Document – Maximilien de Robespierre, “Report of the Principles of Public Morality” (1794)

Document

But what is our goal, the point toward which we are striving? The peaceful enjoyment of freedom and equality; the rule of that Eternal Justice whose laws are not carved in marble or stone but are inscribed in the hearts of all men – even the heart of a slave, who forgets them, and that of a tyrannical ruler, who denies them. We seek an ordering of society in which all base and cruel passions are held in check, and all benevolent and generous passions are brought to life, by laws; in which the noblest ambition is to earn glory and serve the nation; in which social honors are based on the fundamental notion of equality; in which any given citizen is subject to the magistrate, while the magistrate is subject to the people, and the people to the cause of justice …. . We desire a society in which morality takes the place of egotism; integrity takes that of formal codes of behavior; principles replace habits; the rule of reason substitutes for the tyranny of tradition – scorn of vice takes the place of scorn of the unfortunate, the love of honor takes over for the love of money, and good people replace “proper society.” We want a society in which merit replaces intrigue, genius replaces wit, truth replaces glamour, genuine happiness displaces luxurious boredom, and human greatness displaces the pettiness of “great people.” …. . In short, a society in which the miraculous virtue of a republic takes the place of the ridiculous vice of a monarchy ….

A democratic state is one in which the sovereign people, guided by laws of their own making, do for themselves everything that they can do effectively, and their representatives, guided by those same laws, do everything that they cannot. This is why you must seek the rules for your political conduct in the principles of democracy. But before we can lay the foundations of democracy and set them on firm ground, we must first (if we are ever to achieve the stable society ruled by constitutional laws) finish Liberty’s war against Tyranny and pass safely through the storms of Revolution …. . Therefore you ought to conduct yourself with the stormy conditions through which our revolution is passing always in mind. …. . And what is the fundamental principle of our popular democracy, the mainspring that sustains and drives it? Virtue. The type of public virtue that worked wonders in ancient Greece and Rome and is bound to produce even more astonishing feats in republican France …. .

It follows that the first rule of your public conduct should be to dedicate yourselves to equality and virtue …. . and you should embrace everything that inspires patriotism, purifies morals, elevates the soul, and directs the passions of the heart toward serving the public interest …. . Insofar as our French Revolution is concerned, any personal immorality is an attack on our society, any personal corruption is counter-revolutionary. Weakness, vice, and prejudice are paving stones on the road to another monarchy. Under the heavy weight of our former customs, human frailty can succumb to false ideas and faint-hearted sentiments, and thus we are in greater danger from too much weakness that we are from an excess of zeal …. .

But I speak these words not to justify any and all excesses. Even the most sacred of principles can be abused. Our government must be wise enough to allow for circumstances, to seize the right moments, to select the appropriate methods. Proper preparation is necessary to the correct performance of weighty deeds, just as wisdom is a precondition of virtue. From this way of thinking we deduce an important truth: a government of the people must trust those people and be suspicious of itself.

And this is all that would need to be said, if we were steering the great ship of our revolution through calm waters. But storms rage against us, and the condition of our revolution at the moment imposes a special obligation upon all …. .Wicked men with plans in their hearts to steal from the people or who have already done so and now seek impunity, evildoers for whom the liberty of all is a personal tragedy or who have embraced the call of our revolution but treat our republic as an object on which to prey, abound. So many self-serving and greedy men who once stood at our side have now abandoned us and our cause, which they probably never shared with us at all. One could say that two opposed foes – Virtue and Vice – are competing for mastery of the natural world, and at the present hour are fighting to control the destiny of the world. At this moment, in this great epoch of human history, France is the main stage of this titanic struggle. On the outside, all the tyrants of the world have us encircled; on the inside, all their friends are conspiring against us and will keep doing so until there is no hope. Therefore we must either smother our Republic’s internal and external enemies, or perish with them. Our guiding maxim will be to deal with the people by reason, and to the enemies of the people by terror. In peaceful times, of course, virtue is the source from which the people’s government derives its authority. But now, at this point in our revolution, there are two sources: virtue and terror. Virtue, without which terror would be disastrous; and terror, without which virtue is powerless – terror that is nothing more nor less than swift, severe, and unbending justice …. .

Some will say that terror is how a despotism rules. But has our government anything in common with despotism? Yes – but only in the sense that a sword in one hand resembles a sword in another, whether one champions liberty or tyranny. When tyrants hold power because their subjects are terrified of them, then tyrants are justified – but only as tyrants. When we strike down the enemies of liberty by means of terror, we too are justified – but as founders of a republic. The government of our revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

Review

1. 1. What is the context for Robespierre arguing that virtue without terror is disastrous? How does he portray the position of France?

2. 2. What does Robespierre mean by “the government of our revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny”? Can you say that events made “despotism of tyranny against liberty” to be more true?