e State,--a policy of poor man against rich.
Alongside of these measures terrorism was getting into full swing. The
revolutionary tribunal had its staff quadrupled on the 5th of September;
within a few days the sections were given increased police powers; and
Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes, the two strongest supporters of
Hebert in the Convention were elected to the Committee of Public Safety.
On the 17th was passed the famous _Loi des suspects_, the most drastic,
if not the first, decree on that burning question. It provided that all
partisans of federalism and tyranny, all enemies of liberty, all
_ci-devant_ nobles not known for their attachment to the new
institutions, must be arrested; and further that the section committees
must draw up lists of suspects residing within their districts. All this
meant a repetition on a larger and better organized plan of the massacres
of a year before. As Danton had said in the debates on the Revolutionary
Tribunal: "This tribunal will take the place of that supreme tribunal,
the vengeance of the people; let us be terrible so {194} as to dispense
the people from being terrible." Judicial, organized terror was to
replace popular, chaotic terror.
With terror now organized, the prisons filled, and the Revolutionary
Tribunal sending victims to the guillotine daily, the internal struggle
became one between two terrorist parties, of Hebert and of Robespierre,
both committed to the policy of the day, but with certain differences.
Hebert viewed the system as one affording personal safety,--the
executioner being safer than the victim,--and the best opportunity for
graft. The man of means was singled out by his satellites for suspicion
and arrest, and was then informed that a judicious payment in the right
quarter would secure release. Beyond that, Hebert probably cared little
enough one way or the other; he was merely concerned in extracting all
the material satisfaction he could out of life. With Robespierre the
case was different; it was a struggle for a cause, for a creed, a creed
of which he was the only infallible prophet. Poor, neat, respectable,
unswerving but jealous, he commanded wide admiration as the type of the
incorruptible democrat; stiffly and self-consciously he was reproducing
the popular pose of Benjamin Franklin. {195} Between him and Hebert
there could be no real union. He was willing, while Hebert remained
strong in his hold on the public, to act alo
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