154

B. Law of 22 Prairial. June 10, 1794 (22 Prairial, Year II). Duvergier, Lois, VII, 190-192.

1. The revolutionary tribunal shall have a president and four vice-presidents, one public accuser, four substitutes for the public accuser and twelve judges.

2. The jurors shall be fifty in number.

3. The different functions shall be discharged by the citizens whose names follow: . . [The omission relates

exclusively to the personnel of the court.]

The revolutionary tribunal shall divide itself into sections composed of twelve members, to wit: three judges and nine jurors, which jurors cannot give judgment at a number less than that of seven.

4. The revolutionary tribunal is instituted in order to punish the enemies of the people.

5. The enemies of the people are those who seek to destroy the public liberty, either by force or by artifice.

6. Those are reputed enemies of the people who shall have promoted the re-establishment of royalty or sought to depreciate or dissolve the National Convention and the revolutionary and republican government of which it is the centre:

Those who shall have betrayed the Republic in the command of places and armies, or in any other military function; carried on correspondence with the enemies of the Republic; labored to make the supplies or the service of the armies fail; Those who shall have sought to impede the supplies for Paris or to cause scarcity within the Republic;

Those who shall have seconded the projects of the enemies of France, either in aiding the withdrawal and the impunity of conspirators and the aristocracy, or in persecuting and calumniating patriotism, or in corrupting the servants of the people, or in abusing the principles of the revolution, the laws or the measures of the Government, by false and perfidious applications;

Those who shall have deceived the people or the representatives of the people, in order to lead them into operations contrary to the interests of liberty;

Those who shall have sought to promote discouragement,

in order to favor the enterprises of the tyrants leagued against

the Republic;

Those who shall have spread false news in order to divide or disturb the people;

Those who shall have sought to mislead opinion and to prevent the instruction of the people, to deprave morals and to corrupt the public conscience, to impair the energy and the purity of the revolutionary and republican principles, either by stopping the progress of them, or by counter-revolutionary or insidious writings, or by any other machination;

The contractors whose bad faith compromises the safety of the Republic, and the wasters of the public fortune, other than those included in the provisions of the law of 7 Frimaire;

Those who, being charged with public functions, abuse them in order to serve the enemies of the revolution, to distress the patriots or to oppress the people;

Finally, all those who are designated in the preceding laws relative to the punishment of the conspirators and counterrevolutionaries, and who, whatever the means or the appearances with which they cover themselves, shall have made an attack upon the liberty, unity, and security of the Republic, or labored to prevent the strengthening of them.

7. The penalty provided for all offences, the jurisdiction of which belongs to the revolutionary tribunal, is death.

8. The proof necessary to convict the enemies of the people is every kind of evidence, either material or moral or verbal or written, which can naturally secure the approval of every just and reasonable spirit; the rule of judgment is the conscience of the jurors enlightened by love of the fatherland; their aim, the triumph of the Republic and the ruin of its enemies; the procedure, the simple means which good sense dictates in order to come to the knowledge of the truth, in the forms which the law determines.

It is confined to the following points:

9. Every citizen has the right to seize and to arraign before the magistrates conspirators and counter-revolutionaries. He is required to denounce them when he knows of them.

10. Nobody can arraign a person before the revolutionary tribunal, except the National Convention, the committee of public safety, the committee of general security, the represen

tatives of the people who are commissioners of the Convention, and the public accuser of the revolutionary tribunal.

II. The constituted authorities in general cannot exercise this right without having notified the committee of public safety and the committee of general security and obtained their authorisation.

12. The accused shall be examined in public session: the formality of the secret examination which precedes is suppressed as superfluous; it shall occur only under special circumstances in which it shall be judged useful for a knowledge of the truth.

13. If proofs exist, either material or moral, independently of the testified proof, there shall be no further hearing of testimony, unless that formality appears necessary, either to discover the accomplices or for other important considerations of public interest.

