33. february 15,1793: condorcet presents his constitution ... · to the convention on february 15...

236 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CONVENTION

that the cause of the Africans will be pleaded in vain. You will sustain it with all the force of your eloquence, regenerators of the national felicity, intrepid protectors of oppressed peoples. After having founded French prosperity on liberty, equality, and virtue, you will direct toward the dark regions of colonial slavery these rays of truth that disperse all kinds of tyranny as the morning sun dissipates the night mists. You will proscribe this system of oppression and bloodshed which costs the barbarian who perpetuates it so many crimes, and the sensitive man who deplores it so many tears, and the unfortunate who is its victim so much suffering. The nations whose gaze is upon you, who admire you and prepare to imitate you, will recognize that if reason, intellect, and courage are enough to enable the French Republic to re-establish nations in the sovereignty that kings had usurped, it is through justice, morals, fraternity, and the exercise of all the social virtues that you will consolidate the work of universal regeneration. And through this profound respect for individual liberty, this proscription of every calculation founded on murder and enslavement, this abolition of all usages contrary to the rights of nations or of individuals, you will cause your political principles to be cherished, you will tear out the last roots of feudal aristocracy, and you will merit, finally, the glorious title of LIBERATORS OF THE TWO WORLDS.

33. February 15,1793: Condorcet Presents His

Constitution to the Convention

The Marquis Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat Ie Condorcet is well known as an aristocrat and a philosophe who during the revolution became a democratic theoretician of representative government and the principal author of the so-called Girondin constitution which was presented to the Convention on February 15 and 16, 1793. The constitution, like Condorcet himself, became a victim of the Girondin-Mountain struggle. It was set aside by the Convention, vilified by the leaders of the Mountain, replaced by the Jacobin constitution of 1793, and given little notice by subsequent generations. Condorcet himself, who died in prison in

P. H. Beik (ed.), The French Revolution© Paul H. Beik 1970

CONDORCET PRESENTS HIS CONSTITUTION 237

1794, is much better known for the remarkable Esquisse d'un tableau historique des pro gres de I' esprit humain (1794), which he wrote while outlawed and in hiding during the Terror. His speech of February 15, 1793, introducing the constitutional project is, however, remarkable in its own right and much less accessible. Not only does it represent an immense effort to solve the theoretical problems of creating a representative democracy; it is also, despite its complexity, a document expressing awareness of the contingencies of the revolutionary crisis and of many of the problems that were to defeat the efforts of Robespierre and the leaders of the Mountain. Condorcet's speech and the constitution, as printed by order of the Convention, total 48 pages each. There can be no question of reproducing here in their entirety even Condorcet's introductory remarks, but their importance as the high point of his life and of his effort to apply the product of his thought to the demands of the revolution, together with the relative neglect that this document has suffered, justifies inclusion of several key passages. Those selected are not descriptions of the contours of the constitution but, rather, reflections on problems of representation and of the revolution. They have been translated from Plan de constitution presente a la Convention nationale, les 15 et 16 fevrier 1793, l'an II de la Republique. Imprime par ordre de la Convention nationale (Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1793) [Part I] Exposition des principes et des motifs du plan presente ... par Ie Comite de constitution, pp. 1-2, 5-7,9-13, 30-33, 46-48. The passages have been given headings describing their contents, and are separated from each other by extra space.

Opening Remarks; the Political Task

To GIVE to a territory of twenty-seven thousand square leagues, inhabited by twenty-five million individuals, a constitution which, based solely on the principles of reason and justice, assures to the citizens the maximum possible enjoyment of their rights; to assemble the parts of this constitution in such a way that the necessity of obedience to the laws and of the submission of individual wills to the general will leaves in existence and uncurtailed the sovereignty of the people, the equality of the citizens, and the exercise of natural liberty: such is the problem that we had to resolve.

Never did a people freer from all prejudices, more emancipated from the yoke of their ancient institutions, offer a better occasion for following, in the making of their laws, only the general principles consecrated by reason; but never, either, did the disturbance caused by so complete a revolution, never did a more active ferment aroused in people's minds, never did the weight


of a more dangerous war, never did greater dislocations in the public economy seem to oppose to the establishment of a constitution more numerous obstacles.

The new constitution must be suitable to a people in whom a revolutionary movement is coming to completion, and yet it must also be suitable for a peaceful people; the constitution must, in calming the agitation without enfeebling the activity of the public spirit, permit this movement to subside without making it more dangerous, repressing it without perpetuating it by illconceived or uncertain measures which would transform this temporary fever into a spirit of disorganization and anarchy.

