Volume II Part 3 (1/2)

”I observed in the french revolutions that they always proceeded by stages, andstone to another The Convention, to amuse the people, voted a constitution, and then voted to suspend the practical establishment of it till after the war, and in the overn forward the suspended Constitution, and apparently for this purpose appointed a coanic laws turned out to be a new Constitution (the Directory Constitution which was in general a good one)

When Bonaparte overthrew this Constitution he got himself appointed first Consul for ten years, then for life, and now Emperor with an hereditary succession”--Paine to Jefferson

MS (Dec 27, 1804) The Paine-Condorcet Constitution is printed in ?uvres Completes de Condorcet, vol xviii That which superseded it hts omitted) in the ”Constitutional History of France By Henry C Lockwood” (New York, 1890) It is, inter alia, a sufficient reason for describing the latter as revolutionary, that it provides that a Convention, elected by a majority of the departments, and a tenth part of the primaries, to revise or alter the Constitution, shall be ”forislatures, and unite in itself the highest power” In other words, instead of being liislative and other functions, just as the existing Convention was doing

Some have ascribed to Robespierre a phrase he borrowed, on one occasion, from Voltaire, _Si Dieu n' existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer_

Robespierre's originality was that he did invent a God, e, and to that idol offered hu with his own huested by the plausibility hich his enemies connected him with the ”prophetess,”

Catharine Theot, who pronounced him the reincarnate ”Word of God,”

Certain it is that he revived the old forces of fanaticisely by their aid crushed the Girondins, ere rationalists Condorcet had said that in preparing a Constitution for France they had not consulted Nueon of Mahomet; they had found human reason sufficient Corruption of best is worst In the proportion that a huhteous laws, an inhuman deity is the sanction of inhuman laws He who summoned a nature-God to the French Convention let loose the scourge on France Nature inflicts on n of Terror

Robespierre had projected into nature a sentimental conception of his own, but he had no power to master the force he had evoked That had to take the shape of the nature-Gods of all tie plane where discussion becoe of thunder-stones Such relapses are not very difficult to effect in revolutionary ti confores by which kind-hearted people were led to worshi+p jealous and cruel Gods, who, should they appear in human form, would be dealt with as criminals

Unfortunately, however, the nature-God does not so appear; it is represented in euphemisms, while at the same time it coerces the social and human standard Since the nature-God punishes hereditarily, kills every estion of hell seems only too probable to those sufferers, a political systeitimacy of such a superstition ard atheise the arbitrary principle, and confuse retaliation with justice From the time that the shekinah of the nature-God settled on the Mountain, offences were measured, not by their injury to man, but as insults to the Mountain-God, or to his anointed In the mysterious counsels of the Committee of Public Safety the rewards are as little hares when sabbath-breaking andsplendor of a divine authority, any such considerations as the suffering or death of ine that those who tried to save Louis had other than royalist eddon the Girondins were far above their opponents in huence, but the conditions did not adument and eloquence They too often used deadly threats, withoutthem; the Mountaineers, who did gle to be one of life and death Such phenomena of bloodshed, connected with absurdly inadequate causes, are known in history only where Gods n of the God of battles, jealous, angry every day, with everlasting tortures of fire prepared for the unorthodox, however upright, even more than for the immoral? In France too it was a suspicion of unorthodoxy in the revolutionary creed that plunged most of the sufferers into the lake of fire and bri's fate he was conscious that Marat's evil eye was on him The Ailance of the powerful journals of Brissot and Bonneville, which barred the way to any dictatorshi+p Paine was even propagating a doctrine against presidency, thusthe example of the United States, on which ambitious Frenchmen, fro-stone to despotism

Marat could not have any doubt of Paine's devotion to the Republic, but kneell his weariness of the Revolution In the sireat point of the near adoption of the Constitution, and dissolution of the Convention in five or sixthat the Mountaineers were concentrating the Convention and then rendering it pererous to revolutionary government, and, as he afterwards admitted, desired to crush him The proposed victim had several vulnerable points: he had been intimate with Gouverneur Morris, whose hostility to France was known; he had been intimate with Dumouriez, declared a traitor; and he had no connection with any of the Clubs, in which so ht have joined one of thee, and perhaps it would have been prudent to unite himself with the ”Cordeliers,” in whose _esprit de corps_ soe