14. In a case in which there shall be occasion for this proof, the public accuser shall cause to be summoned the witnesses who can show the way to justice, without distinction of witnesses for or against.

15. All the proceedings shall be conducted in public and no written deposition shall be received, unless the witnesses are so situated that they cannot be brought before the tribunal, and in that case an express authorisation of the committees of public safety and general security shall be necessary.

16. The law gives sworn patriots to calumniated patriots for counsel; it does not grant them to conspirators.

17. The pleadings finished, the jurors shall formulate their verdicts and the judges shall pronounce the penalty in the manner determined by the laws.

The president shall propound the question with lucidity, Irecision, and simplicity. If it was presented in an equivocal or inexact manner, the jury may ask that it be propounded in another manner.

18. The public accuser may not on his own authority discharge a prisoner bound over to the tribunal or one whom he shall have caused to be arraigned there; in a case in which there is no matter for an accusation before the tribunal, he shall make a written report of it, with a statement of the reasons, to the chamber of the council, which shall pronounce.

But no prisoner may be discharged from trial before the decision of the chamber has been communicated to the committees of public safety and general security, who shall examine it.

19. A double register shall be kept of the persons arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal, one for the public accuser and the other for the tribunal, upon which shall be enrolled all the prisoners, according as they shall be arraigned.

20. The Convention modifies all those provisions of the preceding laws which may not be in agreement with the present law and does not intend that the laws concerning the organization of the ordinary tribunals should apply to the crimes of counter-revolution and to the action of the revolutionary tribunal.

21. The report of the committee shall be joined to the present decree as instruction.

33. Decree for Establishing the Revolutionary Committees,

March 21, 1793. Duvergier, Lois, V, 206-207.

The revolutionary committees created by this decree were among the most characteristic and potent agencies in the service of the revolutionary government. The powers granted in this decree were subsequently much increased in various ways, chiefly by additional decrees and by authorisation of the committee of public safety. For these powers at their greatest extent see No.

45.

REFERENCE. Aulard, Revolution Francaise, 350-355.

1. There shall be formed in each commune of the Republic and in each section of the communes divided into sections, at the hour which shall be indicated in advance by the general council, a committee composed of twelve citizens.

2. The members of this committee, who cannot be chosen from the ecclesiastics, former nobles, former seigneurs of the locality, and agents of the former seigneurs, shall be chosen by ballot and by plurality of the votes.

4. The committee of the commune, or each of the committees of the sections of the commune, shall be charged to re

ceive for its district the declarations of all the strangers actually residing within the commune or who may arrive there.

5. These declarations shall contain the names, age, profession, place of birth and means of existence of the declarer.

6. They shall be made within eight days after the publication of the present decree; the list thereof shall be printed and posted.

7. Every foreigner who shall have refused or neglected to make his declaration before the committee of the commune or of the section in which he shall reside, within the period above prescribed, shall be required to leave the commune within twenty-four hours and the territory of the Republic within eight days.

34. Decree upon the Press.

March 29, 1793. Duvergier, Lois, V, 230.

During the earlier stages of the Revolution the freedom of the press was accepted both in principle and in practice. Without formally abandoning the principle, the royalist newspapers were suppressed after the establishment of the Republic, and Girondist newspapers after the prosecution of the Girondist deputies. This decree illustrates the method employed against the royalist newspapers and is typical of all decrees affecting the press.

REFERENCE. Aulard, Revolution Francaise, 359-361.

The National Convention decrees:

1. Whoever shall be convicted of having composed or printed works or writings which incite to the dissolution of the national representation, the re-establishment of monarchy or of any other power which constitutes an attack upon the sovereignty of the people, shall be arraigned before the extraordinary tribunal and punished with death.

2. The vendors, distributers and hawkers of these works or writings shall be condemned to an imprisonment which shall not exceed three months, if they declare the authors, printers or other persons from whom they have obtained them; if they refuse this declaration, they shall be punished by two years in prison.