The r?gime of which St. Just
presents the plan, is that by which every oligarchy of invaders
installs and maintains itself over a subjugated nation. Through this
r?gime, in Greece, ten thousand Spartans, after the Dorian invasion,
mastered three hundred thousand helots and p?riocques; through this
r?gime, in England, sixty thousand Normans, after the battle of
Hastings, mastered two million Saxons; through this r?gime in Ireland,
since the battle of the Boyne, two hundred thousand English
Protestants have mastered a million of Catholic Irish; through this
r?gime, the three hundred thousand Jacobins of France will master the
seven or eight millions of Girondins, Feuillants, Royalists or
Indifferents.
This system of government is a very simple one and consist in
maintaining the subject population in a state of extreme helplessness
and of extreme terror. To this end, it is disarmed;[115] it is kept
under surveillance ; all action in common is prohibited ; its eyes
should always be directed to the up-lifted ax and to the prison doors
always open ; it is ruined and decimated. - For the past six months
all these rigors are decreed and applied, -- disarmament of
"suspects," taxes on the rich, the maximum against traders,
requisitions on land-owners, wholesale arrests, rapid executions of
sentences, arbitrary penalties of death, and publicized, multiplied
tortures.
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