The president [Robespierre] announces that a large number of Parisian citizens were requesting permission to enter the chamber and have their delegation present a petition.
The delegation is introduced, headed by the mayor and several municipal officers.
Chaumette: Citizen legislators, the citizens of Paris are tired of a situation that has been uncertain and wavering for too long and want to settle their fate once and for all. EuropeÕs tyrants, along with the stateÕs internal enemies, persist outrageously in their hideous plot to starve the French People into submission and to force them to shamefully trade their liberty and sovereignty for a piece of breadÑsomething they will certainly never do.
New lords, just as cruel, just as greedy, and just as brazen as those they replaced, have risen up in the ruins of feudalism. They have leased or bought the properties of their former masters and continue to follow the well-worn paths of crime, to profit from public misery, to stem the tide of abundance, and to tyrannize those who destroyed tyranny.
Another class, as greedy and as criminal as the first, has seized control of [the supply of] basic necessities. You have dealt them a blow, but they were only dazed. They continue to plunder beneath the very nose of the law.
You have passed wise laws, laws that promise happiness. But they have not been implemented because the power to do so is lacking. If you do not create that power quickly, these laws risk becoming obsolete almost at birth.
At this very moment, the enemies of the state are raising their swords against it . . . swords already stained with the state's own blood. You both possess and implement the needed skills which then, in republican hands, change metal into weapons capable of felling tyrants. But where are the hands that can drive these weapons into the traitors' breasts?
Hidden domestic enemies, freely speaking the word "liberty," stem the flow of life. In spite of your benevolent laws, they close granaries and coolly engage in the heinous calculation of how much they stand to make from a famine, a riot, or a massacre. Your spirit buckles at the very thought, so you turn over the granariesÕ keys and the execrable ledgers of these monsters back to the administrators. But where is the strong hand that will forcefully turn that key so fatal to such traitors? Where is that proud and impassible being, unyielding to conspiracy and corruption, who will tear out the pages of the book that has been written with the PeopleÕs blood, immediately commuting it into a death sentence against those who are starving the nation?
Every day we learn of new betrayals and new crimes. Every day we become upset at the discovery and the reappearance of new conspiracies. Every day new disturbances stir up the Republic, ready to drag it into their stormy whirlwinds, hurling it into the bottomless abyss of the centuries to come. But where is that powerful being whose terrible cry will reawaken sleeping justiceÑor rather justice that has been paralyzed, dazed by the clamor of factionsÑand force it at last to strike off criminal heads? Where is that powerful being who will crush all these reptiles who corrupt everything they touch and whose venomous stings stir up our citizens, transforming political gatherings into gladiatorial arenas where each passion, each interest, finds apologists and armies? [...]
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 07:03 pm (UTC)(From the session of 5 September 1793:)
The president [Robespierre] announces that a large number of Parisian citizens were requesting permission to enter the chamber and have their delegation present a petition.
The delegation is introduced, headed by the mayor and several municipal officers.
Chaumette: Citizen legislators, the citizens of Paris are tired of a situation that has been uncertain and wavering for too long and want to settle their fate once and for all. EuropeÕs tyrants, along with the stateÕs internal enemies, persist outrageously in their hideous plot to starve the French People into submission and to force them to shamefully trade their liberty and sovereignty for a piece of breadÑsomething they will certainly never do.
New lords, just as cruel, just as greedy, and just as brazen as those they replaced, have risen up in the ruins of feudalism. They have leased or bought the properties of their former masters and continue to follow the well-worn paths of crime, to profit from public misery, to stem the tide of abundance, and to tyrannize those who destroyed tyranny.
Another class, as greedy and as criminal as the first, has seized control of [the supply of] basic necessities. You have dealt them a blow, but they were only dazed. They continue to plunder beneath the very nose of the law.
You have passed wise laws, laws that promise happiness. But they have not been implemented because the power to do so is lacking. If you do not create that power quickly, these laws risk becoming obsolete almost at birth.
At this very moment, the enemies of the state are raising their swords against it . . . swords already stained with the state's own blood. You both possess and implement the needed skills which then, in republican hands, change metal into weapons capable of felling tyrants. But where are the hands that can drive these weapons into the traitors' breasts?
Hidden domestic enemies, freely speaking the word "liberty," stem the flow of life. In spite of your benevolent laws, they close granaries and coolly engage in the heinous calculation of how much they stand to make from a famine, a riot, or a massacre. Your spirit buckles at the very thought, so you turn over the granariesÕ keys and the execrable ledgers of these monsters back to the administrators. But where is the strong hand that will forcefully turn that key so fatal to such traitors? Where is that proud and impassible being, unyielding to conspiracy and corruption, who will tear out the pages of the book that has been written with the PeopleÕs blood, immediately commuting it into a death sentence against those who are starving the nation?
Every day we learn of new betrayals and new crimes. Every day we become upset at the discovery and the reappearance of new conspiracies. Every day new disturbances stir up the Republic, ready to drag it into their stormy whirlwinds, hurling it into the bottomless abyss of the centuries to come. But where is that powerful being whose terrible cry will reawaken sleeping justiceÑor rather justice that has been paralyzed, dazed by the clamor of factionsÑand force it at last to strike off criminal heads? Where is that powerful being who will crush all these reptiles who corrupt everything they touch and whose venomous stings stir up our citizens, transforming political gatherings into gladiatorial arenas where each passion, each interest, finds apologists and armies? [...]