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"Citizen Danton," wrote the deputy Thomas Paine,1 "the danger, every day increasing, is of a rupture between Paris and departments. The departments did not send their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and every insult shown to them is an insult to the department that elected them. I see but one effective plan to prevent this rupture taking place, and that is to fix the residence of the Convention and of the future assemblies at a distance from Paris. . . . I saw, during the American Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience that arose from having the government of Congress within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and, after a residence of four years, it found it necessary to leave it. It then adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to New York. It again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and, after experiencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of a government within a government, it formed the project of building a town not within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction for the future residence of Congress. In every one of the places where Congress resided, the municipal authority privately or publicly opposed itself to the authority of Congress, and the people of each of those places expected more attention from Congress than their equal share with the other States amounted to. The same thing now takes place in France, but in a greater excess."
Danton knew all this, and he is sufficiently clear-headed to comprehend the danger; but the furrow is laid out, traced, and by himself. Since the 10th of August Paris holds France down while a handful of revolutionaries tyrannize Paris.2
I.
Jacobin advantages. -- Their sway in the section assemblies. -- Maintenance, re-election and completion of the Commune.-- Its new chiefs, Chaumette, Hébert and Pache. -- The National Guard recast. -- Jacobins elected officers and sub-officers.-- The paid band of roughs. -- Public and secret funds of the party.
Owing to the composition and the holding of the section assemblies, the original source of power has remained Jacobin, and has become of a darker and darker hue; accordingly, the electoral processes which, under the legislative body, had fashioned the usurping Commune of the 10th of August, are perpetuated and aggravated under the Convention.3 "In nearly all the sections4 it is the sans-culottes who occupy the chair, arrange things inside the chamber, place the sentinels and provide the censors and auditors. Five or six spies, familiar with the section, and paid forty sous a day, remain during the session, and ready to undertake any enterprise. These same individuals will take orders from one Committee of Surveillance to another, . . so that if the sans-culottes of one section are not strong enough they may call in those of a neighboring section." -- In such assemblies the elections are decided beforehand, and we see how the faction keeps forcibly in its hands, or obtains by force, every elective position. The Council of the Commune, in spite of the hostile inclinations of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, succeeds at first in maintaining itself four months; then, in December,5 when it is at last compelled to break up, it reappears through the authorization of the suffrage, reinforced and completed by its own class, with three chiefs, a syndic-attorney, a deputy and a mayor, all three authors or abettors of the September massacre; with Chaumette, Anaxagoras, so-called, once a cabin-boy, then a clerk, always in debt, a windbag, and given to drink; Hébert, called "Père Duchesne," which states about all that is necessary for him; Pache, a subaltern busy- body, a bland, smooth-faced intriguer, who, with his simple air and seeming worth, pushes himself up to the head of the War Department, where he used all its resources for pillaging, and who, born in a door-keeper's lodgings, returns there, either through craft or inclination, to take his dinner. -- The Jacobins, with the civil power in their hands, also grab the military power. Immediately after the 10th of August,6 the National Guard is reorganized and distributed in as many battalions as there are sections, each battalion thus becoming "a section in arms"; by this we may judge its composition, and the kind of rabble-rousers they select as officers and non- commissioned officers. "The title of National Guard," writes a deputy, "can no longer be given to the lot of pikemen and substitutes, mixed with a few bourgeois, who, since the 10th of August, maintain the military service in Paris." There are, indeed, 110,000 names on paper; when called out on important occasions, all who are registered may respond, if not disarmed, but, in general, almost all stay at home and pay a sans-culotte to mount guard in their place. In fact, there is for the daily service only a hired reserve in each section, about one hundred men, always the same individuals. This makes in Paris a band of four or five thousand roughs, in which the squads may be distinguished which have already been seen in September: Maillard and his 68 men at the Abbaye, Gauthier and his 40 men at Chantilly, Audouin, the Sapper of the Carmelites," and his 350 men in the suburbs of Paris, Fournier, Lazowski and their 1,500 men at Orleans and Versailles.7 As to the pay of these and that of their civil auxiliaries, the faction is not troubled about that; for, along with power, it has seized money. To say nothing of its rapine in September,8 and without including the lucrative offices at its disposition, four hundred of these being distributed by Pache alone, and four hundred more by Chaumette,9 the Commune has 850,000 francs per month for its military police. Other bleedings at the Treasury cause more public money to flow into the pockets of its clients. One million per month supports the idle workmen which fife and drum have collected together to form the camp around Paris. Five millions of francs protect the petty tradesmen of the capital against the depreciation in value of certificates of credit. Twelve thousand francs a day keep down the price of bread for the Paris poor.10 To these regularly allowed subsidies add the funds which are diverted or extorted. On one side, in the War Department, Pache, its accomplice before becoming its mayor, organizes a steady stream of waste and theft; in three months he succeeds in bringing about a deficiency of 130,000,000, "without vouchers."11 On another side, the Duke of Orleans, become Philippe-Egalité, dragged along by the men once in his pay, with a rope around his neck and almost strangled, has to pay out more than ever, even down to the very depths of his purse; to save his own life he consents to vote for the King's death, besides resigning himself to other sacrifices;12 it is probable that a large portion of his 74,000,000 of indebtedness at his death is due to all this. -- Thus in possession of civil and military offices, of arms and money, the faction, masters of Paris, has nothing to do but master the isolated Convention, and this it invests on all sides.13
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