On Consulting the People's Will via Referendum

In examining the workings of a deliberative assembly, one easily sees that,the discussions that take place in it have two very distinct objectives. Discussion takes place there concerning the principles that must serve as a basis for the decision on a general question; that question is examined in its various parts, and the consequences that would result from different ways of deciding it are indicated. Up to that point, people have all sorts of opinions, all different from each other, and no one opinion has a majority of the votes. Thereafter comes a new discussion: in proportion as the question is clarified, opinions draw nearer and combine with each other; a small number of more general opinions is formed, and soon the question under discussion is reduced to a certain number of more simple questions, clearly posed, on which it is possible to consult the will of the assembly; and one would have attained the point of perfection for this kind of operation if those questions were such that each individual, in responding yes or no to each of them, had truly uttered his wish.

The first kind of discussion does not assume a meeting of men in the same assembly; it can take place as well by the printed word as by the spoken word; perhaps even better.

The second kind of discussion, on the other hand, could not take place between isolated men without interminable delays; the one is sufficient for men who seek only to be enlightened and to form opinions for themselves; the other can be useful only to those who are obliged to pronounce or to prepare a common decision.


Finally, when these two discussions are completed, the moment comes to make a decision; and if the purpose of the questions to be responded to by rising or remaining seated, by adoption or rejection, by yes or by no, is clearly determined, it is evident that the decision is as much an expression of everyone's opinion whether they vote together or separately, by voice vote or by ballot.

Thus the first kind of discussion no more belongs to a deliberative assembly than to isolated men, no more to an assembly with public powers than to a private group.

The second stage of discussion is only possible in a deliberative assembly, and, to be properly conducted, requires a single assembly. It would be almost impossible without an exchange of views in an assembly created for that purpose to prepare the way for decisions by formulating the questions in a clear way, permitting an immediate decision either by this or by any other assembly.

The final decision can be made by votes in separate assemblies, provided that these questions, posed in a manner to be resolved by a simple ye.s or no answer, be irrevocably fixed. Then all discussion in these assemblies becomes superfluous: it suffices for there to have been time enough to examine the questions in silence or to discuss them freely in private societies. The objection that in that case the citizens have not been able to take part in the totality of the discussion-that all have not been able to be heard by all-can have no force.

For it is not necessary, in order to decide with full knowledge of the facts, to have read or heard on each subject everything that all other men charged with that same decision have been able to think; it is not necessary to have heard them in preference to others, who may have been able to diffuse more light; it is enough not to have been deprived of any means of instruction, and to have been able to use these means freely. It is up to each individual to choose the method of enlightening himself that best suits him, to adjust the study that he is obliged to make of a question to his own education and intelligence. And certainly experience has proved that men who would like to have read everything written on a subject and heard everything that could have been said about it would in the end make themselves incapable of any decision.

But in order to form a general will from the particular wills of several isolated assemblies, it is necessary that these wills be


exp.cessed on a question definitively posed, and everyone knows to what extent the manner of posing a question can influence the outcome of a decision.

One must therefore regard as illusory the right of decision left to separate assemblies in every case where the form in which the question is posed can influence their will, or even determine it in some way. This method of deciding must therefore not be applied to all kinds of decisions; but it must be reserved for those where, no matter how a proposition may have been posed, it is really possible to fulfill the purpose for which the assemblies were consulted by giving a yes or no answer. One must therefore have recourse to this method only for some propositions; in cases where the refusal to accept a proposition would mean its entire rejection even when only one part of it was objected to, that refusal still expresses the will that one wished to know about when posing the question.

Dangers and Benefits of Consulting Assemblies of the People

The bringing together of citizens in primary assemblies must be considered more a means of reconciling peace with liberty than a danger to public tranquillity. These assemblies, formed of men occupied with peaceful concerns and useful work, cannot be troubled unless a too lengthy session reduces them to a residue of idlers and thereby makes them dangerous, or unless, in leaving them to their own devices, one exposes them to letting themselves be led astray. And so we have neglected no means of conserving all the natural utility of these assemblies, and of forestalling the influence of intrigue.

First, those assemblies in which citizens exercise their rights as members of the sovereign by accepting or rejecting a constitution, by responding to the questions that are put to them in the name of the national representation, by formulating demands concerning the laws and thereby obliging the legislative corps to undertake a considered examination, those assemblies in which the participating citizen votes not for himself alone but for the entire nation, are entirely distinct, both by their form and by their distribution over the territory, from those in which the same citizens could be called upon to deliberate as members of one of the territorial divisions; hence their attention can be


devoted only to questions for the consideration of which the law stipulates their convocation.

