"All aristocrats are corrupt, and every corrupt man is an aristocrat;"
for, "republican government and public morality are one and the same
thing."[134]
Not only do evil-doers of both species tend through instinct and
interest to league together, but their league is already perfected.
One has only to open one's eyes to detect "in all its extent" the plot
they have hatched, "the frightful system of destruction of public
morality."[135] Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonn?, Danton, H?bert, "all of
them artificial characters," had no other end in view : "they
felt[136] that, to destroy liberty, it was necessary to favor by every
means whatever tended to justify egoism, wither the heart and efface
that idea of moral beauty, which affords the only rule for public
reason in its judgment of the defenders and enemies of humanity." -
Their heirs remain; but let those be careful. Immorality is a
political offense; one conspires against the State merely by making a
parade of materialism or by preaching indulgence, by acting
scandalously, or by following evil courses, by stock-jobbing, by
dining too sumptuously; by being vicious, scheming, given to
exaggeration, or "on the fence;" by exciting or perverting the people,
by deceiving the people, by finding fault with the people, by
distrusting the people,[137] short, when one does not march straight
along on the prescribed path marked out by Robespierre according to
principles: whoever stumbles or turns aside is a scoundrel, a traitor.
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