- Moreover, it is
just, wise and good "in all that it undertakes, all is virtue and
truth; nothing can be excess, error or crime."[156] It must intervene
when its true representatives are hampered by the law "let it assemble
in its sections and compel the arrest of faithless deputies."[157]
What is more legal than such a motion, which is the only part
Robespierre took on the 31st of May. He is too scrupulous to commit
or prescribe an illegal act. That will do for the Dantons, the
Marats, men of relaxed morals or excited brains, who if need be, tramp
in the gutters and roll up their shirt-sleeves; as to himself, he can
do nothing that would ostensibly derange or soil the dress proper to
an honest man and irreproachable citizen. In the Committee of Public
Safety, he merely executes the decrees of the Convention, and the
Convention is always free. He a dictator! He is merely one of seven
hundred deputies, and his authority, if he has any, is simply the
legitimate ascendancy of reason and virtue.[158] He a murderer! If he
has denounced conspirators, it is the Convention which summons these
before the revolutionary Tribunal,[159] and the revolutionary Tribunal
pronounces judgment on them.
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