Since these same assemblies do not act each for itself but as parts of a whole, never being convoked except to pronounce on questions already set, no discussion should be authorized in them. The citizens who compose them can, to be sure, freely discuss in the meeting place of the assembly, during the interval between the proposing of a question and the decision, the subjects that are submitted for their judgment; but at such times the officers of the assembly exercise no function. This discussion necessarily preserves a private character, and one can neither interfere with the decision nor delay it, since that kind of voluntary meeting, when it does take place, is absolutely distinct from the assembly where the decision must be made.

Localized spontaneous demands and voluntary private gatherings, assuming of their own accord a public character not sanctioned by the law, or municipal or section assemblies which transform themselves into primary assemblies: that is what we wanted to replace by regular and legal demands, by assemblies convoked in the name of the law and exercising, according to legally established procedures, precise and well-defined functions.

By the very nature of things, when individual demands make themselves heard, when the people, agitated by unavoidable anxieties, especially during the birth of a constitution, on the heels of a revolution, either assemble in crowds or respond to these anxieties in assemblies convoked for other reasons, the representatives of the people find themselves placed between two dangers. A facility that could be taken for weakness encourages intrigue and factions, debases the laws, corrupts the national spirit, and leads to a resistance that can bring about insurrections: these insurrections, which can be dangerous for liberty, are always dangerous for peace, and almost necessarily bring misfortunes to some people. If that state of anxiety persists in the people, continual movements place in the way of the tranquillity so necessary to public prosperity ever-recurring obstacles; and, on the contrary, if the people themselves grow weary of these movements, soon the established authorities learn to defy their spiritless and timid demands; and their petitions, tranquilly deposited on some desk or other, serve only to prove their indifference and to encourage the desire to abuse it. Those irregular demands also have the inconvenience of maintaining among the citizens


dangerous errors about the nature of their rights, or of the sovereignty of the people, or of the various powers established by the law.

Finally, there would result a real inequality among the various parts of the republic. In fact, both improperly made claims and the insurrections or the inconveniences that can result from them have a greater force if the place where they occur is the site of the national government, or is nearby, or if the center of agitation is in a city that is richer or more important because of its location and the numerous institutions that have been established there; in such cases certain parts of the territory, because they contain those cities, or because other local circumstances tempt people to conciliate them, and make people afraid of alienating them, may exercise on the entire republic an influence contrary to equality among all the parts of the country-an equality whose most scrupulous conservation is so forcefully demanded by the law of nature, justice, common welfare, and general prosperity.

The procedure proposed by the committee for making demands appears to forestall all of these inconveniences.

An ordinary citizen can request his primary assembly to demand that any law whatever be subjected to a new examination, or to ask that there be provided, through a new law, a remedy to some disorder that he has noticed. The only requirement is that fifty other citizens sign with him not a statement that the proposition is just but one to the effect that it merits submission to a primary assembly.

The primary assembly has the right to convoke, for the purpose of examining the proposition that it has itself admitted, all the assemblies of one of the territorial divisions. If the will of the majority in these assemblies agrees with that of the original primary assembly, then the assemblies of the next higher territorial division are convoked; and if the will of the majority in them still concurs, the assembly of the people's representatives for the whole nation is obliged to examine not the proposition itself but only whether it ought to concern itself with that proposition. If it refuses, all of the primary assemblies in the country are convoked on the same question, still that of whether such a subject ought to be taken under consideration; and then either the will of the majority in the primary assemblies declares itself in favor of the opinion of the national representatives, and the proposition


is rejected, or that majority expresses a contrary view, and the central assembly, which appears in consequence to have lost the national confidence, must be renewed. The new law, which is the result of the demand made by the primary assemblies, is subject to the same contestation and the same censure; with the result that never can the will of the people's representatives or that of the citizens become immune to correction by the general will.

The same rules are observed if there is a question whether to call a Convention charged with presenting to the people a new constitution or a revision of the old one; but it is necessary that the Convention, which will of necessity be directed by the national spirit, have, in any case, the power to present a whole new constitution. It would be absurd for the number of articles that it could reform or correct to be restricted; for the manner of changing them can compel changes in a great number of others; and in a work that must offer a systematic ensemble, every change must entail a general examination in order to harmonize all the parts with the new element introduced into the system.

