- The principal posts, however, are those which subject
lives and freedom to the discretion of those who occupy them: for,
through this more than regal power, they possess all other power, and
such is that of the men composing the forty-eight revolutionary
committees, the bureaus of the Committee of General Security and of
the Commune, and the staff-officers of the armed force. They are the
prime-movers and active incentives of the system of Terror, all picked
Jacobins and tested by repeated selection, all designated or approved
by the Central Club, which claims for itself the monopoly of
patriotism, and which, erected into a supreme council of the party,
issues no patent of orthodoxy except to its own henchmen.[33]
They immediately assume the tone and arrogance of dictatorship. "
Pride has reached its highest point:[34] ... One who, yesterday, had
no post and was amiable and honest, has become haughty and insolent
because, deceived by appearances, his fellow-citizens have elected him
commissioner, or given him some employment or other." Henceforth, he
behaves like a Turkish agha amongst infidels, and, in command, carries
things out with a high hand.
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