have no hesitation in saying it--they
have legitimated the insurrection;" they were guilty, and it was well
to hang them.[1108] Not only do the party leaders excuse assassinations,
but they provoke them. Desmoulins, "attorney-general of the Lantern,
insists on each of the 83 departments being threatened with at least one
lamppost hanging." (This sobriquet is bestowed on Desmoulins on account
of his advocacy of street executions, the victims of revolutionary
passions being often hung at the nearest lanterne, or street lamp,
at that time in Paris suspended across the street by ropes or
chains.--(Tr.)) Meanwhile Marat, in the name of principle, constantly
sounds the alarm in his journal:

"When public safety is in peril, the people must take power out of the
hands of those whom it is entrusted... Put that Austrian woman and her
brother-in-law in prison... Seize the ministers and their clerks and put
them in irons... Make sure of the mayor and his lieutenants; keep the
general in sight, and arrests his staff... The heir to the throne has no
rights to a dinner while you want bread. Organize bodies of armed men.
March to the National Assembly and demand food at once, supplied to
you out of the national stocks... Demand that the nation's poor have
a future secured to them out of the national contribution. If you are
refused join the army, take the land, as well as gold which the rascals
who want to force you to come to terms by hunger have buried and
share it amongst you. Off with the heads of the ministers and their
underlings, for now is the time; that of Lafayette and of every rascal
on his staff, and of every unpatriotic battalion officer, including
Bailly and those municipal reactionaries--all the traitors in the
National Assembly!"

Marat, indeed, still passes for a furious ranter among people of some
intelligence. But for all that, this is the sum and substance of his
theory: It installs in the political establishment, over the heads
of delegated, regular, and legal powers an anonymous, imbecile,
and terrific power whose decisions are absolute, whose projects are
constantly adopted, and whose intervention is sanguinary. This power is
that of the crowd, of a ferocious, suspicious sultan, who, appointing
his viziers, keeps his hands free to direct them and his scimitar ready
sharpened to cut of their heads.

II.--The Jacobins.

Formation of the Jacobins.--The common human elements of his
character.--C