Jacobin

“ A Jacobin who reasoned as much as he is accused of reasoning would be sometimes accessible to the voice of reason. Now, observation proves, from the time of the Revolution to our own days, that the Jacobin is never influenced by reasoning, however just, and it is precisely here that his strength resides. ”

“ A true Jacobin, then, is one who does not believe in the divine right of kings, or in any other alias for it, which implies that they reign ‘in contempt of the will of the people’; and he holds all such kings to be tyrants, and their subjects slaves. To be a true Jacobin, a man must be a good hater ”

“ The Jacobin Revolution is carried on by men of no rank, of no consideration, of wild, savage minds, full of levity, arrogance, and presumption, without morals, without probity, without prudence. What have they, then, to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds? One thing, and one thing only,—but that one thing is worth a thousand;—they have energy. In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigor of his mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jacobinism is born of social decomposition just as mushrooms are born of a fermenting soil. Consider the authentic monuments of its thought—the speeches of Robespierre and Saint-Just, the debates of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, the harangues, addresses, and reports of Girondists and Montagnards. Never did men speak so much to say so little; the empty verbiage and swollen emphasis swamp any truth there may be beneath their monotony and their turgidity. The Jacobin is full of respect for the phantoms of his reasoning brain ”

“ The Jacobin Spirit and the Mentality created by Democratic Beliefs.
Existing generations have inherited, not only the revolutionary principles but also the special mentality which achieves their success.
Describing this mentality when we were examining the Jacobin spirit, we saw that it always endeavours to impose by force illusions which it regards as the truth. The Jacobin spirit has finally become so general in France and in other Latin countries that it has affected all political parties, even the most conservative. The bourgeoisie is strongly affected by it, and the people still more so. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But the important Jacobin leaders were men of education, although they often condescended in pursuit of popularity to adopt worse manners than their own.
It was through their success in organisation that these [Pg 144] men attained to power. From the first the Jacobin Society in Paris, with its many great names and high prestige, had attained an exceptional position, and that position it immensely strengthened by establishing branch societies all over France. ”

“ The Girondists hoped, though almost in despair, that it was not yet too late to show the people the horrors of anarchy, and to rally around themselves the multitude to sustain a well-established and law-revering republic. The Jacobins determined to send their opponents to the scaffold, and by the aid of the terrors of the mob, now enlisted on their side, resistlessly to carry all their measures. A hint from the Jacobin leaders surrounded the Assembly with the hideous howlings of a haggard concourse of beings just as merciless and demoniac as lost spirits. ”

“ The root of the Jacobin theory was that all power and right resided in the people, and that when the people acted, law and government must give way before them. The people were sovereign and could not do wrong. Consequently, it was the business of the people to watch their rulers very closely, to supervise their conduct jealously, to remind them that they were only agents and puppets of a sovereign always suspicious and alert. If the sovereign chose to come forward, no Ministers or rulers must interfere to thwart it. ”

“ These theories would be of little importance, if we did not only know, but sorely feel, that there is a strong Jacobin faction in this country, which has long employed itself in speculating upon constitutions, and to whom the circumstance of their government being home-bred and prescriptive seems no sort of recommendation. What seemed to us to be the best system of liberty that a nation ever enjoyed to them seems the yoke of an intolerable slavery. ”

“ But more, I do not think they even exist in France; they have there died the best of deaths, a death I am more pleased to see than if it had been effected by a foreign force; they have stung themselves to death, and died by their own poison. But the honourable gentleman, arguing from experience of human nature, tells us that Jacobin principles are such, that the mind that is once infected with them, no quarantine, no cure can cleanse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is noticeable that many of the Jacobin agents were men who had failed in the ordinary walks of life, and who were consequently bitter against social laws. In their compassion for suffering and their contempt for the magic of wealth, the Jacobins fell into the opposite excess, professed to find magic in poverty, and regarded ignorance and destitution as entitled to honour in themselves. Recalling the doctrine of their master, that in a state of Nature men's instincts are good, they refused to recognise the frailty of humanity, and forgot that misfortune is sometimes due to fault. ”

