These are (translated into English) excerpts from Maximilien Robespierre’s pre-French Revolution speech “Republic of Virtue”, within which he justifies the use of terror to defend democracy. This post, like all my other posts, is intended just for me, but if anyone else finds finds it interesting or helpful, that would make me happy 🙂
"Republic of Virtue" (February 5th, 1794)
Maximilien Robespierre
the Opening lines:
“What is the objective toward which we are reaching? The peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice whose laws are engraved not on marble or stone but in the hearts of all men, even in the heart of the slave who has forgotten them or of the tyrant who disowns them.”
“We wish an order of things where…. … commerce will be the source of
public wealth and not merely of the monstrous riches of a few families.”
“We wish to substitute in our country… all the virtues and miracles of the republic for all the vices and absurdities of the monarchy.”
“We wish, in a word, to fulfill the intentions of nature and the destiny of humanity…. by sealing our work with our blood, we may witness at least the dawn of universal happiness-this is our ambition, this is our aim.”
“A democracy is a state where the sovereign people, guided by laws of their own making, do for themselves everything that they can do well, and by means of delegates everything that they cannot do for themselves.”
“Since virtue (good citizenship) and equality are the soul of the republic, and your aim is to found and to consolidate the republic, it follows that the first rule of your political conduct must be to relate all of your measures to the maintenance of equality and to the development of virtue; for the first care of the legislator must be to strengthen the principles on which the government rests. Hence all that tends to excite a love of country, to purify moral standards, to exalt souls, to direct the passions of the human heart toward the public good must be adopted or established by you. All that tends to concentrate and debase them into selfish egotism, to awaken an infatuation for trivial things, and scorn for great ones, must be rejected or repressed by you. In the system of the French revolution, that which is immoral is impolitic, and that which tends to corrupt is counterrevolutionary. Weakness, vices, and prejudices are the road to monarchy…”
“It is necessary to annihilate both the internal and external enemies of the republic or perish with its fall. Now, in this situation your first political maxim should be that one guides the people by reason, and the enemies of the people by terror.”
“If the driving force of popular government in peacetime is virtue, that of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror: Virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice that is prompt, severe, and inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie.”
Bibliography
Marvin Perry, et. al., Sources of the Western Tradition, Volume II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), pp. 93-94, third edition.
Immediately:
Robespierre was of course murdered a few months later (on June 19th 1974), ending The Reign of Terror which he lead. The Reign of Terror is thought to have executed 16,594 official death sentences…
The rhetoric being passed around on social media by the far left in the US today reminds me of Robespierre’s words. Many of even my friends are calling for the need to cyberbully and demonize Trump-supporters to apparently bully them into silence. Some are suggesting “let’s just kill them?” for the cops who were involved in the unjust death of Breonna Taylor. These are only two concrete examples.
