self to make known. Nevertheless, I might possibly have been able to publish this work much sooner, had I not been withheld by the apprehension of furnishing fresh pretexts for animosities and persecutions. Now, however, that age presses me, I have decided to let it appear; and I feel the greater confidence in so doing, because, on the one hand, the men of that epoch have almost all disappeared, and because, on the other, the political doctrines of the present day being at an infinite distance from those which were professed by the Democrats of the year IV of the French Republic, there exists no longer any occasion to dread any dangerous application. Besides, it is just that the democratic party should be at length known in its true colours.
Having to render an account of a singularly bold enterprise, I have considered it my duty to make clearly appear in what manner we conducted ourselves; and to this end I have deemed it necessary to bring to recollection the situation in which the Revolution then stood, the successive phases which had marked its progress, and the virtues or vices which appeared to us to have exercised any influence upon it. Accordingly, I have commenced my narration with a rapid retrospect of this Revolution, up to the period of those events which form my subject-matter. I have not pretended to write a history of them, I have only desired to sketch the impressions which we (the conspirators) received from them.
To accomplish the task thus imposed upon me, it was not sufficient to narrate what Babeuf and his friends did, or wished to do, with the view of putting their
