Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/196

180 Gracchus Babeuf, the earliest of the French socialists, was bom in 1762, in the department of Aisne. From his father, a major in the Austrian army, he received special instruction in mathematics, but was deprived of him by death at the age of sixteen. Established as a land-sur veyor at Eoye, in the Somme department, he became a fervid advocate of the Revolution, and wrote articles in the Gorrespondant Picard, for which he was prosecuted in 1790. He was acquitted on that occasion, and was afterwards elected an administrator of the department; but a charge of forgery being brought against him, he was condemned by the Somme tribunal to twenty years imprisonment in 1793. Escaping to Paris, he became secretary to the Relief Committee of the Commune, and joined Garin in his denunciation of the Committee of Public Safety. This led to his incarceration, ostensibly under the former sen tence. This was, however, annulled by the Court of Cassa tion; and he was also discharged by the Aisne tribunal (18th July 1794), to which he had been remitted. Return ing to Paris, he entered on a violent crusade against the remains of the Robespierre party, and started the Journal de la Liberte de la Presse to maintain his views. In the following year (1795) the Girondists acquired supremacy in the Convention ; Babeuf s journal was suspended, and him- . self imprisoned first in Paris and then at Arras. Thrown into the society of certain partisans of Robespierre, he was Avon over by them, and was ready, on his release, to become the indiscriminatiag defender of the very men whom he had previously attacked (No. 34 of the Tribun, as he now called iiis journal). In April 1796 Babeuf, Lepelletier, and others, constituted themselves a &quot; Secret Directory of Public Safety,&quot; and took the title of the &quot; Equals;&quot; while another association of self-styled &quot; Conventional&quot; and &quot; Patriots&quot; met at the house of Ainar. The latter party aimed at the re-establishment of the revolutionary government, while Babeuf and his friends wanted besides to realise their schemes for the organisation of common happiness. Dis putes naturally arose; and to reconcile the Equals and the Patriots, it was agreed, first, to re-establish the constitu tion of 1793; and secondly, to prepare for the adoption of true equality by the destruction of the Government. Every thing was ready by the beginning of May 179G, and the number of adherents in Paris was reckoned at 17,000; but on the 10th the Government succeeded in arresting the main leaders of the plot. The army protected the ^Government, and the people of Paris looked on. The trial was opened at Vendome on Feb. 2, 1797, and lasted three months. Babeuf and Darthc were sentenced to death; Germain, Buonarroti, and five others, to transportation; Amar, Vadier, Duplay, and the remaining fifty-three, were acquitted. On the announcement of the sentence, Babeuf and Darthe stabbed themselves, but the wounds were, not mortal. They passed a frightful night, and next morning were borne bleeding to the scaffold. Ardent and generous, heroic and self-sacrificing, Babeuf had neither solid knowledge nor steadiness of judgment. &quot; The aim of society is happiness, and happiness consists in equality,&quot; is the centre of his doctrine. Propagated under the name of Babouvism, it became the germ of contemporary com munism. Babeuf s influence was fatal in a threefold way, because he re-established the memory of Robespierre among French Republicans, connected them with the theories of Rousseau, and paved the way for that school of Socialists which left the lessons of experience and observation for Utopian dreams. 1em  BÁBI, or, the appellation of a remarkable modern sect in Persia, is derived from the title (bob, i.e., gate) assumed by its founder, Seyed Mohammed Ali, born at Shiraz about 1824, according to Count Gobineau, but ten years earlier according to Kasem Beg. Persia, as is well known, is the least strictly Mahometan of all Mahometan countries, the prophet himself occupying an almost secondary place in the popular estimation to his successor Ali, and the latter s sons, Hassan and Hosein. The cause of this hetero doxy is, no doubt, to be sought in ethnological distinctions, the Aryan Persians never having been able to thoroughly accommodate themselves to the creed of their Semitic con querors. Their dissatisfaction has found vent partly in tha universal homage paid to Ali, and the rejection of the Sunna or great mass of orthodox Mahometan tradition, partly in violent occasional outbreaks, most characteristically of all in the mystical philosophy and poetry of the Sufis, which, under the guise of a profound respect for the ex ternals of Mahometanism, dissolves its rigid Monotheism into Pantheism. Babism is essentially one of the innumer able schools of Sufism, directed into a more practical channel by its founder s keen perception of the evils of his times. His first appearance in public took place about 1843, when, on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca and after a prolonged course of meditation in the ruined mosque of Kufa, the scene of Ali s murder, he presented himself in his native city with a journal of his pilgrimage and a new commentary on the Koran. He speedily became engaged in controversy with the mollahs or regular clergy, who, exasperated by the freedom of his strictures on their lives as well as their doctrines, obtained an official decree for bidding him to preach in public, and confining him to his house. The Bab, by which title he was now universally known, complied in appearance, but continued to instruct his disciples in private ; his doctrines rapidly assumed more logical consistency, and his pretensions augmented in an equal ratio. He now laid aside the title of Bab, declaring himself to be the Nokteh or Point, i.e., not merely the re cipient of a new divine revelation, but the focus to which all preceding dispensations converged. There was little in such a pretension to shock Oriental habits of thought; while the simplicity and elevation of the ethical part of the Bab s system, united to the charm of his manner and the eloquence of his discourse, rapidly gained fresh proselytes. The most remarkable of these was the Mollah Hussein Boushrevieh, a man of great erudition and energy of char acter, who, having come all the way from Khorassan to hear him, became his convert, and undertook the dissemination of his religion throughout the empire. Two other apostles were speedily added, the appearance of one of whom may almost be said to mark an epoch in Oriental life. It is rare indeed to find a woman enacting any distinguished part in the East, least of all that of a public teacher. Such, however, was the part assumed by the giited Zerryn Taj (Crown of Gold), better known by the appella tion of Gourred-Oul-Ayn (Consolation of the Eyes), be stowed in admiration of her surpassing loveliness. The third missionary was Mohammed Ali Balfouroushi, a reli gious man, who had already acquired a high reputation for sanctity. The new religion made rapid progress, and the endeavours of the authorities to repress it eventually pro duced a civil war. Hussein constructed a fort in the pro vince of Mazanderan, where he defeated several expeditions despatched against him, but at length fell mortally wounded in the moment of victory, and his followers, reduced to surren der by famine, were mostly put to death (1849). Balfou- 