Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1898-01-20
FRENCH SUSPICION.
IT HAS PLAYED AN IMPORTANT PART
IN THE couNTRY,s HISTORY.

X
IN THE CoUNTRY'S HISTORY.
In France the Element OF Suspicion Has
Reached the Preternatural and Is No
New Thing-How 1t Influenced the Ac-
tions of Robespierre.
At all the great crises of French life
the element Of preternatural suspicion
has played an important part. Like
some mischievous Puck it hovers over.
the land, whispering doubts here, mis-
givings there, converting the whole ma
tion into mouchards, whose business it
is to set a watch on their neighbors day
and night. We have such profound
admiration for many qualities of the
French people, such a sincere belief in
the necessity of powerful French fac
tor in the complex mesh Of modern
civilization, that we can afford to bring
this charge of undue suspicion against
France as a whole No student of
French history can fail to see the con-
fusion it has wrought It is not the
growth of yesterday, but it is almost as
evident in the memoirs of the France
of the seventeenth century as on the
Paris boulevards at the present moment.
1t pervaded the court and the official
classes in the time of Richelieu, it was
constantly present in the mind of Maza-
rim when negotiating with Cromwell,
and it is visible all through the pages
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of preternatural suspicion naturally at
tanned it's climax in the French revolu-
tion, when, for the first time, the mon
archy was involved in it's infinite en-
tanglements
From the moment when the national
assembly met at Versailles to the day
when Napoleon was banished to Elba
universal suspicion filed the air and
dictated the cruel aspect of French pol
icy. The queen was, of course, suspect
ed, and justly. in political matters, and
perhaps it was not altogether unreason-
able that the suspicion in which she
was enveloped should have attached to
her weak but perfectly honest husband,
who was assumed to be absolutely un-
der her fatal influence.
The attack on the BastiIle was ami
mated not merely by memories of the
past, not in the least because Of actual
cruelties at the time. for there was
none, but mainly because it was sus-
pected that the Bastille was to be utilized
as an armed fortress to overawe Paris.
The day of the s'black cockades'' and
the march of the Maenads Ito use Car
lyle's graphic phraseology) were due to
excited suspicion. The assembly had
scarcely organized itself before the
demon of suspicion spread its dusky
wings over that body, and Mirabeau and
Barnave, at first popular idols, became
suspected of intrigue with the court.
The vigorous personalities who came
to the front all suspected one another.
To them the famous warning which
Benjamin Franklin addressed to the
founders of the American republic,
Gentlemen, we must hang together or
we shall hang separately, would have
been useless They could not hang to-
gether, and they did hang, or were
guillotined, separately. It was Danton S
suspicion of an aristocratic plot which
caused the September massacres. 1t was
pure suspicion that created the most re-
voting and unjust of all the revolu-
tionary excesses, the tribunal of Fou-
quier- -Tinville. Danton in his turn was
suspected and fell.
We may, of course, justify the suspi-
cion of Dumouriez, but what possible
explanation can be given of the suspi-
oion Of the harmless astronomer Bailly,
with his precisian virtues, who paid
with his head for the dangerous folly
of meddling with things he did not un-
derstand? 1t was obviously question
of war to the knife between Jacobin and
Girondin, for each took an absolutely
different view Of both foreign and in-
ternal politics; but why could not the
struggle have been confined to party
warfare within the walls Of the con-
vention? Why was it necessary to deci-
mate the Girondin chiefs? The only
answer that can be made is that suspi-
cion had grown to such a pitch that the
very existence of Girondism was con-
sidered incompatible with the security
of the republic. Men had become fren-
zied, insane, through constant spying on
one another's actions and perpetual at
tempts to fathom one another's inward
thoughts, and the claw of suspects
was simply formal expression of ma
tional craziness. That way madness lies.
In the person of Robespierre preternat-
ural suspicion attained its most COM
>plete incarnation. His feline nature was
ever on the dart for its prey. He could
not hear good word said Of any man
but he instantly began to revolve in his
mind the question as to whether there
were not some concealed motive in the
praise. The shout of triumphant relief
which reverberated over France when
Robespierre's head fell into the basket
marked the break of the straining point
of that suspicion which had created and
sustained the terror When we remem-
Der that but for an accident Carnot
would have fallen victim to Robes
pierre's suspicious and that this suspi-
cious disposition had led man of senti-
mental virtue to become wholesale
murderer, we can understand that feel
ing of relief. London Spectator.
Nothing to Work On.
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