ideal democracy was instituted, was presented to the
French people. Its adoption exactly coincides with the supremacy of
Robespierre in the Committee of Public Safety, and with the inauguration
of the Reign of Terror. The danger of invasion made the new tyranny
possible, but the political doctrine of the Jacobins made it necessary.
Robespierre explains the system in his report on the principles of
political morality, presented to the Convention at the moment of his
greatest power:--

If the principle of a popular government in time of peace is virtue,
its principle during revolution is virtue and terror combined:
virtue, without which terror is pernicious; terror, without which
virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but rapid, severe, inflexible
justice; therefore a product of virtue. It is not so much a principle
in itself, as a consequence of the universal principle of democracy
in its application to the urgent necessities of the country.

This is perfectly true. Envy, revenge, fear, were motives by which
individuals were induced or enabled to take part in the administration
of such a system; but its introduction was not the work of passion, but
the inevitable result of a doctrine. The democratic Constitution
required to be upheld by violence, not only against foreign arms, but
against the state of society and the nature of things. The army could
not be made its instrument, because the rulers were civilians, and
feared, beyond all things, the influence of military officers in the
State. Officers were frequently arrested and condemned as traitors,
compelled to seek safety in treason, watched and controlled by members
of the Convention. In the absence of a military despotism, the
revolutionary tribunal was the only resource.

The same theory of an original state of nature, from which the principle
of equality was deduced, also taught men where they might find the
standard of equality; as civilisation, by means of civil power,
education, and wealth, was the source of corruption, the purity of
virtue was to be found in the classes which had been least exposed to
those disturbing causes. Those who were least tainted by the temptations
of civilised society remained in the natural state. This was the
definition of the new notion of the people, which became the measure of
virtue and of equality. The democratic theory required that the whole
nation should be reduced to the level of the lower orders in al