ROBESPIERRE

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 February 1935, Page 12

ROBESPIERRE

THE' VIRTUOUS TYRANT. “Maxtmilien Robespierre: A Study in Deterioration,” by Reginald Somerset Ward, is reviewed as follows, by Desmond McCarthy, in the London “Sunday Times”): — This is a good biography and a contribution to the best literature on the French Revolution. It is firmly based on research, and the facts are so arranged that the reader is left free to form his own conclusions, though he is given the author’s interpretation of them. How rare this is, readers of modern biography know. Mr. Somerset Ward’s subject is the gradual deterioration of a soul. How was it that in Robespierre, a man of many virtues : and good impulses, those virtues turned sour and those impulses were devoured by a selfrighteous egotism? This is the focus he has chosen, though we are by no means stinted of general history. There are three factors, he says, which determine changes in a personality: the soul, .heredity, and environment.W Self-determination is the work of the soul, and its instrument is the will. A man’s personality, therefore, may approximate to his ideals or recede from them. The author is of the opinion that the causes of this approximation or recession are to be understood best by studying the lives of individuals; and it is because Robespierre- presents. ,an example of the working of these laws that he has chosen him as a subject, not because he figured in 'events to the imaginatoin, though' lie interests us in those events. It would be hard to find “in the history of the French Revolution ,a more, striking example qf’the effects produced by changes in the - soul and their far-reaching influence on the mass of mankind.” These far-reaching influences start from a comparatively'small flaw in .Robespierre’s character, which in many ways was a most' respect-worthy one, till they grow and spread into forces of general destruction. The author’s object has been to discover a general truth beneath the intricacies of a particular career. The memory of Robespierre was held in such ; detesitajtion ‘after Ms death that a great deal of the evidence available for judging him was destroyNo one wanted his friendship or with him to be remembered, even as long as 50 years after his death.

He came of legal stock, and a meti•culous uprightness and a tendency,to emphasise the letter rather than the spirit, characteristic of the legal mind, appear. throughout his career. Mr. Somerset Ward is inclined (and I think he is right) to emphasise the great importance of the disgrace which fell upon the family through his father when he was a child. The elder Robespierre was dishonest, and his children were brought up in the shadow Of shame. They were very poor, and dependent .upon the charity of relations. During his boyhood Robespierre was acutely conscious of his responsibilities as the eldest son of a broken family, and of a feeling of inferiority, which he tried to correct by unusual diligence and. rectitude. Chapters 111 and IV deal with his education and his behaviour as a youth and a boy. Careful use has been made here of the evidence available—often contradictory. They leave the impression of an anxious boy mortified by injustice. This sense of. injustice found, by the bye, vent in what was almost-Robespierre’s first essay, where he pleaded that guilt in one member of a family ought never to be visited by social disapproval towards other members of it, desirable as solidarity in honour .and disgrace might be from many points pf view.

i HIS PUBLIC BEGINNINGS. I The crucial influence on his youth. ■ however, was that of Rousseau. Read- > ing Rousseau exaggerated the boy’s I sense:of social grievances and encour- . aged his solitary habits (this must s be placed to the bad account); but it also encouraged in him democratic ; sympathies, which are discernible in I his family. For several generations, i though belonging to the little - noblesse >de la Robe,” they had repeatedly ■ married’beneath their social status. At > this poifit in the book we find an excel- [ lent statement of Rousseau’s philos- • ophy and its effect on Robespierre. To • both the conception of “the people” I meant not the whole population but > the poor and downtrodden. We are given an excellent account of his early > career at the Bar, a period of his life s when he seems to have been most am- ■ iable and sociable, and of the effect • upon him of defending his clients. In 1789 Robespierre wrote an appre-

