishes them according to his whim. I thus conclude that the death penalty should be abrogated. ”

“ Outside of civil society, if a bitter enemy makes an attempt on my life or, pushed away twenty times, he returns again to ravage the field that I cultivated with my own hands; since I have only my individual strength to oppose to his I must either perish or kill him, and the law of natural defense justifies and approves me. But in society, when the force of all is armed against only one, what principle of justice could authorize it to kill him? ”

“ Does it circulate when it is accumulated in the hands of a small number of millionaires who remove it from commerce in order to render it more precious and rare, who coldly calculate how many families must perish before the merchandise has reached the time fixed by their atrocious avarice? Does it circulate when it only crosses the regions that produced it, before the eyes of indigent citizens who suffer the torture of Tantalus before filling the unknown abyss of some entrepreneur of public starvation? ”

“ Why kill each other in a war between brothers who all want to be free? For Bender and Condé will speak of themselves as more patriotic than us. If, when you had no more harvests to preserve from arson, nor enemy armies on your frontiers, the Constitutional Committee had you tolerate so many nation-icide decrees, would you hesitate to cede to the insinuations of your chiefs when you are only asked to make slight sacrifices in order to bring about a general reconciliation? ”

“ But how could we look upon rules of general policy, commanded by society’s interests as attacks on property? Who then is the good citizen who could complain of being obliged to act with loyalty in broad daylight? Who are the shadows necessary for if not monopolists and rascals? In any event, haven’t I proved to you that society has the right to demand that portion that is necessary for the subsistence of citizens? ”

“ Has Russia been in turmoil since the despot who governs it entirely suppressed the death penalty, as if by this act of humanity and philosophy he wanted to expiate the crime of holding millions of men in the yoke of absolute power?
Listen to the voice of justice and reason. It cries out to you that human judgements are never certain enough to justify a society of men subject to error dealing death to another man. ”

“ What frightens me, Messieurs, is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone. And here I need to be listened to until the end. Once again, what frightens me is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone else: it’s that since this morning, all of our enemies speak the same language as us. ”

“ The desire to live cedes before pride, the most imperious of all the passions that master the heart of man. The most terrible of all punishments for social man is opprobrium, is the overwhelming sight of public execration. When the legislator can strike the citizen in so many sensitive places and in so many ways, why would he reduce himself to employing the death penalty? Punishments aren’t imposed to torment the guilty, but in order to prevent crime by the fear of incurring them. ”

“ To speak to the representatives of the people of the means of providing for its subsistence is not only to speak to them about the most sacred of their obligations, but of the most precious of their interests, for without a doubt they are mixed in with it. It is not the cause of the indigent alone that I want to plead, but that of landowners and merchants themselves. ”

“ I saw aristocracy accuse the people, I saw hypocritical intriguers impute their own crimes to the defenders of freedom, who they called agitators and anarchists. I saw an impudent minister whose virtue was allowed to be suspected, demand adorations of France while ruining it, from the midst of these criminal intrigues I saw tyranny emerge armed with martial law in order to legally bathe in the blood of starving citizens. Millions for the minister, from whom it was forbidden to ask for an accounting; bonuses for the profit of the blood-suckers of the people; the unlimited freedom of commerce ”

“ I know that in thus accusing almost all of my colleagues, almost all the members of the Assembly of being counter-revolutionary, some from ignorance, others from terror, others from resentment, others by wounded pride, others from a blind confidence, many because they are corrupt, I raise up against me all the prideful; I sharpen a thousand daggers, I offer myself to all the hatred. ”

“ If in place of this powerful, calm and moderate severity that should characterize it they place anger and vengeance; if they spill human blood that they could spare and that they have no right to spread; if they spread out before the people cruel scenes and cadavers wounded by torture, it then alters in the hearts of citizens the ideas of the just and the unjust; they plant the seed in the midst of society of ferocious prejudices that will produce others in their turn. ”

“ The legislator who prefers death and atrocious penalties to the gentler means in his power outrages public feeling and weakens the moral sentiment among the people he governs; like a clumsy preceptor who, by the frequent use of cruel punishments, stupefies and degrades the soul of his student; he wears out and weakens the springs of government by wanting to wind them up too strongly. ”

“ Whoever knows men, whoever especially knows the French people, knows that it is not in the power of a fool or a bad citizen to rise the people up without any reason against the laws they love; even less against its elected representatives and the freedom it has conquered. It is up to the representatives themselves to bear witness to the confidence given them and to disconcert aristocratic evil by taking care of the people’s needs and calming their fears. ”

“ Man is no longer for man so sacred an object: we have a less grand idea of his dignity when public authority puts his life at risk. The idea of murder inspires less fear when the law itself gives the example and the spectacle. The horror of crime is diminished when it is punished by another crime. ”

“ The first social law is thus that which guarantees to all society’s members the means of existence; all others are subordinated to it. Property was only instituted or guaranteed to cement it. It is in order to live that we have property in the first case. It is not true that property can ever be in opposition with men’s subsistence.
The aliments necessary to man are as sacred as life itself. Everything that is indispensable for its preservation is a property common to all of society. Only the surplus is private property and is abandoned to the industry of merchants. ”

“ Everyone is united; everyone has the same face, and nevertheless it’s clear that a king who had a pension of 40 million, who still disposed of all places, who still had the most beautiful and the most secure crown on his head, could not have renounced so many advantages without being sure of recovering them. ”

“ In this system everything is against society, everything is in favor of the grain merchants.
It is here, legislators, that all your wisdom and circumspection are necessary. Such a subject is always delicate to deal with. It is dangerous to redouble the fears of the people and to even seem to authorize its discontent. It is even more dangerous to be silent about the truth and to hide principles. But if you follow them all inconveniences disappear: principles alone can dry up the sources of evil. ”

“ Even if you could imagine the most perfect judicial order, even if you had found the most upright and enlightened judges, there would still remain some room for error or caution. Why forbid yourselves the means of repairing them? Why condemn yourselves to the inability to lend a helping hand to oppressed innocence? ”

“ So he couldn’t have based his hopes on the support of Leopold and the King of Sweden and on the army from beyond the Rhine: let all the brigands of Europe league together and they will again be defeated. It is, then, in our midst, it’s in this capital, that the fugitive king left those supports upon which he counts for his triumphal re-entry. Otherwise his flight would be too foolish.
You know that 3 million men armed for freedom would be invincible; he thus has a powerful party of great intelligence in our midst. ”

“ What more certain way to encourage cupidity and to free it from any hindrance than to pose as a principle that the law doesn’t even have the right to oversight in order to impose the slightest constraint? ”