November 21, 1793 – Jacobin Club (extracts only)
(provided by Ayumi Mizota - translator unknown)
Some
have supposed that the Convention, in accepting civic offering has proscribed
the Catholic religion. No, the convention has not taken this rash step, and
will never take it. Its intention is to maintain the freedom of religion that
it has proclaimed, and to repress at the same time those who would abuse their
freedom to trouble public order. It will not allow peaceable ministers of
religion to be persecuted, but it will punish them severely whenever they
dare to use their functions for the deceptions of citizens or the arming of
prejudice and royalism against the Republic. Priests have been denounced for
saying the mass; they will say it longer if an attempt is made to prevent
them. He who would prevent them is more a fanatic than he who says the mass.
Some would go further. Under pretence of destroying superstition they would
make a kind of religion of atheism itself. Any philosopher, any individual
may have on that matter whatever opinion he please. Whoever would make a crime
of atheism is a madman, but the public man, the legislator, would be a hundred
times madder to adopt such a doctrine. The National Convention abhors it.
The Convention is not a writer of books, an author of metaphysical systems;
it is a political and popular body, charged with protecting not only the rights
but also the character of the French people. Not for nothing has it proclaimed
the declarations of the rights of man in the presence of the Supreme Being.
It will be said perhaps that I am narrow-minded, a man of prejudice, even
a fanatic. I have already said that I spoke not as an individual or as a systematic
philosopher, but as a representative of the people. Atheism is aristocratic;
the idea of a great being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes
triumphant crime is altogether popular […]
I repeat: we have no other fanaticism to fear than that of immoral men, paid
by foreign courts to reawaken fanaticism and give our Revolution an appearance
of immorality, characteristic of our great cowardly and savage enemies […]
Foreign courts maintain two armies. One is on the frontier […] The other,
more dangerous, is in our midst; it is an army of spies, of paid rascals who
insert themselves everywhere, even in the heart of the popular societies.
[…]
I demand that this Society purge itself finally of this criminal horde! I
demand that Dubussion be driven from the Society, and also two other intriguers,
one of whom lives with Proli under the same rood, and who both are known to
you as his agents: I speak of Desfieux and Pereyra. I demand a thorough scrutiny
of the tribune, to detect and drive out all the agents of foreign powers who
under their auspices have introduced themselves into this Society.