If the majority desires a Convention, the assembly of national representatives will be obliged to support it. A refusal on its part to convoke the primary assemblies is therefore the only case in which the right of insurrection may be legitimately employed, and then the motive for it would be so clear, so universally felt, and the movement that would result from it would be so general, so irresistible, that this refusal, contrary to a positive law dictated by the nation itself, is beyond all probability. These forms, which an urgent concern can render very prompt, assure nevertheless sufficient mature consideration and force individuals to reflect on the question. The demands of the territorial divisions would all have an equal authority, since they would lead with an equal force, and with all the force of the law, to consultation of the whole people. There would be no pretext for disorderly movements, since such movements could not exist unless they were composed of a part of the people against the whole people, whose decision they would obviously appear to be seeking to prevent or to render useless. No system of intrigue that did not encompass the entire republic could hope for success. The body of national representatives, subject to a legal renewal, could not, in a case of refusal to examine, become the object of resent-


ment; for either the national will would back the decision of the representatives or that body would cease to exist and would thereby cease to incite anxiety. Finally, the execution of provisional laws guarantees public tranquillity; and if, on the one hand, very precise knowledge of the will of an imposing majority crushes all the factions, awareness of a feeble majority, by calling attention to the dangers involved in opposing it, is still enough to rally all the good citizens, all the true patriots, to it, and to cause them to join forces through the momentary sacrifice of their personal opinions.

Besides, a Declaration of Rights adopted by the people, that exposition of the conditions to which each citizen consents in order to enter into the national association, and of the rights that he recognizes in all the others, that limit imposed by the general will on the enterprises of the social authorities, that pact that each of them is pledged to maintain with respect to individuals, is still a powerful protection for liberty and equality, and at the same time a sure guide for the citizens when they formulate demands ....

Equality of Political Rights

Whom does the constitution recognize as having the faculty of exercising the political rights that men have received from nature, and which, like all other rights, are derived essentially from qualities of men as sensitive beings susceptible to moral ideas and capable of reasoning? The publicists are divided on this question between two opposing opinions. Some have regarded the exercise of political rights as a kind of public function for which conditions based on common utility could be required. They have believed that the exercise of the rights of all could be entrusted exclusively to a portion of the citizens so long as that portion had no interest in abusing that trust and could have no motive for doing so, and above all on the condition that there would be reason to believe that they would better exercise those rights for the public utility. They have thought that there would be no real injustice in this distinction if these privileged men were not able to make laws for themselves alone, especially if the exclusion established by law could in some measure be regarded as voluntary, owing to the existence of easy ways to avoid it on the part of those who might wish to do so.


Others thought, on the contrary, that political rights should belong to all individuals with complete equality; and that if one could legitimately subject their exercise to conditions, the only acceptable ones would be those necessary to establish that a given man belonged to a certain nation, and not to another, and, in case all citizens could not vote in the same place, to determine to what assembly each individual should belong.

Until now, all free peoples have accepted the first opinion. The constitution of 1791 also conformed to it; but the second opinion appeared to us more in keeping with reason, with justice, and even with a truly enlightened policy. We did not believe that it was legitimate to sacrifice a natural right recognized by the most simple reasoning to considerations the reality of which is at least uncertain. We felt that it was necessary either to limit ourselves to insignificant distinctions without any real object· or to give to these exclusions a dimension to which an egalitarian, generous, and just people could consent without dishonoring itself.

We did not believe that it was possible, in a nation enlightened concerning its rights, to propose to half of the citizens to abdicate a part of those rights, nor that it was useful to the public tranquillity to separate a people actively occupied with political interests into two parts, of which one would be everything and the other nothing, by virtue of the law, in spite of the will of nature, which, in creating men, wanted all of them to be equal. In ancient times nations were a composite of families for whom a common origin was assumed, or who at least dated back to a first union. Political rights were hereditary, and it was through legal adoption that new families became affiliated. Nowadays it is by territory that nations are distinguishable, and it is the inhabitants of this territory who are naturally the members of each association.

