[178] Robespierre disclaimed the intention of attacking property, and took up a position like that of Rousseau—­teaching the poor contempt for the rich, not envy.  “I do not want to touch your treasures,” he cried, on one occasion, “however impure their source.  It is far more an object of concern to me to make poverty honourable, than to proscribe wealth; the thatched hut of Fabricius never need envy the palace of Crassus.  I should be at least as content, for my own part, to be one of the sons of Aristides, brought up in the Prytaneium at the public expense, as the heir presumptive of Xerxes, born in the mire of royal courts, to sit on a throne decorated by the abasement of the people, and glittering with the public misery.”  Quoted in Malon’s Expose des Ecoles Socialistes francaises, 15.  Baboeuf carried Rousseau’s sentiments further towards their natural conclusion by such propositions as these:  “The goal of the revolution is to destroy inequality, and to re-establish the happiness of all.”  “The revolution is not finished, because the rich absorb all the property, and hold exclusive power; while the poor toil like born slaves, languish in wretchedness, and are nothing in the state.” Expose des Ecoles Socialistes francaises, p. 29.

[179] Cont.  Soc., II. xi.

[180] Cont.  Soc., I. iv.

[181] Ib., II. vii.

[182] Ch. vi. (vol. v. 371; edit. 1801).

[183] Ch. vii. (p. 383.)

[184] Goguet, in his Origine des Lois, des Arts, et des Sciences (1758), really attempted as laboriously as possible to carry out a notion of the historical method, but the fact that history itself at that time had never been subjected to scientific examination made his effort valueless.  He accumulates testimony which would be excellent evidence, if only it had been sifted, and had come out of the process substantially undiminished.  Yet even Goguet, who thus carefully followed the accounts of early societies given in the Bible and other monuments, intersperses abstract general statements about man being born free and independent (i. 25), and entering society as the result of deliberate reflection.

[185] Cont.  Soc., II. xi.  Also III. viii.

[186] II. xi.  Also ch. viii.

[187] II. viii.

[188] II. ix.

[189] Politics, VII. iv. 8, 10.

[190] Cont.  Soc., II. x.

[191] Plato’s Laws, v. 737.

[192] Ib., iv. 705.

[193] Projet de Constitution pour la Corse, p. 75.

[194] Gouvernement de Pologne, ch. xi.

[195] Cont.  Soc., II. vii.

[196] Goguet was much nearer to a true conception of this kind; see, for instance, Origine des Lois, i. 46.

[197] Decree of the Committee, April 20, 1794, reported by Billaud-Varennes.  Compare ch. iv. of Rousseau’s Considerations sur le Gouvernement de Pologne.