to
satiate their greed, their cruelty, their lust.--The latter add
to private appetites a far greater devastation, the systematic and
gratuitous ravages enforced upon them by the superficial theory with
which they are imbued.

*****

[Footnote 3301: "The Revolution," II., pp. 298-304, and p. 351.]

[Footnote 3302: "The Revolution," II., pp.298-304, and p. 351. Should
the foregoing testimony be deemed insufficient, the following, by
those foreigners who had good opportunities for judging, may be added:
(Gouverneur Morris, letter of December 3, 1794.) "The French are plunged
into an abyss of poverty and slavery, a slavery all the more degrading
because the men who have plunged them into it merit the utmost
contempt."--Meissner, "Voyage a Paris," (at the end of 1795,) p. 160.
"The (revolutionary) army and the revolutionary committees were
really associations organized by crime for committing every species of
injustice, murder, rapine, and brigandage with impunity. The government
had deprived all men of any talent or integrity of their places
and given these to its creatures, that is to say, to the dregs of
humanity."--Baron Brinckmann, Charge d'Affaires from Sweden. (Letter of
July 11, 1799.) "I do not believe that the different classes of society
in France are more corrupt than elsewhere; but I trust that no people
may ever be ruled by as imbecile and cruel scoundrels as those that have
ruled France since the advent of its new state of freedom... The dregs
of the people, stimulated from above by sudden and violent excitement,
have everywhere brought to the surface the scum of immorality."]

[Footnote 3303: Fleury, "Babeuf," 139, 150.--Granier de Cassagnac,
"Histoire du Directoire," II., 24-170.--(Trial of Babeuf, passim.) The
above quotations are from documents seized in Babeuf's house, also from
affidavits made by witnesses, and especially by captain Grizel.]

[Footnote 3304: Moniteur, session of September 5, 1793. "Since our
virtue, our moderation, our philosophic ideas, are of no use to us, let
us be brigands for the good of the people; let us be brigands!"]

[Footnote 3305: Babeuf, "Le Tribun du Peuple," No.40. Apologia for the
men of September, "who have only been the priests, the sacrificers of a
just immolation for public security. If anything is to be regretted it
is that a larger and more general Second of September did not sweep away
all starvers and all despoilers."]

[Footnote 3306: Granier de Cas