Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it is curious to remark
how the nerve and vigor of his style, which had spoken so potently to
his sovereign, is relaxed when he addresses himself to the
_sans-culottes,_--how that strength and dexterity of arm, with which he
parries and beats down the sceptre, is enfeebled and lost when he comes
to fence with the poniard. When he speaks to the populace, he can no
longer be direct. The whole compass of the language is tried to find
synonymes and circumlocutions for massacre and murder. Things are never
called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes _agitation_,
sometimes _effervescence_, sometimes _excess_, sometimes too continued
an exercise of a _revolutionary power_.
However, after what had passed had been praised, or excused, or
pardoned, he declares loudly against such proceedings _in future_.
Crimes had pioneered and made smooth the way for the march of the
virtues, and from that time order and justice and a sacred regard for
personal property were to become the rules for the new democracy. Here
Roland and the Brissotins leagued for their own preservation, by
endeavoring to preserve peace. This short story will render many of the
parts of Brissot's pamphlet, in which Roland's views and intentions are
so often alluded to, the more intelligible in themselves, and the more
useful in their application by the English reader.
Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot, and their party
hoped to gain the bankers, merchants, substantial tradesmen, hoarders of
assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and
gentry to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to
the effects which they possessed, whether these effects were the
acquisitions of fair commerce, or the gains of jobbing in the
misfortunes of their country and the plunder of their fellow-citizens.
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