They were under the coercion of public opinion, but were
dragged instead of driven by it. They frequently held back, but this was
merely a halt, which accelerated the rapidity of the march which left
them at the scaffold, where they regained their heroism in the presence
of death, while the bloody mob went on to a similar ending a little
distance beyond.
When the lull came, after the massacre, the two parties stood looking at
each other across the river of blood. The Jacobins accused the
Girondists of being enemies of the country. It is characteristic of
revolutionary times to accuse vaguely and to punish severely. Socrates
died as an alleged corrupter of youth. Pilate, after acquitting Jesus of
the crime of high treason, suffered him to be executed for "teaching
throughout all Jewry." "Roundhead" and "Cavalier" were once expressive
terms of condemnation. In our own times the words "slave-holder,"
"abolitionist," "loyal," "disloyal," and "rebel" have formed the
compendious summing up of years of history. An indictment is compressed
into an epithet in such times. In the time of Madame Roland, to be "a
suspect" was to be punishable with death. So the Jacobins suspected the
Girondists, and accused them of being enemies of France. They introduced
measures which pandered to the bloodthirst of the mob, and for which the
Girondists were compelled either to vote or to draw upon themselves its
vengeance. Madame Roland urged and entreated the Girondists to make one
last struggle for law, liberty, and order, by moving to bring to justice
the ringleaders in the massacre, including the Jacobin chiefs, who
instigated it.
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