It has been claimed that political rights should appertain only to landed proprietors. But in observing the present order of societies, one can base this opinion only on one argument; one can say that they alone exist on the territory in an independent manner and cannot be excluded from it by the arbitrary will of another. Now, while admitting the pertinence of this reasoning, one sees, in the first place, that it may be used with equal force in favor of those who, through a convention, have acquired the right thus to exist on the territory in an independent manner for a determined period; and if one admits this consequence,


one sees the force of this argument diminish little by little, and the limits of the time during which one would require this independence to last to be impossible to fix except in an uncertain and purely arbitrary manner. It would even be seen before long that the point where this kind of independence ceases is no longer marked clearly enough to serve as a basis for such an important distinction as the enjoyment or deprivation of political rights. The condition of dependence that does not permit the belief that an individual obeys his own will could still doubtless be a motive for exclusion. But we did not believe it possible to assume the existence of such a condition of dependence under a truly free constitution and in the midst of a people whose love of equality is the distinctive characteristic of the public spirit. Social relationships that would support such humiliation cannot persist among us, and must soon take another form. Finally, since the entire code of our laws consecrates civil equality, is it not better that political equality also reign there completely and serve to disperse what remains of that dependence, rather than that the dependence should to some extent be sanctioned by our new laws?

Other considerations have added the final touch to our conclusion. Such is the difficulty of fixing the limits where, in the chain of dependencies that the social order entails, there begins the condition that renders an individual of the human race incapable of exercising his rights. Such is the fear of making still more dangerous the dependence of certain classes of men who would escape from exclusion; that of giving for the future a pretext for new exclusions; and finally that of separating a great number of individuals from the social interest and making them indifferent or even hostile to a liberty that they could not share. Thus we believed that the public interest, in accord with justice, permitted us to refrain from sullying our legal system by any stain of inequality, and for the first time pn earth to conserve in the institutions of a great people the entire equality of nature.

In small states public security can compel considerable restrictions of the exercise of political rights. In such states there can be fear that resident foreigners who share political rights may exercise a dangerous influence, and that they may wish to play the role of citizens in order to carry out projects contrary to the interest of the nation that has allowed them to share its rights. And the more neighboring peoples differ in opinions,


customs, and principles, the more fear is justifiable; but it becomes void for a territory such as that of France, especially under this so wise system of a single republic already unanimously adopted by the National Convention.

Thus every man twenty-one years of age, born in France or having declared his intention of settling here, is admitted, after one year of residence on the territory, to the enjoyment of all the rights of a French citizen; and three months of previous residence will give him the power to exercise them in the place where he will have established his home. An absence of six years not caused by public service will compel, as a prerequisite to renewed exercise of the rights of citizenship, a new residence of six months.

We believed that we should limit the austerity of the law to these simple police precautions, necessary in order not to make admission to the right of citizenship arbitrary, not to expose it to contestations, and for the sake of uniform principles throughout the republic.

Every citizen shall be eligible to all of the positions to be filled by elections.

Only the age of twenty-five years will be a requirement. This interval between admission to citizenship rights and the age of eligibility for holding public office provides the time necessary for judging new citizens, observing their conduct, and recognizing their principles. . . .

Concluding Remarks; Tactics and Principles

Given these salutary arrangements, we may expect that exaggerated enthusiasm and excessive suspicion will disappear, as well as party passions and the fear of factions, the pusillanimity for which all agitation is the dissolution of the State, and the anxiety that suspects tyranny as soon as it perceives order and peace. In every great society that experiences a revolution, men are of two kinds. The one kind is busy with public affairs from interest or from patriotism, appears in all the disputes of opinion, enters all the factions, and supports all the different parties; one would think them the entire nation, while often they are only a feeble portion of it. The' other kind, committed to their work, retained in their personal occupations from necessity or from liking for peace and quiet, love their country without seeking to govern


it, and serve the patrie without wishing to make their opinions or their parties dominant in it. Forced either to split into factions and give their confidence to the leaders of opinion or to be reduced to inactivity and silence, they have need of a constitution to show them in a sure manner what their interest is, and what their duties are, in order that they may learn without difficulty toward what ends they should unite their efforts; and from the moment that their imposing mass is finally in motion toward this common end, the active portion of the citizens ceases to appear to be the whole people. From that moment, individuals are no longer anything and the nation alone exists. Thus it must be expected that all those whose vanity, ambition, or greed requires troubles, all those who fear that the establishment of a peaceful order will once more immerse them in the crowd, lost to public esteem; all those who can be something in a party, and can be nothing in a nation; it must be expected that all those men will unite their efforts in order to retard, to trouble, perhaps to prevent, the establishment of a new constitution. They will be seconded by those who regret some portion of what the revolution has destroyed, who say that the formation of a republic founded on equality is impossible, because they fear to see it established, and by those men, more guilty still, who have calculated that only the long duration of our divisions could give to our foreign enemies victories fatal to liberty.