1 ciation of Charles Dupaty, an eminent t lawyer, whom he had once met. Du- - paty had died in the previous year. - The work is a mirror of Maximil.ien’s ow»t feelings at the end of his legal ; career in Arras. In it he says: “He j who aspires to the glory of being use- - ful to his fellow-citizens must recog- > nise that hatdred and vengeance will ■ ally themselves with envy to bring • about his destruction. Such has ever ■ been the destiny of great men.” ; It was “this confusion betwixt his . cause and himself, betwixt attacks on his person and his ideal, betwixt zeal for the truth and anger at being attacked” which his election as a Deputy to the States-General made visible. Even during his practice at the Bar he was already tending to notice first the personal aspect of everything that happened. The chapter called “The Apprenticeship of Power” gives an admirable account of the point of view of the Deputies compared with that of the Court, and of the confusion in the Sessions of the Assembly; though it is upon the substance of the Declaration of Rights and what it meant to Robespierre that attention is chiefly directed. It is interesting to note that about this time he made an eloquent speech against capital punishment. He was still neither definitely monarchical nor Republican in his views, but his suspicion of Louis XVI was growing and confirmed by the King's second attempt to escape. What he insisted on in his speeches was that the King was subject to the law. His speeches were logical rather than eloquent, and of a very high moral tone. Had any' Jacobin been asked what Robespierre | thought was the most important factor in the Government of a nation he would have replied unhesitatingly, Virtue. The other source of his power lay in his rarely speaking without denouncing somebody or other. He had no hand in the massacres in the pris- ■ ons, but he excused them. It seems clear thht Taliien, the Sec- 1 retary of the Commune, played a lead- 1 ing part in organising the murders. ' Danton, whose responsibility was sec- ' ondary rather than primary, probably gave the true explanation of the affair 1

to the future Louis Philippe. “At the moment,” he said, “when all the male population is rushing into the army, leaving us defenceless in Paris, the prisons are filled to overflowing with scoundrels and conspirators, who await the arrival of the invader in order to .murder us. I have only forestalled them. I desired that all the youth of Paris should reach Champagne stained with a blood which shall assure us of their fidelity. I desired to set. between them and the emigres a river of blood.” It must be remembered that to Robespierre’s nature and principles cruelty was abhorrent; and from the moment he excused the massacres the moral basis of his character crumbled. He yielded henceforth to every temptation which besets a man who addresses his fellow men from a lofty platform and believes his power to be their salvation. THE END AND THE MORAL. The effect of power was to alter at once one of his strongest and oldest principles, the freedom of the Press; and .on the charges he brought against Danton, Mr. Ward’s comment is that they prove how far the disease of self-idolatry had eaten him up. The perfect State was to be attained through Virtue and Terror. “Virtue without which Terror is baneful, Terror without which Virtue is powerless.” Danton was insufficiently virtuous. On February 6, 1794, Robespierre declared that “The Terror is nothing else save Justice prompt, severe, and inflexible. It is therefore an emanation of Virtue, and he proceeded to identify Virtue with himself. “A marked symptom,” says his biographer, “of Robespierre’s spiritual disease was the rapid development of the inquisitorial side of his character.” He became keener and keener on “purifying.” It was an exciting game with the prison and the guillotine as forfeits. He acted on the principle of his friend Aigon, “Everything is lawful to virtue in order to triumph over vice.”

The last chapter describes and analyses the causes of Robespierre’s fall. The description of his last hours is one of the few occasions on which the author employs the dramatic method, and he shows that he can do such things very well. We can always, I think, count on his accuracy. Others have told the story of those last hours, but what has not been done to my knowledge as well is the exposition of the fatal mistakes which Robespierre made in his last speech in his own defence. Katherine of Russia had a set of maxims, one of which ran, “Voltaire, my teacher, forbade predictions because those who are given to predicting love to make systems. Whoever constructs systems wishes to flt in all that has happened and all that has not happened. The love of the system becomes pride and breeds obstinacy, intolerance, persecution.” For all these terrible repudiations of the ideals of Law and Order one devastating process was responsible. The personal aspect of all the MaximilI ien did or thought or suffered increased in his mind, and crept like a shadow over his outlook on life. Thus, at last, his own judgment be-1 came in his own eyes a substitute for I the law. The great objective ideal of 1 Justice had been eclipsed by the be- 1 lief in his own infallibility, and the light of his soul was darkened by the eclipse. It was inevitable that he should come to his end in an insurrection against the lawful Assembly of < the nation.

This is a remarkable and interesting book—with a moral.