To publish the Works of Robespierre is to rehabilitate a name around which so many unjust prejudices have gathered; it is, at the same time, to provide the people with an abundant source of enlightenment and instruction. How many men who have never so much as glanced at Robespierre’s writings or speeches are convinced, on the authority of the aristocracy’s paid writers, that Robespierre was a villain. Let them read his works, and they will arrive at a fairer judgement of his feelings and his heart.
Robespierre’s works are the best answer to the frenzied declamations of his equally frenzied detractors. To slander, insult and shriek is not to reason. Those who, for want of better arguments, heap insult upon slander against a man prove one thing: that there is not a single fact in that man’s life which might support a reasonable and conscientious attack upon him.
Did Robespierre err? That is what I shall examine in the historical notice with which I shall preface his works. But it is above all through those works themselves, by reading and reflecting upon them, that one may become convinced that Robespierre was cruelly slandered. It is by closely examining his conduct and his political actions from 1789 until 9 Thermidor that one will recognise in him the purest defender of the rights of humanity.
Whoever reads Robespierre is inwardly consumed by a more ardent love of country and liberty, and by a deeper hatred of the tyrants who crush humankind. Whoever reads him sees a new universe unfolding before his eyes. He feels, touches and understands his rights; he identifies himself with them; he becomes worthy of the noble name of man, worthy of the great title of citizen.
