The evening times., 1899-08-14
CHARACTER OF RoBEsP1ERRE.
He Looked Intelligence and Pratt
tied Commonplaces.
(From the Saturday Review

tfFuiu RcNAcN-B
A phrase may insure immortality, and
the phrase makers have been kind TO
Naximilian Robespierre. Yet few of the
phrases which have given the monster life
are just and opposite. Consistent he was
consistent in a hard, intellectual cruelty.
But was he incorruptible? Assured
ly he was, in the sense that
Mirabeau was corruptible. Yet even
here the superiority is with the
other. Mirabeau took money, and never
let himself be bribed. Robespierre never
took money, and was bribed every hour by
his astounding vanity and by fierce
ambition which o'erleapt all the bounda-
ries of morals. To assume that he was
moved by patriotism in his attack upon
France is to forget both his ambition and
his vanity. He proved his ambition by the
determination to shed the blood of his op-
ponents He showed his vanity in all the
speeches which he made by surprise, as
well as in his furtive efforts at dandyism.
His elegance was the elegance Of Arras,
to be sure; his frizzled hair suggested the
provincial barber. Yet he was always ele-
CANT and friZzled, and, as Carlyle said,
had his room hung round with seagreen
portraits and busts.'' But behind the two
| master qualities of his nature there was
| neither solid intelligence nor equable cour-
| age.
No man ever came forth to rule others
| with a more slender equipment He had
read Rousseau, whom he half understood.
and there his erudition began and ended
+! 1t is statesman's business to scan events,
| and to find a practical solution for such
| difficulties as the situation imposes. He
showed to best advantage before the Jaco-
| bins, who were always content with an
| aphorism, and at an aphorism Robespierre
was never at loss, for he was in essence
| pothouse politician. spouting Rousseau
/ in cafes.
| 1t is notorious that in the presence OF
/ educated gentlemen he preserved a stony
silence. Yet with congenial audience he
was garrulous, though never eloquent Not
even his partisans claim for him this SUI
preme gift. His speeches are the dreariesi
I ever spoken by leader of men, since they
are chiefly composed Of philosophic COM
monplace. 1.-THE only basis of civilized So
! ciety," he cried in respite from murder,
/ ''is morality" and the throng of citizens
was this stunted intelligence which
| made him a danger to the state.
When he should have acted he tho
rized; when he should have developed
| statesmanlike idea, he was content to
echo a copy-book heading. OF such stuff,
! indeed, are made the worlds worst enc
mics. The pedant's narrow brain is more
i u pSdCe tHdu Tue TdScdl S
| overt villainy.
! A phrase like Robespierre's, repeated
| parrot-like, might arm a lazy hand with a
! dagger; but Robespierre had neither the
| courage nor the policy to stay the hand
| into which he had thrust a casual wea-
| pom. No, when blood flowed in the gut
ters, he mumbled Renaissance of lawless
philosophy, or fashioned what he fondly
hoped was an epigram: There is but one
| way of avoiding obstacles; crush them"
That is quoted by an admirer as a MASTER
/ piece of wit. And it is nothing bur a
| 'bull,'' and wholly inferior to the variant of
Sir Boyle Roche: ''The best way to avoid
| danger is to meet it plump" But while
he was of a beggarly intelligence mere
! Autolycus in the byways of philosophy
he yet had one positive characteristic--he
was cruel. His discourses are ill-conposed
and hard to read, yet one and all give you
| the impression Of a careless cruelty. He
declared himself innocent of the Septem-
| Der massacres, and he never raised voice
nor finger to stay them. He assumed the
| first responsibility for the death of the
King, to whom he would have refused a
| trial; and when he came to power he could
| invent no better artifice of government
| than Terror, which was cruelty made con-
! crete. He pitied nobody, he spared no.
body, and the only satisfaction which can
! be extracted from his squalid history IL