Jacobinism

“ The Great French Revolution was indeed a national revolution. And what is more, within the national framework, the world struggle of the bourgeoisie for domination, for power, and for undivided triumph found its classical expression.
Jacobinism is now a term of reproach on the lips of all liberal wiseacres. Bourgeois hatred of revolution, its hatred towards the masses, hatred of the force and grandeur of the history that is made in the streets, is concentrated in one cry of indignation and fear – Jacobinism! ”

“ But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi; it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit of a future and still unreached perfection; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection, that they may with the more authority recast the world; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture,— eternally passing onwards and seeking,—is an impertinence and an offence. But culture, just because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man with limitations and errors of his own along with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the world and Jacobinism itself a service. ”

“ Sir, to employ arguments solely to the purposes of popular irritation is a branch of Jacobinism? It is with pain, Sir, that I have heard arguments manifestly of this tendency, and having heard them, I hear with redoubled suspicion of the assertions, that Jacobinism is extinct. By what softer name shall we characterise the attempts to connect the war by false facts and false reasoning with accidental scarcity? By what softer name shall we characterise appeals to the people on a subject which touches their feelings, and precludes their reasoning? ”

“ The learned Abbé defines Jacobinism as "the error of every man who, judging of all things by the standard of his own reason, rejects in religious matters every authority that is not derived from the light of nature. It is the error of every man who denies the possibility of any mystery beyond the limits of his reason, of every one who, discarding revelation in defence of the pretended rights of Reason, Equality, and Liberty, seeks to subvert the whole fabric of the Christian religion." ”

“ He highly approves of ex officio informations and special juries, as the great bulwarks of the liberty of the press; taxes he holds to be a providential relief to the distresses of the people, and war to be a state of greater security than peace. He defines Jacobinism to be an abstract attachment to liberty, truth, and justice ”

“ I have said more, Sir, upon this subject than I should have thought necessary, if I had not felt that this false and dangerous mockery of the Sovereignty of the People is in truth one of the chief elements of Jacobinism, one of the favourite impostures to mislead the understanding, and to flatter and inflame the passions of the mass of mankind, who have not the opportunity of examining and exposing it, and that as such on every occasion, and in every shape in which it appears, it ought to be combated and resisted by every friend to civil order, and to the peace and happiness of mankind. ”

“ After this decisive victory, and last dreadful catastrophe, Jacobinism, considered as a pure and unmixed party, can scarce be said to have again raised its head in France, although its leaven has gone to qualify and characterise, in some degree, more than one of the different parties which have succeeded them. As a political sect, the Jacobins can be compared to none that ever existed, for none but themselves ever thought of an organized, regular, and continued system of murdering and plundering the rich, that they might debauch the poor by the distribution of their spoils. ”

“ It is a startling assertion to make, but we have good reason to think it true, that, in the last great war with Jacobinism, stretching through very nearly one whole quarter of a century, beyond all doubt the nobility was that order amongst us who shed their blood in the largest proportion for the commonwealth. Let not the reader believe that for a moment we are capable of undervaluing the pretensions of any class, whether high or low. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property. ”

“ If we complain of the prodigality of a branch of the Administration or wish to control it by refusing to appropriate all the money which is asked, we are stigmatized as disorganizers; if we oppose the growth of systems of taxation, we are charged with a design of subverting the Constitution and of making a revolution; if we attempt to check the extension of our political connections with European nations, we are branded with the epithet of Jacobins. Revolutions and Jacobinism do not flow from that line of policy we wish to see adopted. ”

“ Two advantages, fortune and education, each involving the other, cause a man to be ranked in the upper class; hence, one or the other, whether each by itself or both together, mark a man out for spoliation, imprisonment and death.—In vain may he have demonstrated his Jacobinism, and Jacobinism of the ultra sort. ”

“ Wordsworth's publication was in 1816, under the title A Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns, occasioned by an intended Republication of the Account of the Life of Burns by Dr. Currie. By William Wordsworth.—M.
[30] Jacobinism—although the seminal principle of all political evil in all ages alike of advanced civilization—is natural to the heart of man, and, in a qualified sense, may be meritorious. A good man, a high-minded man, in certain circumstances, must be a Jacobin in a certain sense. ”

“ Jacobinism does not consist in the having or not having a certain pageant under the name of a king, but "in taking the people as equal individuals, without any corporate name or description, without attention to property, without division of powers, and forming the government of delegates from a number of men so constituted,—in destroying or confiscating property, and bribing the public creditors, or the poor, with the spoils, now of one part of the community, now of another, without regard to prescription or possession." ”

“ We see the rotten material which the purifying flame of Jacobinism was soon to consume out of the land with fiery swiftness. We watch the very classes from which, as we have been so often told, the regeneration of France would have come, if only demagogues and rabble had not violently interposed. ”

