d April 6, 1793,
the Revolutionary Committees and the Revolutionary Tribunal had but
seventeen months in which to do their work. They did not drive ahead
with all their might until after the fall of the Girondists, and
especially after September, 1763 that is to say for a period of eleven
months. Its loose wheels were not screwed up and the whole was not
in running order under the impulse of the central motor until after
December, 1793, that is to say during eight months. Perfected by the law
of Prairial 22, it works for the past two months, faster and better than
before, with an energy and rapidity that increase from week to week.--At
that date, and even before it, the theorists have taken the bearings of
their destinies and accepted the conditions of their undertaking. Being
sectarians, they have a faith, and as orthodoxy tolerates no heresy, and
as the conversion of heretics is never sincere or durable, heresy can
be suppressed only by suppressing heretics. "It is only the dead,"
said Barere, Messidor 16, "who never return." On the 2nd and 3rd
of Thermidor,[4140] the Committee of Public Safety sends to
Fouquier-Tinville a list of four hundred and seventy-eight accused
persons with orders "to bring the parties named to trial at once."
Baudot and Jean Bon St. Andre, Carrier, Antonelle and Guifroy, had
already estimated the lives to be taken at several millions and,
according to Collot d' Herbois, who had a lively imagination, "the
political perspiration should go on freely, and not stop until from
twelve to fifteen million Frenchmen had been destroyed."[4141]

To make amends, in the fourth and last division of their work, that is
to say, in spoliation, they went to the last extreme: they did all that
could be done to ruin individuals, families and the State; whatever
could be taken, they took.--The Constituent and Legislative Assemblies
had, on their side, begun the business by abolishing tithes and all
feudal rights without indemnity, and by confiscating all ecclesiastical
property; the Jacobin operators continue and complete the job; we have
seen by what decrees and with what hostility against collective and
individual property, whether they attribute to the State the possession
of all corporations whatever, even laic, such as colleges, schools and
scientific or literary societies, hospitals and communes, or whether
they despoil individuals, indirectly through assignats and the maximum,
or directly through the forced