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After the probity and good judgment of the tribunal, the two cardinal guarantees in state trials are accurate definition, and proof. The offence must be capable of precise description, and the proof against an offender must conform to strict rule. The Law of Prairial violently infringed all three of these essential conditions of judicial equity.
If the 31st of May had had a different result, what happened at a much later period would probably have taken place immediately, namely, a gradual abatement of the revolutionary movement, increased attacks on the part of Europe, a general resumption of hostilities by all parties, the days of Prairial, without power to drive back the multitude; the days of Vendemiaire, without power to repel the royalists; the invasion of the allies, and, according to the policy of the times, the partition of France.
He prepared what is known as the law of the 22nd of Prairial, which was presented by Couthon, and carried without a division on June 10, two days after the procession. It is the most tyrannical of all the acts of the Revolution, and is not surpassed by anything in the records of absolute monarchy. For the decree of Prairial suppressed the formalities of law in political trials.
At other times, rage predominates and there are riots. At Evreux, Germinal 21, a riot breaks out, owing to the delivery of only two pounds of flour per head and per week, and because three days before, only a pound and a half was delivered. There is a riot at Dieppe, Prairial 14 and 15, because "the people are reduced here to three or four ounces of bread."
If they finally rebelled against the "Mountain," and against the rabble, it was at the last moment, and solely to save their lives. Before, as after the 9th of Thermidor, before, as after the 1st of Prairial, the incentives of the conduct of these pusillanimous oppressors or involuntary liberators were baseness and egoism.
Seeing that matters were coming to a more considerable change than that of the 30th Prairial, he, an ex-noble, thought that the decline of the republic would lead to the restoration of the Bourbons, and he treated with the Pretender Louis XVIII. It seems that, in negotiating the restoration of the monarchy by his agent, David Monnier, he was not forgetful of himself.
A year was necessary to enable the conventional party, on its return to power, to restore the revolution to a legal position; and it could only accomplish this by two victories that of Prairial and that of Vendemiaire.
To expedite matters, he must get their heads off quietly, and as "up to this time things have been managed confidentially in the Committee of Public Safety," he, alone with Couthon, two days after, without informing his colleagues, draws up, brings to the Convention, and has passed the terrible act of Prairial which places everybody's life at his disposal.
In order to rid himself more quickly of the men who displeased him he induced the Convention to enact the law of Prairial, which permitted the execution of mere suspects, and by means of which he had 1,373 heads cut off in Paris in forty-nine days. His colleagues, the victims of an insane terror, no longer slept at home; scarcely a hundred deputies were present at sessions.
Three days after the festival celebrating the new alliance and the reconciliation of heaven and earth, the Convention promulgates the Law of Prairial which suppresses, with a sort of ferocious good-nature, all the traditional forms of Law, whatever has been devised since the time of the Roman jurisconsults for the safeguarding of innocence under suspicion.
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