Barère’s defence of the Revolutionary Government against the charge of dictatorship (11 Germinal, Ye

Barère’s defence of the Revolutionary Government against the charge of dictatorship (11 Germinal, Year II)One has spokenof dictatorship, this word has resounded in my ear for fifteen minutes [duringthe interventions of Delmas and Legendre], it is essential to destroy such anidea. I see that the friends of the convicts are the only ones who havetrembled for liberty. I only know dictatorship when one man takes all masks:sometimes the one of audacity, sometimes the one of suppleness ; when onesurrounds oneself with friends, when one forms a party, when one walks [with] atroop of clients in one’s wake.What! therewould be a dictatorship in the committees which are removable every month,every minute. On the day where they will not have defended liberty, where theywill not have protected your borders, where they will have neglected to fightthe factions that are enemies of liberty, the denunciation will be brought tothis tribune, and I, a member of this committee, will myself be the first oneto support them.Can one speak ofdictatorship there, where there are committees which are responsible everyminute, which only draw their authority from the National Convention, and whichreport to it what they do?I have said thatyou would not set an example of an aristocratic senate, whose members wouldhave more rights than the other citizens. […]Source: Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, t. 32, p. 74f. -- source link

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