38 CARNOT, 



even to excuse, those bloody saturnalia, by referring them 

 to the will of the people. But if I judge of the people 

 of 1793, whom I have not known, by that which I saw 

 in action in 1830, the explanation is false. I do not 

 hesitate to say so. The people in a moment of efifer- 

 vescence and blindness, sometimes fall into culpable 

 actions, but it has never associated itself with daily 

 barbarities. It is degrading the people to say, that fear 

 only could drive it to meet inimical hordes : nor are its 

 sentiments better known, when it is insinuated that it 

 wished for the death of one of the members of this 

 Academy who honoured France by his genius ; and the 

 death of another of our co-academicians, who did honour 

 to human nature by his vh-tue^ No, Gentlemen ; no ! 

 in the noble country of France, the death of Lavoisier, 

 the death of Malesherbes, could not be ordered by con- 

 siderations for the public good. No excuses for such 

 crimes ; they must be branded to-day, they must be 

 branded to-morrow ; they must be branded for ever. 

 Devoted by sentiment, by conviction, by the irresistible 

 power of logic to the worship of liberty, let us repel far 

 from us the execrable thought, that the scaflfold is the 

 inevitable auxihary of democracy. 



The crimes that I have been openly denouncing have 

 been in some measure personified by France, by Europe, 

 by the whole world : these crimes are Robespierre ! 

 Some young, some estimable writers, who are now de- 

 spoiling our revolutionary annals with the indefatigable 

 patience of the Benedictines of former ages, think they 

 have discovered that public opinion is quite wrong. 

 According to them, llobespierre and his partisans have 

 much less contributed to the sanguinary acts of terror, 

 than the Billaud-Vai'cnnes, the Collot d'Herbois, or the 



