Jacobin Club

“ A club formed in 1791, during the French Revolution, by the monarchical majority of the Jacobin Club, who objected to the principles and language of the minority. Their impolitic action in seceding from the Jacobins rendered the extreme revolutionists masters of the situation, owing to the enormous influence of the name Jacobin throughout France.
Fief.
In feudal times land held by a vassal by military service or other feudal tenure. ”

“ It was this widespread yet highly centralized organization that gave to the Jacobin Club its formidable power.
At the outset the Jacobin Club was not distinguished by extreme political views. The somewhat high subscription confined its membership to men of substance, and to the last it was—so far as the central society in Paris was concerned—composed almost entirely of professional men, such as Robespierre, or well-to-do bourgeois, like Santerre. ”

“ An address was read to the Jacobin Club openly demanding the annihilation of royalty; and though this address was received at first with murmurs—for the majority, even of the Jacobins, were not then prepared for such a step—the new doctrine with marvelous rapidity spread through the lower orders of Paris, and very speedily gained the ascendency in the club. Danton mounted the tribune of the Jacobin Club on the 23d of June, and demanded the forfeiture of the throne. "Your king," said he, "is either a knave or an idiot. If we must have one of the two, who would not prefer the latter?" ”

“ I have never heard that even the most ambitious Potentates ever pretended to extend their subjugation beyond the persons and property of the conquered; but these militant dogmatists claim an empire even over opinions, and insist that no people can be free or happy unless they regulate their ideas of freedom and happiness by the variable standard of the Jacobin club. ”

“ Among other plans, by which they hoped to counterpoise the omnipotence of the Jacobin Club, the Constitutionalists had established a counter association, termed, from its place of meeting, [192] Les Feuillans. In this club,—which included about two hundred members of the Legislative Body, the ephemeral rival of the great Jacobinical forge in which the Revolutionists had their strength and fabricated their thunders,—there was more eloquence, argument, learning, and wit, than was necessary ”

“ After the fall of the monarchy Robespierre was in effect the Jacobin Club; for to the tribunes he was the oracle of political wisdom, and by his standard all others were judged. [3] With his fall the Jacobins too came to an end.
Not the least singular thing about the Jacobins is the very slender material basis on which their overwhelming power rested. France groaned under their tyranny, which was compared to that of the Inquisition, with its system of espionage and denunciations which no one was too illustrious or too humble to escape. ”

“ The Jacobin Club possessed a large staff of officers, including a president, vice-president, four secretaries, twelve inspectors, four censors, eight commissaries, treasurer, and librarian, all appointed at quarterly elections. The privilege of membership was only granted under very strict conditions, and every newly-elected Jacobin had, before being formally admitted, to take the following oath:—
“I swear to live free or die ”

“ Despite the unity of will due to the absence of dissident parties the clubs obey the laws of the psychology of crowds. They are consequently subjugated by leaders. This we see especially in the Jacobin Club, which was dominated by Robespierre.
The function of the leader of a club, a homogeneous crowd, is far more difficult than that of a leader of a heterogeneous crowd. The latter may easily be led by harping on a small number of strings, but in a homogeneous group like a club, whose sentiments and interests are identical, the leader must know how to humour them and is often himself led. ”

“ The committees of government distributed large sums of money to the Jacobin Club and its affiliated societies, as being necessary to the propagation of sound political principles. The clubs themselves took upon them in every village the exercise of the powers of government; and while they sat swearing, drinking, and smoking, examined passports, imprisoned citizens, and enforced to their full extent the benefits of liberty and equality. "Death or Fraternity" was usually inscribed over their place of assembly ”

“ When the national representatives were transferred from Versailles to Paris, the Breton deputies and those of the assembly who were of their views held their sittings in the old convent of the Jacobins, which subsequently gave its name to their meetings. It did not at first cease to be a preparatory assembly, but as all things increase in time, the Jacobin club did not confine itself to the influencing the assembly; it sought also to influence the municipality and the people, and received as associates members of the municipality and common citizens. ”

“ He informed her in one of his last letters that he had been promoted to certain duties in the Commune of Paris, and she glories in his advancement."
"In truth, the workingman has been elected a municipal officer. They even proposed to him, such is his influence in the quarter and in the Jacobin Club, to run as candidate for the Convention, but he declined the offer. For the rest, his position with the Jacobins has put him in touch with several leading spirits of the Revolution—Tallien, Robespierre, Legendre, Billaud-Varenne, Danton, and other rabid democrats." ”

“ Thus the Jacobins became all-powerful.
A tremor of revolt ran through the cities of the south which chafed under the despotism of the Parisian mob. These cities had their own grievances. The Jacobin clubs menaced the lives and properties of all who were guilty of wealth or of moderate opinions, while the representatives on Revolt of the provinces. mission deposed the municipal authorities and placed their own creatures in power. At the end of April the citizens of Marseilles closed the Jacobin club, put its chiefs on their trial and drove out the representatives on mission. ”

“ It is worth while to take in detail one case more, a special one, and one that is authentic, which serves as a specimen, and which presents a foreshortened image of France during one tranquil year. At Aix, in the month of December, 1790,3146 in Opposition to the two Jacobin clubs, a club had been organized, had complied with all the formalities, and, like the "Club des Monarchiens" at Paris, claimed the same right of meeting as the others. But here, as at Paris, the Jacobins recognize no rights but for themselves alone, and refuse to admit their adversaries to the privileges of the law. ”

