all Emigrants are declared Traitors, their property become National; they are 'dead in Law,'—save, indeed, that for our behoof they shall 'live yet fifty years in Law,' and what heritages may fall to them in that time become National too! A mad vitality of Jacobinism, with Forty-four Thousand centres of activity, circulates through all fibres of France.
Very notable also is the Tribunal Extraordinaire:[1] decreed by the Mountain; some Girondins dissenting, for surely such a Court contradicts every formula;—other Girondins assenting, nay coöperating, for do not we all hate Traitors, O ye people of Paris?—Tribunal of the Seventeenth, in Autumn last, was swift; but this shall be swifter. Five Judges; a standing Jury, which is named from Paris and the Neighbourhood, that there be not delay in naming it: they are subject to no Appeal; to hardly any Law-forms, but must 'get themselves convinced' in all readiest ways; and for security are bound 'to vote audibly'; audibly, in the hearing of a Paris Public. This is the Tribunal Extraordinaire; which, in few months, getting into most lively action, shall be entitled Tribunal Révolutionnaire; as indeed it from the very first has entitled itself: with a Herman or a Dumas for Judge-President, with a Fouquier-Tinville for Attorney-General, and a Jury of such as Citizen Leroi, who has surnamed himself Dix-Août, 'Leroi August-Tenth,' it will become the wonder of the world. Herein has Sansculottism fashioned for itself a Sword of Sharpness: a weapon magical; tempered in the Stygian hell-waters; to the edge of it all armour, and defence of strength or of cunning shall be soft; it shall mow down Lives and Brazen-gates; and the waving of it shed terror through the souls of men.
But speaking of an amorphous Sansculottism taking form, ought we not, above all things, to specify how the Amorphous gets itself a Head? Without metaphor, this Revolution Government continues hitherto in a very anarchic state. Executive Council of Ministers, Six in number, there is: but
- ↑ Moniteur, No. 70 (du 11 Mars), No. 76, etc.
