Carnot saves and employs eminent engineers,
D'Arcon, de Montalembert, d'Obenheim, all of them nobles, and one of
them an anti-Jacobin, without counting a number of accused officers
whom he justifies, replaces, or maintains.[41] - Through these
courageous and humane acts, they solace themselves for their scruples,
at least partially and for the time being; moreover, they are
statesmen only because the occasion and superior force makes it
imperative, more led by others than leading, terrorists through
accident and necessity, rather than through system and instinct. If,
in concert with ten others, Prieur and Carnot order wholesale robbery
and murder, if they sign orders by twenties and hundreds, amounting to
assassinations, it is owing to their forming part of a body. When the
whole committee deliberates, they are bound, in important decrees, to
submit to the preponderating opinion of the majority, after voting in
the negative. In relation to secondary decrees, in which there has
been no preliminary discussion in common, the only responsible member
is the one whose signature stands first; the following signatures
affixed, without reading the document, are simply a "formality which
the law requires," merely a visa, necessarily mechanical; with "four
or five hundred business matters to attend to daily," it is impossible
to do otherwise.
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