seau, the
_Contrat Social_ was his gospel; war, made with the blood of the people,
was in the eyes of this philosopher--what it must ever be in the eyes of
the wise--wholesale slaughter to gratify the ambition of a few, glorious
only when it is defensive. Robespierre did not consider France placed in
such a position as to render it absolutely necessary for her safety that
the human vein should be opened, whence would flow such torrents of
blood. Embued with a firm conviction of the omnipotence of the new ideas
on which he nourished faith and fanaticism within a heart closed against
intrigue, he did not fear that a few fugitive princes, destitute of
credit, and some thousand aristocratic emigres, would impose laws or
conditions on a nation whose first struggle for liberty had shaken the
throne, the nobility, and the clergy. Neither did he think that the
disunited and wavering powers of Europe would venture to declare war
against a nation that proclaimed peace so long as we did not attack
them. But should the European cabinets be sufficiently mad to attempt
this new crusade against human reason, then Robespierre fully believed
they would be defeated, for he knew that there lies invincible force in,
the justice of a cause--that right doubles the energy of a nation, that
despair often supplies the want of weapons, and that God and men were
for the people.

He thought, moreover, that if it was the duty of France to propagate the
advantages and the light of reason and liberty, the natural and peaceful
extension of the French Revolution in the world would prove far more
infallible than our arms,--that the Revolution should be a doctrine and
not an universal monarchy realised by the sword, and that the patriotism
of nations should not coalesce against his dogmata. Their strength was
in their minds, for in his eyes the power of the Revolution lay in its
enlightenment. But he understood more: he understood that an offensive
war would inevitably ruin the Revolution, and annihilate that premature
republic of which the Girondists had already spoken to him, but which he
himself could not as yet define. Should the war be unfortunate, thought
he, Europe will crush without difficulty beneath the tread of its armies
the earliest germs of this new government, to the truth of which perhaps
a few martyrs might testify, but which would find no soil from whence to
spring anew. If fortunate, military feeling, the invariable companion of
aristo