s not with him on the good side is against him on the bad side,
and, on the bad side, the common understanding between the factious of
every flag and the rogues of every degree, is natural.

"All aristocrats are corrupt, and every corrupt man is an aristocrat;"
for, "republican government and public morality are one and the same
thing."[31134]

Not only do evil-doers of both species tend through instinct and
interest to league together, but their league is already perfected. One
has only to open one's eyes to detect "in all its extent" the plot
they have hatched, "the frightful system of destruction of public
morality."[31135] Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonne, Danton, Hebert, "all of
them artificial characters," had no other end in view: "they felt[31136]
that, to destroy liberty, it was necessary to favor by every means
whatever tended to justify egoism, wither the heart and efface that idea
of moral beauty, which affords the only rule for public reason in its
judgment of the defenders and enemies of humanity."--Their heirs
remain; but let those be careful. Immorality is a political offense; one
conspires against the State merely by making a parade of materialism or
by preaching indulgence, by acting scandalously, or by following evil
courses, by stock-jobbing, by dining too sumptuously; by being vicious,
scheming, given to exaggeration, or "on the fence;" by exciting or
perverting the people, by deceiving the people, by finding fault with
the people, by distrusting the people,[31137] short, when one does not
march straight along on the prescribed path marked out by Robespierre
according to principles: whoever stumbles or turns aside is a scoundrel,
a traitor. Now, not counting the Royalists, Feuillantists, Girondists,
Hebertists, Dantonists, and others already decapitated or imprisoned
according to their merit, how many traitors still remain in the
Convention, on the Committees, amongst the representatives on mission,
in the administrative bodies not properly weeded out, amongst petty
tyrannical underlings and the entire ruling, influential class at Paris
and in the provinces? Outside of "about twenty political Trappists in
the Convention," outside of a small devoted group of pure Jacobins in
Paris, outside of a faithful few scattered among the popular clubs of
the departments, how many Fouches, Vadiers, Talliens, Bourdons, Collots,
remain amongst the so-called revolutionaries? How many dissidents are
there, disguised as