Rigor against the Upper Classes.
The rigor of the revolutionary laws increase according to the
elevation of the class. - The Notables properly so called attacked
because of their being Notables. - Orders of Taillefer, Milhaud, and
Lefiot. - The public atonement of Montargis.
For the same reason, as far as the notables, properly so-called, are
concerned, it bears down still more heavily, not merely on the nobles
because of ancient privileges, not merely on ecclesiastics on the
score of being insubordinate Catholics, but on nobles, ecclesiastics
and bourgeois in their capacity of notables, that is to say, born and
bred above others, and respected by the masses on account of their
superior condition. - In the eyes of the genuine Jacobin, the
notables of the third class are no less criminal than the members of
the two superior classes. "The bourgeois,[113] the merchants, the
large proprietors," writes a popular club in the South, "all have the
pretension of the old set (des ci-d?vants)." And the club complains of
"the law not providing means for opening the eyes of the people with
respect to these new tyrants." It is horrible! The stand they take is
an offense against equality and they are proud of it! And what is
worse, this stand attracts public consideration! Consequently, "the
club requests that the revolutionary Tribunal be empowered to consign
this proud class to temporary confinement," and then "the people would
see the crime it had committed and recover from the sort of esteem in
which they had held it.
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