Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/158

 well knowing beforehand that these classes wished for his death, in order to eject the working-classes from the constitution, and re-seize the whole powers of the State for themselves, as they had done under the Constituent. The 9th Thermidor was as much a coup d'état as Louis Napoleon's 2nd December, and both for the same classes—for landlords and profitmongers, who never yet submitted to any laws not made exclusively by themselves or for themselves, at the cost of slavery to the masses. Real liberty will never exist in the world until these two murderous classes are made to disappear from society under the operation of just laws on Land, Credit, Currency, and Exchange. It is to such laws that Robespierre points in articles 6, 7, 8, and 9 of his "Declaration of Rights;" and it is to their operation upon society he points in that magnificent passage here quoted from his report, on Pluviose, An II., the parallel of which was never before uttered by statesman:—"We desire an order of things in which all the mean and cruel passions shall be chained down—all the beneficent and generous passions awakened by the laws; in which ambition shall consist in the desire of meriting glory, and serving our country; in which distinctions shall spring but from equality itself; in which the citizen shall be subject to the magistrate, the magistrate to the people, and the people to justice; in which the country shall ensure the prosperity of every individual, and in which each individual shall enjoy with pride the prosperity and glory of his country; in which every soul shall be aggrandised by the continual intercommunication of republican sentiments, and by the wish to merit the esteem of a great people; in which the arts shall flourish as the decorations of the liberty that ennobles them; and in which commerce will be a source of public riches, and not of monstrous opulence to a few great houses only. We desire to substitute in our country morality for egotism, probity for honour, principles for usages, duties for conventionalities, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of misfortune, manly pride for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity, love of glory for love of money, honesty for respectability, good people for good society, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for display, the charms of happiness for the ennui of pleasure, the greatness of man for the littleness of the great; a people magnanimous, powerful, and happy, for a people amiable, frivolous, and miserable; in a word, we desire to substitute all the virtues and all the miracles of the Republic for all the vices and all the ridiculous fopperies of the Monarchy. We desire, in short, to fulfil the vows of nature, to accomplish the destinies of humanity, to absolve Providence from the long reign of crime and tyranny; that France, heretofore illustrious amongst enslaved countries, may, by eclipsing all the free States that ever existed, become a model for nations, the terror of oppressors, the consolation of the oppressed, the ornament of the world; and that, in sealing our work with our blood, we may at least witness the breaking dawn of universal felicity." It was these articles and his speeches at the Jacobin club, showing