Thus the intriguers of all descriptions, the aristocrats of all degrees, the conspirators at all levels will have but one will hostile to the establishment of a new constitution, and will employ the same means and speak the same language. If they cannot attack an arrangement too obviously useful or wise, they will accuse those who have proposed or defended it of having secret intentions; for it is easier to cause a suspicion to arise than to destroy a reasonable argument, and even less talent is needed to launch a slander than to construct a sophism.

But the Convention will destroy these shameful hopes; it will hasten to present to the people a constitution worthy of itself and of them; it will know how to distinguish the traps with which its route will be zealously strewn.

The citizens, who all feel the necessity of having, finally, a set of stable laws, will unite with the Convention; they are not unaware that the glory of the Convention, and the fate, for the rest of their lives, of the men who compose it are


linked to the success of this great act of the national will. It is on this basis that the nation, that Europe, that posterity will judge our intentions and our conduct. This idea will sustain their confidence, and they will pronounce with their reason alone on the plan that your wisdom must submit to their sovereign authority.

As for us, we present our work to you with the confidence of men who have sought for that which was useful and just, without passion, without prejudices, without party spirit, without any return for themselves of interest or of vanity, but with that distrust of ourselves rightly inspired in us both by the difficulty of such a task and by all those difficulties inherent in the present circumstances.

The sovereignty of the people, the equality of all men, the unity of the republic-such are the principles which, ever present in our thoughts, guide us in the choice of the arrangements we have adopted, and we have believed that the constitution best in itself, the one most in conformity to the present spirit of the nation, would be that in which these principles would be respected.

Frenchmen, we owe you the whole truth. A constitution simple and well combined, and accepted by you, would not be enough to assure your rights. You will experience neither peace, nor well-being, nor even liberty, if submission to the laws that the people will have adopted is not for every citizen the first of his duties; if this scrupulous respect for law which characterizes free peoples does not extend even to those laws in need of reform for the sake of the public interest; if, charged with choosing the trustees of all authority, you yield to slanderous murmurs instead of listening to the voice of renown; if an unjust suspicion condemns the virtues and talents to retirement and to silence; if you believe the accusers instead of judging the accusations; if you prefer the mediocrity that envy spares to the merit that it enjoys persecuting; if you judge men according to sentiments that are easy to pretend, and not according to a conduct that is difficult to sustain; if, finally, through culpable indifference, citizens do not exercise with calm, with zeal, and with dignity the important functions that the law has imposed on them. Where would liberty and equality be if the law that regulates the rights common to all were not uniformly respected? And what peace, what happiness could a people hope for whose imprudence and


negligence would abandon its interests to incapable or corrupt men? On the other hand, whatever faults a constitution may contain, if it offers means of reforming itself to a people who support the laws, to citizens concerned with the interests of the patrie and responsive to the voice of reason, soon those faults will be corrected, even before they have been able to do harm; thus nature, which has willed that each people be the arbiter of its laws, has made it, equally, the arbiter of its own welfare.

34. March 10,1793: Danton on Crisis Measures

Georges Jacques Danton at the time of this session of the National Convention was in his early thirties and famous for having, as Minister of Justice following the overthrow of the monarchy on August 10, 1792, rallied opinion in the Legislative Assembly and the public to resist the advancing Prussians. By virtue of his office, he had also had a large share of the responsibility for not stopping the September massacres. Danton had given up the ministry to be a Parisian deputy to the Convention, where he found the Girondins cool to his advances and moved toward the Mountain politically. Although haunted by rumors of mismanagement of funds and to some extent by the September massacres, Danton was to go on to become a member of the first Committee of Public Safety, an institution for which, along with the Revolutionary Tribunal, he helped prepare the way in the speeches of March 10, given at a time of crisis when news reports of defeats in Belgium were coming in and there was an atmosphere of mounting tension in the assembly. On this occasion Danton spoke several times. His two principal interventions are given below, separated by bracketed material explaining the course of the debate. The source is the Reimpression de l'ancien Moniteur, Vol. XV (Paris, 1847), pp. 679-680, 683. Danton's speeches were seldom prepared in advance. He seized a moment when he wanted to accomplish something and improvised with great effect, imposing his powerful voice and personality.

National Convention. Gensonne, President. Continuation of the Session of

Sunday, March 10.

DANTON: The general considerations which have been presented to you are true; but it is less a question at this time of examining

33. february 15,1793: condorcet presents his constitution ... · to the convention on february 15...

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