Topino-Lebrun, the artist,
did understand it. Topino sat on the jury which tried Danton, and
observed that the heart of one of his colleagues seemed failing him.
Topino took the waverer aside, and said: "This is not a _trial_, it is a
_measure_. Two men are impossible; one must perish. Will you kill
Robespierre?--No.--Then by that admission you condemn Danton." Lebrun in
these few words went to the root of the matter, and stated the identical
principle which underlies our whole doctrine of the Police Power. A
political court is not properly a court at all, but an administrative
board whose function is to work the will of the dominant faction for the
time being. Thus a political court becomes the most formidable of all
engines for the destruction of its creators the instant the social
equilibrium shifts. So Danton found, in the spring of 1794, when the
equilibrium shifted; and so Robespierre, who slew Danton, found the next
July, when the equilibrium shifted again.
Danton died on the 5th April, 1794; about three months later Jourdan won
the Fleurus campaign. Straightway Thermidor followed, and the Tribunal
worked as well for the party of Thermidor as it had for the Jacobins.
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