The Republic was insolvent,
and must have money, as it must have men. If the government needed men,
it took them,--all. If it needed money, and a man were rich, it did not
hesitate to execute him and confiscate his property. There are very
famous examples of all these phenomena strewn through the history of the
Terror.
The Girondists were liberals. They always had been liberals; they had
never conspired against the Republic; but they were impracticable. The
ablest of them, Vergniaud, complained before the Tribunal, that he was
being tried for what he thought, not for what he had done. This the
government denied, but it was true. Nay, more; he was tried not for
positive but for negative opinions, and he was convicted and executed,
and his friends were convicted and executed with him, because, had they
remained in the Convention, the Dictatorship, through their opposition,
would have lost its energy. Also the form of the conviction was shocking
in the extreme. The defence of these twenty-one men was, practically,
suppressed, and the jury were directed to bring in a verdict of guilty.
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