13,
year II., speech by Baudot.]

[Footnote 2124: Buchez et Roux, XXIX, 142. (Speech by Jean Bon St. Andre
in the Convention, Sep. 25, 1793.) "We are said to exercise arbitrary
power, we are charged with being despots. We, despots!... Ah, no doubt,
if despotism is to secure the triumph of liberty, such a despotism
is political regeneration." (Applause.)--Ibid, XXXI., 276. (Report by
Robespierre, Pluviose 17, year, II.) "It has been said that terror
is the incentive of despotic government. Does yours, then, resemble
despotism? Yes, as the sword which flashes in the hands of the heroes
of liberty, resembles that with which the satellites of tyranny are
armed..... The government of the Revolution is the despotism of freedom
against tyranny."]

[Footnote 2125: Ibid., XXXII, 353. Decree of April 1791. "The Convention
declares, that, supported by the virtues of the French people, it will
insure the triumph of the democratic revolution and show no pity in
punishing its enemies."]

[Footnote 2126: In the following portrayal of the ancient regime, the
bombast and credulity of the day overflows in the most extravagant
exaggerations (Buchez et Roux, XXXI., 300, Report, by Saint-Just,
February 26, 1794.): "In 1788, Louis XVI. Caused eight thousand persons
of both sexes and of every age to be sacrificed in the rue Meslay and on
the Pont-Neuf. These scenes were repeated by the court on the Champs
de Mars; the court had hangings in the prisons, and the bodies of the
drowned found in the Seine were its victims. These were four hundred
thousand prisoners in confinement; fifteen thousand smugglers were hung
in a year, and three thousand men were broken on the wheel; there were
more prisoners in Paris than there are now... Look at Europe. There
are four millions of people shut up in Europe whose shrieks are never
heard."--Ibid., XXIV., 132. (Speech by Robespierre, May 10, 1793). "Up
to this time the art of governing has simply consisted in the art
of stripping and subduing the masses for the benefit of the few, and
legislation, the mode of reducing these outrages to a system."]

[Footnote 2127: Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 353. (Report by Robespierre
to the Convention, May 7, 1794.) "Nature tells us that man is born for
freedom while the experience of man for centuries shows him a slave. His
rights are written in his heart and history records his humiliation."]

[Footnote 2128: Ibid., 372. "Priests are to morality what charlatans are
to