CHAPTER XXIII
THE FRENCH DIRECTORY
BETWEEN EXTREMES[The Extreme Right] There has been formed in Europe a league of fools and
fanatics, who, if they could, would forbid man the faculty to think or see. The sight
of a book makes them shudder; because enlightenment has been abused, they
would exterminate all those they suppose enlightened.... Persuaded that without
men of intelligence there would have been no revolution, they hope to reverse it
with imbeciles....
[The Extreme Left] Europe today excludes any possibility of democracy, direct
or representative; to try the experiment is not to recast the state but to destroy
it.... Do you wish a republic of equals amid the inequalities which the public
services, inheritances, marriage, industry and commerce have introduced into soci-
ety? You will have to overthrow property.
—MALLET DU PAN, 1796
Democracy and Communism
As one moved from the center in a leftward direction, one at first entered a terri-
tory that was not very radical, peopled by men who can be called “democrats” in
the ordinary American sense, though they were more likely to call themselves “true
republicans” or “good patriots.” They accepted the constitution and saw no further
need of violent insurrection, but they feared that the new national government
might go too far in an understanding with émigrés or refractory clergy, or that the
governing groups in Paris did not hold to the great principles of Liberty and
Equality as firmly as they themselves did. Some now owned pieces of former
church or émigré property, in amounts either large or small. Some, without having
been terrorists themselves, had praised the Terror in its day or been busy and useful
as local administrators for the Revolutionary Government. They feared that in a
White Terror, of which there had already been enough painful examples, or even in
a more moderate reaction against persons supposed to be dangerous, they them-