laura/antoine, 18, intj, from italy (but half french). bigender (she/her/hers - he/him/his) and hellenic polytheist. history, art, social justice. also les misérables and star wars trash. ( )

Robespierre’s speech at the Jacobin Club (19 July 1794)

rbzpr:

After the reading of the correspondence and the purification of several members, a citizen from Jura reads the petition which he has to present to the Convention against the representative Prost [who was] denounced for having committed abuses of power during his mission in the département. After the intervention of Robespierre, this petition is sent to the Committee of Public Safety.

Dumas informs the Society of the presence of fierce enemies of the patriots [from Jura] in Paris. Upon his demand, the same Committee is asked to examine the political situation in this region.

I do not claim to pronounce any opinion on this affair, because I do not know it [well] enough: but what is about to be said gives place to the unfortunate reflections which I cannot help myself from announcing to you.

When I have taken at this tribune the parole against those who seek to smother the complaints of oppressed innocence and patriotism, I well expected that one would abuse my complaints, and that those who had rendered them necessary would seek to turn them to the benefit of their perversity. This only applies to those who want identify themselves with the Convention, and to fill it with their own concerns, in order to conspire against it with impunity. These ones would like to see lavish hazardous denunciations against the representatives of the people, free from blame, or who did not only fail by error, in order to give consistency to their system of terror.

I am far from imputing any such intention at the citizens who come to speak and from believing that their complaints are unfounded: I am equally far from thinking that counter-revolutionary hypocrites were able to fool the religion of the representative of the people, and to oppress the good citizens. This is an injustice which the government will have to fix: but I say that the citizen Prost does not bear the trait of a conspirator and of a party chief.

Nothing is easier than rendering justice to citizens who have complaints to make, without finding guilty [persons] among the representatives who have only been deceived. One has to be able to distinguish the measures [that were] dictated in a moment of error from those who have been meditated by a profound malice.

Far from wanting to repulse by these reflections the complaints of oppressed patriots, I only wanted to draw their attention on the precautions which the wickedness of their enemies imposes on them sometimes. They would like to see the pure men [being] accused, or denounced, measureless, error as crime itself, in order to thereby accredit this awful and tyrannical principle, invented by the guilty, that denouncing an unfaithful representative is conspiring against the national representation.

You can see between what reefs their perfidy forces us to march: but we will avoid the wrecking. The Convention is pure, mostly: it is superior to fear, as to crime. It has nothing in common with a handful of conspirators. For myself, whatever may happen, I declare to the counter-revolutionaries who only want to seek their salvation in the ruin of the patrie, that despite all the intrigues directed against me, I will continue to unmask the traitors and to defend the oppressed.

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