Among
the terrorists none was more ardent and indefatigable than Saint-Just,
a young fanatic of unimpeachable probity, who, as a member of the Committee
of Public Safety and as agent of the Convention in the provinces, urged
on the war against all the enemies of the Revolution, whether within
or without France. He was a firm friend and admirer of Robespierre and
suffered death with him on the 10th Thermidor (July 28, 1794). He left
behind him some unpublished notes on republican institutions written
during his last months, when he foresaw that, among so many opponents
of his exalted ideas, he was likely to lose his life. The few selections
which are given below serve to show how Saint-Just, Robespierre, and
their sympathizers proposed to elaborate and to carry out, at the cost
of no matter how much bloodshed, the ideas of Rousseau, whose ardent
disciples they were.
I challenge
you to establish liberty so long as it remains possible to arouse the
unfortunate classes against the new order of things, and I defy you
to do away with poverty altogether unless each one has his own land.
. . . Where you find large landowners you find many poor people. Nothing
can be done in a country where agriculture is carried on on a large
scale. Man was not made for the workshop, the hospital, or the poorhouse.
All that is horrible. Men must live in independence, each with his own
wife and his robust and healthy children. We must have neither rich
nor poor.
The poor
man is superior to government and the powers of the world; he should
address them as a master. We must have a system which puts all these
principles in practice and assures comfort to the entire people. Opulence
is a crime : it consists in supporting fewer children, whether one’s
own or adopted, than one has thousands of francs of income. . . Children
shall belong to their mother, provided she has suckled them herself,
until they are five years old ; after that they shall belong to the
republic until death. The mother who does not suckle her children ceases
to be a mother in the eyes of the country. Child and citizen belong
to the country, and a common instruction is essential. Children shall
be brought up in the love of silence and scorn for fine talkers. They
shall be trained in laconic speech. Games shall be prohibited in which
they declaim, and they shall be habituated to simple truth.
The boys
shall be educated, from the age of five to sixteen, by the country;
from five to ten they shall learn to read, write, and swim. No one shall
strike or caress a child. They shall be taught what is good and left
to nature. He who strikes a child shall be banished. The children shall
eat together and shall live on roots, fruit, vegetables, milk, cheese,
bread, and water. The teachers of children from five to ten years old
shall not be less than sixty years of age. . . . The education of children
from ten to sixteen shall be military and agricultural.
Every man
twenty-one years of age shall publicly state in the temples who are
his friends. This declaration shall be renewed each year during the
month Ventose. If a man deserts his friend, he is bound to explain his
motives before the people in the temples; if he refuses, he shall be
banished. Friends shall not put their contracts into writing, nor shall
they oppose one another at law. If a man commits a crime, his friends
shall be banished. Friends shall dig the grave of a deceased friend
and prepare for the obsequies, and with the children of the deceased
they shall scatter flowers on the grave. He who says that he does not
believe in friendship, or who has no friends, shall be banned of ingratitude
shall be banished. A man convicted of ingratitude shall be banished.
The French
people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality
of the soul. The first day of every month is consecrated to the Eternal.
Incense shall burn day and night in the temples and shall be tended
in turn for twenty-four hours by the men who have reached the age of
sixty. The temples shall never be closed. The French people devote their
fortunes and their children to the Eternal. The immortal souls of all
those who have died for the fatherland, who have been good citizens,
who have cherished their father and mother and never abandoned them,
are in the bosom of the Eternal.
The first
day of the month Germinal the republic shall celebrate the festival
of the Divinity, of Nature, and of the People; the first day of the
month Floreal, the festival of the Divinity, of love, and of husband
and wife, etc.
Every year
on the first day of Floreal the people of each commune shall select,
from among the inhabitants of the commune, and in the temple, a young
man rich and virtuous and without deformity, at least twenty-one years
of age and not over thirty, who shall in turn select and marry a poor
maiden, in everlasting memory of human equality.