th of
Prairial. Two days later Couthon proposed to the Convention the
memorable Law of the Twenty-second Prairial. Robespierre was the
draftsman, and the text of it still remains in his own writing. This
monstrous law is simply the complete abrogation of all law. Of all laws
ever passed in the world it is the most nakedly iniquitous. Tyrants have
often substituted their own will for the ordered procedure of a
tribunal, but no tyrant before ever went through the atrocious farce of
deliberately making a tribunal the organised negation of security for
justice. Couthon laid its theoretic base in a fallacy that must always
be full of seduction to shallow persons in authority: 'He who would
subordinate the public safety to the inventions of jurisconsults, to the
formulas of the Court, is either an imbecile or a scoundrel.' As if
public safety could mean anything but the safety of the public. The
author of the Law of Prairial had forgotten the minatory word of the
sage to whom he had gone on a pilgrimage in the days of his youth. 'All
becomes legitimate and even virtuous,' Helvetius had written, 'on behalf
of the public safety.' Rousseau inscribed on the margin, 'The public
safety is nothing, unless individuals enjoy security.' What security was
possible under the Law of Prairial?

After the probity and good judgment of the tribunal, the two cardinal
guarantees in state trials are accurate definition, and proof. The
offence must be capable of precise description, and the proof against
an offender must conform to strict rule. The Law of Prairial violently
infringed all three of these essential conditions of judicial equity.
First, the number of the jury who had power to convict was reduced.
Second, treason was made to consist in such vague and infinitely elastic
kinds of action as inspiring discouragement, misleading opinion,
depraving manners, corrupting patriots, abusing the principles of the
Revolution by perfidious applications. Third, proof was to lie in the
conscience of the jury; there was an end of preliminary inquiry, of
witnesses in defence, and of counsel for the accused. Any kind of
testimony was evidence, whether material or moral, verbal or written, if
it was of a kind 'likely to gain the assent of a man of reasonable
mind.'

Now what was Robespierre's motive in devising this infernal instrument?
The theory that he loved judicial murder for its own sake, can only be
held by the silliest of royalist or clerical p