Unfortunately, in condemning the terrorists, it pronounced its own
condemnation; for it has authorized and sanctioned all their crimes.
On its benches, in its committees, often in the president's chair, at
the head of the ruling coterie, still figure the members of the
revolutionary government, many of the avowed terrorists like Bourdon
de l'Oise, Bentabolle, Delmas, and Reubell; presidents of the
September commune like Marie Ch?nier; those who carried out "the 31st
of May," like Legendre and Merlin de Douai, author of the decree which
created six hundred thousand suspects in France; provincial
executioners of the most brutal and most ferocious sort, the greatest
and most cynical robbers like Andr? Dumont, Fr?ron, Tallien and
Barras. Under Robespierre, the four hundred mutes "du ventre" were
the reporters, the voters, the claqueurs, and the agents of the worst
decrees against religion, property and persons. The foundations of
Terror were all laid by the seventy-three in confinement before they
were imprisoned, and by the sixteen who were proscribed before their
proscription. Excepting ten or a dozen who stayed away, the
Convention, in a mass, pronounced judgment against the King and
declared him guilty; more than one-half of the Convention, the
Girondists at the head of them, voted his death.
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