In this speech to the Convention as the new Republic faced mortal danger, Danton calls for setting up a Revolutionary Tribunal to deal with the Revolution’s enemies in the immediate aftermath of the Royalist rising in the Vendée. As events and peril gathered pace, the following month the Convention created the Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror would commence, consuming Danton as well.

‘The Creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal’ (1793) by George Jacques Danton from Voices of Revolt, No. 5. International Publishers, New York 1927.

(Delivered in the Convention, March 10, 1793)

It has been proposed to postpone until the following day the organization of the Tribunal. To cut short the ensuing discussion, a number of voices cry for adjournment. The president declares the session adjourned, Danton dashes to the platform and speaks.

***

I CALL upon all good citizens to remain in their places! What! Citizens! In a moment in which our position is such that if Miranda were beaten–and this is not impossible–Dumouriez would be obliged to lay down his arms, completely surrounded, could you possibly adjourn without taking the great steps demanded by the welfare of the Republic? I know how important it is to adopt legal measures to punish the counter-revolutionaries; for it is against them that this tribunal is necessary, it is against them that this tribunal must act as a supreme court of the popular vengeance.

The enemies of liberty are raising their brazen brows; involved everywhere, they are everywhere provocateurs. Observing the honest citizen busy in his home, the artisan busy in his workshops, they commit the folly of considering themselves to be in the majority–Well, drag them yourselves to the popular vengeance, humanity orders you to do this.

Nothing is so difficult as to define a political crime; but if a man of the people is punished at once for any crime that he may commit, if it is so difficult to ascertain the perpetration of a political crime, is it not necessary that extraordinary laws, laws apart from those applying to the social body as a whole, should be used to terrify the rebels and to reach the guilty?

In this matter, the welfare of the people demands great measures, terrible measures. I can see no mutual ground between the ordinary forms of justice and the revolutionary tribunal. History affirms this truth; and since persons have dared, in this Assembly, to recall those bloody days that made all good citizens tremble, I shall go so far as to say that if a tribunal had been in existence then, the  people, who have been so often and so cruelly rebuked for the actions of these days, would not have covered them with blood; I shall say–and I am sure I shall have the approval of all those who witnessed these events–that no human power could at that time have halted the excesses of the national vengeance.

Let us profit by the mistakes of our predecessors. Let us do what the Legislative Assembly failed to do: let us be terrible in order that the people may be spared the necessity of being terrible; let us establish a tribunal, not a good tribunal, to be sure–that is impossible–but a tribunal as good as it can be, so that the people may know that the sword of the law is suspended over the heads of its enemies.

And when you have done this work, I call upon you to take up arms. Send forth your commissaires at once; go about the work of establishing the ministry; for, there is no use concealing the fact, we need ministers. The Minister for the Navy, for example, in a country in which anything can be done because all the materials are available–and I do not deny that he possesses all the qualities of a good citizen–has not created a navy; our frigates have not left port and England is still taking our ships as prizes.

Well, the moment has come; let us be generous with men and money; let us develop all the means of the national strength, but let us place the guiding of these resources only in the hands of men whose necessary and habitual contact with us will assure you the uniformity and the execution of the measures which you shall have devised in favor of the public welfare.

You are not a finished body, for you may constitute yourselves in accordance with your own wills. Beware, citizens, you are responsible to the people for its armies, for its blood, for its assignats; for if its defeats should so much lower the value of this money that the means of subsistence should be destroyed in its hands, who could retard the effects of its resentment and its vengeance?

If you had displayed the necessary energy when I first asked you to, the enemy would now have been thrown back far beyond your borders.

I therefore move that the revolutionary tribunal be organized before we adjourn, that the executive power, in the new organization, be given all the means of action and of energy which it needs. I am not asking that anything be disorganized, I am asking only ameliorative measures. (A Voice: “You are carrying on like a king!”)

And I say that you are talking like a coward! I ask that the Convention approve my attitude and censure the insulting and dishonorable remarks made against me.

I also move that your commissaires be sent out at once, as soon as the measures for the general safety have been taken, and that we have no more such silly discussions as to which section of this hall they are to meet in. Let them spread throughout the departments, let them arouse the citizens, let them revive the love of liberty in the departments, and let them–if they regret their inability to take part in the adoption of useful decrees, or to oppose undesirable decrees–remember that their absence was for the good of the country.

Permit me to recapitulate. To-night, organization of the tribunal, organization of the executive power; to-morrow, action, military action. Let your commissaires be off by to-morrow. Let all France rise and rush to arms and march against the enemy! Let us invade Holland; let Belgium be free; let England’s commerce be destroyed; let the friends of liberty triumph over that country; let our armies, everywhere victorious, bring to all nations deliverance and happiness, and then the world will have its day of vengeance!

International Publishers was formed in 1923 for the purpose of translating and disseminating international Marxist texts and headed by Alexander Trachtenberg. It quickly outgrew that mission to be the main book publisher, while Workers Library continued to be the pamphlet publisher of the Communist Party.

PDF of original book: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/voices-of-revolt/05-George-Jacques-Danton-VOR-ocr.pdf