“ 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 party are daily gaining ground; and since they have forced a ministry of their own on the King, their triumph has become still more insolent and decisive.—A storm is said to be hovering over us, which I think of with dread, and cannot communicate with safety—"Heaven square the trial of those who are implicated, to their proportioned strength!"— Adieu. ”

“ The man who continues neutral, though only a passenger, when hands are wanted to preserve the vessel from sinking, deserves to be thrown overboard, to be swallowed up by the waves and to perish the first. Had all other nations been united and unanimous, during 1793 and 1794, against the monster, Jacobinism, we should not have heard of either Jacobin directors, Jacobin consuls, or a Jacobin Emperor. ”

“ That party was the Jacobins, and, above all, the austere and rigorous Jacobins of Paris. On their ascendancy depended the triumph of the Revolution, and on the triumph of the Revolution depended the salvation of France. [Pg 42] Their ascendancy meant a Jacobin dictatorship, and against this, as against dictatorship in all its forms, many things have been said, and truly said. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A new constitution, of an extreme democratic type, was offered to the acceptance of the people. This dominion of the Jacobins, it must be observed, was a second revolution. The Revolution of 1792 was as different from that of 1789 as was the proposed constitution of 1793 from that of 1791. The insurrections, except at Lyons and Toulon and in La Vendée, were soon quelled. The Jacobin rule was identified with the cause of patriotism in arms against foreign invasion, and with antipathy to the restoration of Bourbon royalty and misrule. ”

“ It was in this way that the Jacobin theory, deduced from philosophy, welcomed by young enthusiasts, scarcely understood by the mass of the people, who applauded it because it opened the way to the satisfaction of their wants, spurred on by opposition, embittered by panic, suspicion, persecution, and translated into action by physical distress, gradually took root in the minds of the poor. But it was by violence that the theory triumphed. It is exceedingly difficult to form a just impression of the part which force played in politics in France in the years 1790 and 1791. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Real's eyes through the open door made him once more cast away all ceremony, notwithstanding his rebuke he had received in the morning. On the right of the monarch stood La Guesle, the Procureur Général, while at the king's feet knelt the very Jacobin friar whom St. Real had seen in conversation with that officer about half an hour before. The monk seemed in the act of presenting a letter; but though that action, and his whole demeanour, appeared perfectly pacific, yet St. Real was convinced, from his previous knowledge, that the ultimate designs of the Jacobin must be evil ”

“ Next to religion, property is the great point of Jacobin attack. Here many of the debaters in your majority, and their writers, have given the Jacobins all the assistance their hearts can wish. When the Catholics desire places and seats, you tell them that this is only a pretext, (though Protestants might suppose it just possible for men to like good places and snug boroughs for their own merits,) but that their real view is, to strip Protestants of their property To my certain knowledge, till those Jacobin lectures were opened in the House of Commons, they never dreamt of any such thing ”

“ 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. ”

“ They read a daily newspaper, and believe that they understand not only local matters but all subjects of national and general importance, that is to say, high level economy, philosophy and law; somewhat resembling the schoolmaster who, being familiar with the rules of arithmetic, thinks that he can teach the differential calculus, and the theory of functions. At any rate, they talk loud and argue on every subject with confidence, according to Jacobin traditions, being, indeed, so many budding Jacobins. ”

“ At the Jacobin club he became from 1790 one of the most violent of the anti-royalist orators. After the flight of Louis XVI. to Varennes, he published a pamphlet, L’Acéphocratie, in which he demanded the establishment of a federal republic. On the 1st of July, in a speech at the Jacobin club he spoke of a republic, and the reference called out the stormy derision of the partisans of the constitutional monarchy; but repeating his demand for a republic on the 15th of the same month, the speech was ordered to be printed and to be sent to the branch societies throughout France. ”