“ Whig principles to me mean that the will of the majority of the nation as a whole must prevail, and not the will of any section, even if it is a large section and does manual work. These are the principles which are in deadly opposition to Jacobinism and Bolshevism. Under Jacobinism and Bolshevism, as their inventors proclaim, true policy must be made to prevail by force, or fraud, if necessary. Privilege is claimed for the minority. Oligarchy, and a very militant form of oligarchy, thus takes the place of true democracy. ”

“ The government, said Dwight, which had been established under the auspices of Washington was the sport of popular commotion, adrift without helm or compass in a turbid and boisterous ocean.
“The great object of Jacobinism, both in its political and moral revolution, is to destroy every trace of civilization in the world, and to force mankind back into a savage state.... That is, in plain English, the greatest villain in the community is the fittest person to make and execute the laws. Graduated by this scale, there can be no doubt that Jacobins have the highest qualifications for rulers.... ”

“ French peasants were Jacobins until the revolution secured to them the soil of France. The same men when transformed into landed proprietors became the staunch opponents of Jacobinism. It is in any case the interest of England to see whether, say in a generation, the existing or further changes in the tenure of land may not avert all necessity or demand for changes in the constitution. ”

“ So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away with the inexhaustible indulgence proper to culture, the consideration of circumstances, the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful judgment of persons. 'The man of culture is in politics,' cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, 'one of the poorest mortals alive!' Mr. ”

“ The societies have perished, or where they have not, have shrunk to a skeleton; the days of democratical declamation are no more; even the starving labourer in the alehouse is become the champion of aristocracy.... Jacobinism was destroyed; its party as a party was extinguished; its tenets were involved in almost universal unpopularity and odium; they were deserted by almost every man high or low in the island of Great Britain. ”

“ Are we not, and with abundant reason, thankful that Jacobinism is rendered comparatively feeble and its deadly venom neutralized, by the profligacy and open irreligion of the majority of its adherents? ”

“ We, the world army of Communism, have long ago made our historical reckoning with Jacobinism. The whole of the present international proletarian movement was formed and grew strong in the struggle against the traditions of Jacobinism. ”

“ The French overthrow transformed the Whig cry of Republicanism to the Whig cry of Jacobinism. “... Between the advent of Mr. Pitt and the resurrection of Lord Grey, ... ever on the watch for a cry to carry them into power, they mistook the yell of Jacobinism for the chorus of an emancipated people, and fancied, in order to take the throne by storm, that nothing was wanting but to hoist the tricolour and to cover their haughty brows with a red cap. ”

“ They would raise the mass of the people to the enjoyment of liberty, but to liberty controlled by vigorous law. Opposed to them were the Jacobins—far more radical in their views of reform. They would overthrow both throne and altar, break down all privileged orders, confiscate the property of the nobles, and place prince and beggar on the footing of equality. These were the two great parties into which revolutionary France was divided and the conflict between them was the most fierce and implacable earth has ever witnessed. ”

“ Supporting by their numerous associations the government as exercised by the Revolutionary Committees, came the mass of Jacobins, who, divided into a thousand clubs, emanating from that which had its meetings at Paris, formed the strength of the party to which they gave the name.
The sole principle of the Jacobinical institutions was to excite against all persons who had any thing to lose, the passions of those who possessed no property, and were, by birth and circumstances, brutally ignorant, and envious of the advantages enjoyed by the higher classes. ”

“ In the Jacobin Society, therefore, the decided Patriot complains that here are men who with their private ambitions and animosities, will ruin Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood, all three: they check the spirit of Patriotism, throw stumbling-blocks in its way; and instead of pushing on, all shoulders at the wheel, will stand idle there, spitefully clamouring what foul ruts there are, what rude jolts we give! To which the Jacobin Society answers with angry roar;—with angry shriek, for there are Citoyennes too, thick crowded in the galleries here. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jacobins or Anti-Jacobins—outrageous advocates for anarchy and licentiousness, or flaming apostles of political persecution—always violent and vulgar in their opinions, they oscillate, with a giddy and sickening motion, from one absurdity to another, and expiate the follies of youth by the heartless vices of advancing age. None so ready as they to carry every paradox to its most revolting and ridiculous excess—none so sure to caricature, in their own persons, every feature of the prevailing philosophy! ”

“ Whether Jacobin or Anti-jacobin, Theophilanthropist or Trinitarian, Spencean or Ex-Spencean, the patron of Universal Suffrage or of close Boroughs, of the reversion of sinecure places, and pensions, or of the abolition of all property,—however extreme in one opinion or another, he alone is in the right; and those who do not think as he does, and change their opinions as he does, and go the lengths that he does, first on one side and then on the other, are necessarily knaves and fools. ”