y a signboard for a fair, and
that the charlatans who had made use of it no longer need it, that it is
to be put away in the store containing other advertising material, that
individual, local and parliamentary liberties are abolished, that the
government is arbitrary and absolute, that no institution, law, dogma,
or precedent affords any guarantee for it against the rights of the
people, that property and lives are wholly at its mercy, that there are
no longer any rights of man.--Six weeks later, when, through the protest
of the forty-five and the arrest of the seventy-three, obedience to the
Convention is assured, all this is boldly and officially announced in
the tribune. "Under the present circumstances of the Republic," says
St. Just, "the Constitution cannot be implemented as this would enable
attacks on liberty to take place because it would lack the violent
measures necessary to repress these." We are no longer to govern
"according to maxims of natural peace and justice; these maxims are only
valid among the friends of liberty;" but they are not applicable between
patriots and the malevolent. The latter are "outside our sovereignty,"
are lawless, excluded from the social pact, slaves in rebellion, to be
punished or imprisoned, and, amongst the malevolent must be placed
"the indifferent[11112]".--"You are to punish whoever is passive in
the Republic and does nothing for it;" for his passivity is treason and
ranks him among other public enemies. Now, between the people and its
enemies, there is nothing in common but the sword; steel must control
those who cannot be ruled "by justice"; the monarchical and neutral
majority must be repressed (comprime);

"The Republic will be founded only when the sans-culottes,[11113] the
sole representatives of the nation, the only citizens, "shall rule by
right of conquest."[11114]

The meaning of this is more than clear. The regime of which St. Just
presents the plan, is that by which every oligarchy of invaders installs
and maintains itself over a subjugated nation. Through this regime, in
Greece, ten thousand Spartans, after the Dorian invasion, mastered three
hundred thousand helots and periocques; through this regime, in England,
sixty thousand Normans, after the battle of Hastings, mastered two
million Saxons; through this regime in Ireland, since the battle of the
Boyne, two hundred thousand English Protestants have mastered a million
of Catholic Irish; through this regime