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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

[118]

IX. The Jacobin Citizen Robot.
Two characteristics of the upper class, wealth and education. - Each
of these is criminal. - Measures against rich and well-to-do people.
- Affected in a mass and by categories. - Measures against cultivated
and polite people. - Danger of culture and distinction. -
Proscription of "honest folks."
Two advantages, fortune and education, each involving the other, cause
a man to be ranked in the upper class; hence, one or the other,
whether each by itself or both together, mark a man out for
spoliation, imprisonment and death. - In vain may he have
demonstrated his Jacobinism, and Jacobinism of the ultra sort.
H?rault-S?chelles, who voted for murdering the King, who belongs to
the Committee of Public Safety, who, in the Upper-Rhine, has just
carried out the worst revolutionary ordinances,[119] but who has the
misfortune to be rich and a man of the world, is led to the scaffold,
and those devoted to the guillotine readily explain his condemnation:
he is no patriot, - how could he be, enjoying an income of two hundred
thousand livres, and, moreover, is he not a general-advocate?[120] One
of these offenses is sufficient.


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