simplified as much as possible; flimsy proofs which would not have sufficed for ordinary crimes were accepted; the endeavour was to make a terrible and profoundly intimidating example. All this is to be found in Robespierre's legislation. The law of the 22nd Prairial lays down rather vague definitions of political crime, so as not to let any enemy of the Revolution escape; and the kind of proofs required are worthy of the purest tradition of the Old Régime and of the Inquisition. "The proof necessary to condemn the enemies of the people is any kind of document, material, moral, verbal or written, which can naturally obtain the assent of any just and reasonable mind. Juries in giving their verdict should be guided solely by what love of their country indicates to their conscience; their aim is the triumph of the republic and, the ruin of its enemies." We have in this celebrated Terrorist law the strongest expression of the theory of the predominance of the State.[1]
The philosophy of the eighteenth century happened to render these methods still more formidable. It professed, in fact, to formulate a return to natural law; humanity had been till then corrupted by the fault of a small number of people whose interest it had been to deceive it; but the true means of returning to the principles of primitive goodness, of truth, and of justice had at last been discovered; all opposition to so excellent a reform, one so easy to apply and so certain of success, was the most criminal act imaginable; the innovators were resolved to show themselves inexorable in destroying the evil influence which bad citizens might exercise for the purpose of hindering the regeneration of humanity. Indulgence was a culpable weakness, for it amounted to nothing less than the sacrifice of the happiness of multitudes to the caprices of incorrigible people, who gave
- ↑ The details themselves of this law can only be explained by comparing them with the rules of the old penal law.
