Page:Babeuf's Conspiracy.djvu/37

6 Hence it happens that the bulk of those who figured on the stage of the Revolution, confined their efforts to the barren object of making one order of government prevail over another, without at all troubling themselves about the condition of those for whose advantage all legitimate government ought to exist; and owing to the same cause it was, that so many pretended legislators imagined themselves to have founded a Republic, when they had only condemned a king to death, and substituted the authority of several for that of an individual.

Our divisions during the Revolution were the results of opposing interests and principles. While one set of persons (the honest) supported a system because they believed it to be good, another set, far more numerous, united themselves to the party that appeared most favourable to their personal views of fortune or ambition. The former pursued with constant fidelity the path which they had originally traced out for themselves; the latter were always shifting their conduct, according to circumstances, or their own capricious passions.

It was only at successive stages of the Revolution, however, that one could discern the particular character of each political sect, for so long as they had a common enemy to combat, they were obliged (whatever their differences of opinion) to appear all to act in the same spirit; but at each succeeding step towards a new degree of amelioration, there was formed a fresh party of oppositionists, namely, of those interested in maintaining the vices against which the new movement was directed.

Thus, if certain nobles of the Constituent Assembly appeared popular at the dawn of the Revolution, they were not slow in revealing their true characters, by following an opposite course, the moment that the first aspirations were heard in favour of a real equality. If others, again, rose up against the reigning family, with the design of substituting another in its room, they were soon seen to range themselves under the banners of royalty, from the moment it became evident that the cause of all dynasties was hopeless. If, at first, the priests applauded the efforts of the reformers against the higher orders of the clergy, they became afterwards the bitterest propagators of fanaticism, when once the nation