re.

For despicable as Robespierre himself might be, the death of Robespierre
was a signal at which great multitudes of men, struck dumb with terror
heretofore, rose out of their hiding places: and, as it were, saw
one another, how multitudinous they were; and began speaking and
complaining. They are countable by the thousand and the million; who
have suffered cruel wrong. Ever louder rises the plaint of such a
multitude; into a universal sound, into a universal continuous peal,
of what they call Public Opinion. Camille had demanded a 'Committee of
Mercy,' and could not get it; but now the whole nation resolves itself
into a Committee of Mercy: the Nation has tried Sansculottism, and
is weary of it. Force of Public Opinion! What King or Convention can
withstand it? You in vain struggle: the thing that is rejected as
'calumnious' to-day must pass as veracious with triumph another day:
gods and men have declared that Sansculottism cannot be. Sansculottism,
on that Ninth night of Thermidor suicidally 'fractured its under jaw;'
and lies writhing, never to rise more.

Through the next fifteenth months, it is what we may call the
death-agony of Sansculottism. Sansculottism, Anarchy of the Jean-Jacques
Evangel, having now got deep enough, is to perish in a new singular
system of Culottism and Arrangement. For Arrangement is indispensable to
man; Arrangement, were it grounded only on that old primary Evangel of
Force, with Sceptre in the shape of Hammer. Be there method, be there
order, cry all men; were it that of the Drill-serjeant! More
tolerable is the drilled Bayonet-rank, than that undrilled Guillotine,
incalculable as the wind.--How Sansculottism, writhing in death-throes,
strove some twice, or even three times, to get on its feet again; but
fell always, and was flung resupine, the next instant; and finally
breathed out the life of it, and stirred no more: this we are now,
from a due distance, with due brevity, to glance at; and then--O
Reader!--Courage, I see land!

Two of the first acts of the Convention, very natural for it after
this Thermidor, are to be specified here: the first is renewal of the
Governing Committees. Both Surete Generale and Salut Public, thinned
by the Guillotine, need filling up: we naturally fill them up with
Talliens, Frerons, victorious Thermidorian men. Still more to the
purpose, we appoint that they shall, as Law directs, not in name only
but in deed, be renewed and changed from period to