Page:Babeuf's Conspiracy.djvu/48

Rh constitution to a rising republic. The want of a regular authority had made itself generally felt, and it was pretty commonly believed that a good distribution of political Champ de Mars the blood of those citizens who were preparing to solicit a contrary decision. They forced the people to have recourse to violence in order to obtain that justice which a simple decree might have peaceably operated. They struck a blow at the right to assemble and petition, and wished to chain the nation for ever to the chariot wheels of the aristocracy.

To the real contempt which the Constituent Assembly had for the mass of the people, we are to attribute the feebleness of their efforts against the royal power, which, while they pretended to shake, they really desired to convert into a rampart against democratic effervescence. Hence, also, its negligence to profit by the people's enthusiasm and the errors of the court, in order to annihilate the monarchy or tie it up within limits which would have made it, in effect, almost a republic.

Such are the causes of the suspicions which subsequently arose against the Lameths, against La Fayette, against the minority of the Noblesse, and against several distinguished members of the Third Estate. The same views were shared by the famous Mirabeau, the extreme corruption of whose morals, forced him through the allurements of gain, to become the champion of that monarchy against which he had just successfully combatted.

But the love of luxury, the thirst of gold, and the desire to shine and govern, were not engrossed by the Noblesse alone; there was between them and the immense class of working men, another numerous class of ignoble aristocrats, who shone by riches, by polished manners, by refined wit, by small talk, by laxity of morals, and by irreligion. This latter upstart class also despised the people—believed itself born to lord over them—pretended to be the sound part of the nation, and added suppleness and jealousy to the views of the nobles, whom they aspired to replace in authority.

This class was composed, for the greater part, of advocates, lawyers, physicians, bankers, rich merchants, opulent citizens, and men of letters, who traced in science, and made it the ladder of their ambition. Greedy, vain, and restless, it plunged into the first movements of the Revolution, and induced the multitude, whom poverty and want of instruction made dependent on them, to participate in their schemes of ambition. The members of this class being masters of most of the tribunes for haranguing the people (tribunes aux harangues), and of the administrations, pushed themselves, through the suffrages of their friends, into the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, where they formed the nucleus of the Girondist faction.

Generally speaking, the Girondists did not desire the ancient regime in all its hideousness, but still less did they desire that the new regime should progress so far as to confound them with what they called the "low people" (bas peuple), and strip them of that superiority which was so profitable to them. As to whether France was governed in the manner of Monarchy or of a Republic, at bottom they cared not a rush, provided to them and their party should belong the possessors and dispensers of all favours emanating from power, and that the sovereignty of the people