reads every
report himself, and passes days and nights at it;"[3238] Jean Bon, in
wooden shoes and woolen vest, with a bit of coarse bread and a glass of
bad beer,[3239] writes and dictates until his strength fails him, and he
has to lie down and sleep on a mattress on the floor.--Naturally, again,
when interfered with, and the tools in their hands are broken, they are
dissatisfied; they know well the worth of a good instrument, and for
the service, as they comprehend it, good tools are essential, competent,
faithful employees, regular in attendance at their offices, and not at
the club. When they have a subordinate of this kind they defend him,
often at the risk of their lives, even to incurring the enmity of
Robespierre. Cambon,[3240] who, on his financial committee, is also a
sort of sovereign, retains at the Treasury five or six hundred employees
unable to procure their certificate of civism, and whom the Jacobins
incessantly denounce so as to get their places. Carnot saves and employs
eminent engineers, D'Arcon, de Montalembert, d'Obenheim, all of them
nobles, and one of them an anti-Jacobin, without counting a
number of accused officers whom he justifies, replaces, or
maintains.[3241]--Through these courageous and humane acts, they solace
themselves for their scruples, at least partially and for the time
being; moreover, they are statesmen only because the occasion and
superior force makes it imperative, more led by others than leading,
terrorists through accident and necessity, rather than through system
and instinct. If, in concert with ten others, Prieur and Carnot order
wholesale robbery and murder, if they sign orders by twenties and
hundreds, amounting to assassinations, it is owing to their forming
part of a body. When the whole committee deliberates, they are bound,
in important decrees, to submit to the preponderating opinion of
the majority, after voting in the negative. In relation to secondary
decrees, in which there has been no preliminary discussion in common,
the only responsible member is the one whose signature stands first; the
following signatures affixed, without reading the document, are simply
a "formality which the law requires," merely a visa, necessarily
mechanical; with "four or five hundred business matters to attend to
daily," it is impossible to do otherwise. To read all and vote in every
case, would be "a physical impossibility."[3242]--Finally, as things
are, "is not the general will,