allow them to go
on.[33140]--Judge by this of their performances in the time of
Robespierre, when the vendors and administrators of the national
possessions exercised undisputed control. Everywhere, at that time,
in the departments of Var, Bouches-du-Rhone, and Vaucluse, "a club of
would-be patriots" had long prepared the way for their exactions. It
had "paid appraisers for depreciating whatever was put up for sale,
and false names for concealing real purchasers; "a person not of their
clique, was excluded from the auction-room; if he persisted in coming in
they would, at one time, put him under contribution for the privilege
of bidding," and, at another time, make him promise not to bid above the
price fixed by the league, while, to acquire the domain, they paid him
a bonus. Consequently, "national property" was given away "for
almost nothing," the swindlers who acquired it never being without a
satisfactory warrant for this in their own eyes. Into whose hands could
the property of anti-revolutionists better fall than into those of
patriots? According to Marat, the martyr apostle and canonised saint of
the Revolution, what is the object of the Revolution but to give to
the lowly the fortunes of the great?[33141] In all national sales
everywhere, in guarding sequestrations, in all revolutionary ransoms,
taxes, loans and seizures, the same excellent argument prevails;
nowhere, in printed documents or in manuscripts, do I find any
revolutionary committee which is at once terrorist and honest. Only,
it is rare to find specific and individual details regarding all the
members of the same committee.--Here, however, is one case, where, owing
to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe
in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the
dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what
suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite
sort of rapine.--At Nantes, "Pinard, the great purveyor of the
Committee,[33142] orders everything that each member needs for his daily
use to be carried to his house."--"Gallou takes oil and brandy,"
and especially "several barrels from citizen Bissonneau's
house."--"Durassier makes domiciliary visits and exacts contributions;"
among others "he compels citizen Lemoine to pay twenty-five hundred
livres, to save him from imprisonment."--"Naud affixes and removes
seals in the houses of the incarcerated, makes nocturna