do with it." In fact, this party has but little money, as it generally consists of honourable and unselfish men. They may, when they attain to power, stain their hands with blood, but not with money. This is known, and people have less fear of intriguers who seek for money more than blood.
The guillotinomania which we find among the Republicans has perhaps been caused by the writers and orators who first employed the phrase système de la terreur to characterise the Government which in 1793 employed the extremest measures to save France. Yet the terrorism which was thereby developed was more a mere show than a system,[1] and the terror was as great in the souls of the rulers as in the people. It is folly when people now, to excite to zealous imitation of the man, carry about plaster casts of Robespierre; and it is folly when people would invoke again the language of 1793, as the Amis du Peuple are doing, and acting thereby, without knowing it, as retrogressively as the most zealous champions of the old régime. He who gathers the red flowers which in the spring have fallen from the trees, and would stick them again with wax to the boughs whereon they grew, acts as foolishly as the one who plants cut and faded white lilies in the sand. Republicans
- ↑ The French version here adds "un fait passager."