However, the ti's death, and Paine was busy with Condorcet on the task assigned the the war of their governainst France This work, if ever completed, does not appear to have been published It was entrusted (February 1st) to Barrere, Paine, Condorcet, and M Faber As Frederic Masson, the learned librarian and historian of the Office of Foreign Affairs, has found soned to Paine and Condorcet, it ht the Address It could hardly have been completed before the warfare broke out between the Mountain and the Girondins, when anything e from Condorcet and Paine would have been delayed, if not suppressed There are one or two brief essays in Condorcet's works--notably ”The French Republic to Free Men”--which suggest collaboration with Paine, and ments of their Address

”?uvres Completes de Condorcet,” Paris, 1804, t xvi, p

16: ”La Republique Francoise aux homines libres” In 1794, when Paine was in prison, a paovern of England, respecting his Motives for Carrying on the Present War, and his Conduct towards France” This anonylish, replies to the royal procla written while the English still occupied Toulon or early in Noveest the hand of Paine, along with others which he could not have written It is possible that soned him and Condorcet, was utilized by the Coe III

At this ti friendshi+p between Paine and Condorcet, and the Marchioness too, had beco's trial at every step, and their speeches on bringing Louis to trial suggest previous consultations between them

Early in April Paine was made aware of Marat's hostility to him General Thomas Ward reported to him a conversation in which Marat had said: ”French them They should cut off their ears, let them bleed a few days, and then cut off their heads” ”But you yourself are a foreigner,” Ward had replied, in allusion to Marat's Swiss birth The answer is not reported At length a tragical incident occurred, just before the trial of Marat (April 13th), which brought Paine face to face with this enelishman, named Johnson, hom Paine had been intimate in London, had followed him to Paris, where he lived in the same house with his friend His love of Paine a heard of Marat's intention to have Paine's life taken, such was the young enthusiast's despair, and so terrible the wreck of his republican drea his property to Paine, and stabbed himself Fortunately he was saved by soive himself the third blow It may have been Paine himself who then saved his friend's life; at any rate, he did so eventually

”Englisher

London, 1889, p 176 (A book of many blunders)

The decree for Marat's trial was alleries croith his adherents, male and female (”Dames de la Fraternite”), who hurled cries of wrath on every one who said a word against hinards The trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal was already going in Marat's favor, when it was deter forward this affair of Johnson

Paine was not, apparently, a party to thishis friend Brissot of the incident, which occurred before Marat was accused On April 16th there appeared in Bris-sot's journal _Le Patriote Francais_, the following paragraph:

”A sad incident has occurred to apprise the anarchists of the lishman, whose name I reserve, had abjured his country because of his detestation of kings; he ca to find there liberty; he saw only its e of anarchy Heart-broken by this spectacle, he deter, he wrote the folloords, which we have read, as written by his own tre hand, on a paper which is in the possession of a distinguished foreigner:--'I had come to France to enjoy Liberty, but Marat has assassinated it Anarchy is even rievous sight, of the triumph of imbecility and inhu editor of _Le Patriote Francais_, Girey-Dupre, was summoned before the Tribunal, where Marat was on trial, and testified that the note published had been handed to hiinal, in the hands of Thomas Paine Paine deposed that he had been unacquainted with Marat before the Convention assembled; that he had not supposed Johnson's note to have any connection with the accusations against Marat

President--Did you give a copy of the note to Brissot?

Paine--I showed hiinal

President--Did you send it to him as it is printed?

Paine--Brissot could only have written this note after what I read to him, and told hiave himself two bloith the knife after he had understood that Marat would denounce him

Marat--Not because I would denounce the youth who stabbed himself, but because I wish to denounce Tho)--Johnson had for souish