“ II.4 (Report of Dutard, June 6, 1793.) —The mental traits of the Jacobins form a contrast and are fully visible in the following speeches: "We desire despotically a popular constitution." (Address of the Paris Jacobin Club to the clubs in the departments, Jan. 7, 1793.) —Buchez et Roux, XXIII. 288—Ibid., 274. (Speech by Legros in the Jacobin Club, Jan. 1.) "Patriots are not counted; they go by weight... One patriot in a scale weights more than 100,000 aristocrats. One Jacobin weights more than 10,000 Feuillants. One republican weights more than 100,000 monarchists. ”

“ There was a slight reaction among certain classes in Paris in favour of the King, and several demonstrations took {128} place which an abler and more active monarch might have turned to advantage. On the other hand, the Jacobin Club attempted to use its machinery to influence the action of the electoral meetings. As a result, when the deputies met on the 1st of October, it was calculated that about 400 belonged to the floating central mass, 136 to the Jacobins, that is, Jacobins in the new Robespierre-Danton sense, 264 to the Feuillants. ”

“ There was indeed enough wrong done by our old ally and by the mother-country to supply both parties in America with good reasons for war.
The whole land was in an uproar and despite the news of the Terror in France, the Jacobin clubs multiplied in many cities North and South, and [Pg 242] broke out in the wildest acts of folly. In Charleston they pulled down the statue of the great statesman Pitt. The Democratic Club of that city asked to be affiliated with the Jacobin Club in Paris, while the city council voted to use no longer the absurd titles "Your Honour" and "Esquire." ”

“ He was a leading member of the Cordeliers' Club till his expulsion in November 1791; but in 1790 he was refused admission to the Jacobin Club, then consisting mainly of moderate men, on account of his calumniating disposition. ”

“ In politics, as in religion, faith generating the church, the latter, in its turn, nourishes faith. In the club, as in the private religious meeting, each derives authority from the common unanimity, every word and action of the whole tending to prove each in the right. And all the more because a dogma which remains uncontested, ends in seeming incontestable; as the Jacobin lives in a narrow circle, carefully guarded, no contrary opinions find their way to him. The public, in his eyes, seems two hundred persons ”

“ Hither come all ambitious revolutionists who desire to talk, to agitate, to make themselves conspicuous. Here Robespierre lords it, not being a deputy in consequence of the law forbidding members of the {6} Constituent Assembly to belong to the legislative body. Those who love disorder come here to seek emotions. Some find lucrative employment, applause being paid for, and the different parties having each its claque in the galleries. Since April, 1791, the Jacobin Club has affiliations in two thousand French towns and villages. ”

“ If it were actually formed on the model of the Jacobin Club of Paris, by some of those with whom the scheme originated, it cannot be rationally presumed that men of great purity of reputation, in public as well as private life, would either seek admission into such an assembly, knowing it had any criminal views ”

“ Amongst themselves and in their popular club it is worse, for
"the eagerness to get any office leads to every one denouncing each other; "3315
consequently, at the Jacobin club in the rue St. Honoré, and in the branch clubs of the quarter, there is constant purging, and always in the same sense, until the faction is cleansed of all honest or passable alloy and only a minority remains, which has its own way at every balloting. One of them announces that, in his club, eighty doubtful members have already been gotten rid of ”

“ The moving spirit, the genius and soul of the Revolution were the Jacobin Clubs. There were organized the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, theo-philanthropy, the worship of the prostitute as Goddess of Reason, the noyades and the fusillades which made France a vast charnel-house.
To-day the Jacobin Clubs have changed their signboards, they are now Lodges of the Grand Orient. But the spirit is unchanged. The ideal is always the same—the destruction of all revealed religion, and with it the noblest fruit of Christianity, Liberty. ”

“ I mean, that, without legal names, these clubs will be led to assume political capacities; that they may debate the forms of Constitution; and that from their meetings they may insolently dictate their will to the regular authorities of the kingdom, in the manner in which the Jacobin clubs issue their mandates to the National Assembly or the National Convention. The audacious remonstrance, I observe, is signed by all of that association (the Friends of the People) who are not in Parliament, and it was supported most strenuously by all the associators who are members, with Mr. ”

“ But with regard to the practicability of the course to be pursued, the right honourable gentleman says, he is looking forward to a time when there shall be no dread of Jacobin principles. I ask whether he does not think, from the fraud, oppression, tyranny, and cruelty with which the conduct of France has marked them, that they are not now nearly dead, extinct, and detested? But who are the Jacobins? Is there a man in this country who has at any time opposed Ministers, who has resisted the waste of public money and the prostitution of honours, that has not been branded with the name? ”

“ When the jeunesse dorée did at last organize themselves, they had little difficulty in flogging the Jacobins out of the cafés into comparative silence. Long before this the Girondin government had been urged to meet organization by organization, force by force; and it is clear from the daily reports of the police agents that even a moderate display of energy would have saved the National Convention from the humiliation of being dominated by a club, and the French Revolution from the blot of the Terror. ”

“ No strong government existed, nor, in the actual conditions of the country, could exist on the lines laid down by the constitution. France was menaced by civil war within, and by a coalition of hostile powers without; the discipline of the Terror was perhaps necessary if she was to be welded into a united force capable of resisting this double peril; and the revolutionary leaders saw in the Jacobin organization the only instrument by which this discipline could be made effective. This is the apology usually put forward for the Jacobins by republican writers of later times ”

“ You observe, with some surprize, that I make no mention of the Jacobins— the fact is, that until now I have heard very little about them. Your English partizans of the revolution have, by publishing their correspondence with these societies, attributed a consequence to them infinitely beyond what they have had pretensions to:—a prophet, it is said, is not honoured in his own country—I am sure a Jacobin is not. ”