Adam Michnik - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Adam Michnik

The Ultras of moral revolution
Translated by Elzbieta Matynia

We need a moral revolution!1

Do we really need one?
But of course! Replied an ultrarevolu-

tionary, a Jacobin.

But of course! Replied an ultrareac-
tionary, a partisan of the Counterrevo-
lution.

Radicals, adherents of extreme solu-
tions, Ultras of all the colors of the rain-
bow, have a need for revolutionary up-
heavals, because only upheavals that
turn the world upside down allow them
to ful½ll their dream of a great cleansing.

The Jacobin, the revolutionary Ultra,
says:

Adam Michnik is editor-in-chief of “Gazeta
Wyborcza,” Poland’s leading daily newspaper.
He founded the paper in 1989 to support the in-
dependent trade union Solidarity during the ½rst
free elections in the history of the Communist
bloc. Michnik has published numerous books, in-
cluding “Letters from Prison and Other Essays”
(1985), “The Church and the Left” (1993), and
“Letters from Freedom: Post–Cold War Realities
and Perspectives” (1998).

We need a moral revolution because
we are surrounded by ‘souls of mud’–
reactionaries, hidden royalists, petty
individuals, one-day patriots–who are
conspiring against our revolutionary
government. We need a moral revolu-
tion because vice is spreading. Reaction-
ary newspapers are sowing lies; so one
has to force them into silence. Corrup-
tion is spreading; so we must look care-
fully at the rich. “I regard wealth,” said
Robespierre, “not only as the price of
crimes, but as a punishment for them; I
want to be poor, so as not to be unfortu-
nate.” France is surrounded by traitors–
those poisonous insects sowing shame-
lessness, deceit, meanness. It is they who
caused the collapse of a state and socie-
ty functioning according to one system
of values, discovered in 1789, with rules
that allowed us to maintain a dignity and
a brotherhood founded upon the need to
do good. We need a moral revolution to-
day, now that we have a chance to leave
the crisis of nonmemory and the curse
of a fresh start. We need a cleansing, a
capacity to do good for the Revolution.
It also means a recognition of one’s own
errors–one’s fatal tolerance for ‘moder-

1 For Professor Barbara Skarga, with a deep
bow. This article was ½rst published in Polish
in Gazeta Wyborcza, April 15, 2005.

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Adam
Michnik
on
nonviolence
& violence

ates,’ for the forgiving and the temper-
ate.

The conservative, the reactionary Ul-

tra, says:

We need a moral revolution because
now, after the return of the Bourbons,
the tide of revolution has receded. The
time has passed when vice ruled trium-
phant over France; when regicide was
a law unto itself; when those responsi-
ble for regicide dictated their own laws;
when virtue was humiliated, loyalty
persecuted, and property con½scated.
It’s true that a cruel despotism and the
omnipotent guillotine, that revolution
–this huge gutter of ½lth–polluted
France. Nevertheless, France still has
many virtues; so one can, wrote Joseph
de Maistre, “start the nation anew.”
France, washed clean from the dirt of
Jacobinism, restored to its monarchic
and Catholic roots, will become a sym-
bol of reconciliation between the King
and his subjects. We need a moral revo-
lution in order to restore the dream of a
state and society functioning according
to one system of values, with rules that
allow us to maintain the loyalty and dig-
nity be½tting royal subjects, always in-
clined to do good. We need a moral revo-
lution because today everything is possi-
ble, ‘even the resurrection of the dead,’
not to mention the resurrection of ‘our
own moral subjectivity.’ One must avoid
at all costs a compromise with the bas-
tards of Jacobinism and Bonapartism,
who want a constitutional monarchy,
that is, a king without royal power–they
don’t understand that ‘every constitu-
tion is regicide.’

What familiar voices despite such dif-
ferent historical costumes. I hear them
continuously today–with mounting

Dædalus Winter 2007

sadness and amazement. After all, those
who echo them ought to know where it
all leads.

Does history repeat itself? Karl Marx

once wrote, paraphrasing Hegel, that
each historical fact repeats itself twice
–the original drama turns into farce.
Marx was wrong: history repeats itself
much more frequently. The world is
still full of inquisitors and heretics, li-
ars and those lied to, terrorists and the
terrorized. There is still someone dying
at Thermopylae, someone drinking a
glass of hemlock, someone crossing the
Rubicon, someone drawing up a pro-
scription list. And nothing suggests that
these things will stop repeating them-
selves.

We like to reiterate that history is a
teacher of life. If this is indeed true, we
listen very poorly to its lessons. That is
why I am reflecting today on the Ultras
of the Revolution and the Ultras of the
Counterrevolution, who dreamt about
a Big Cleansing and a Moral Revolution
–not so that the language of that reign
of terror may never repeat itself, but
because I’m convinced it will inevitably
do so.

III

After a victorious civil war, Lucius Cor-
nelius Sulla, the Roman dictator, began
his rule by taking revenge on his oppo-
nents. He did it with an exacting meth-
od, namely, by ordering the drawing up
of proscription lists, that is, lists of out-
lawed enemies–and designating a re-
ward for their heads. “With nerve-rack-
ing premeditation,” write historians
Max Cary and Howard Hayes Scullard,
“Sulla prolonged the listing of new vic-
tims, announcing from time to time
additional proscription lists. Terror
reigned. This modernized system of

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The Ultras
of moral
revolution

mass murders was aimed with particu-
lar viciousness at those adversaries who
were wealthy. Their property was con-
½scated, and the cities of Italy became
theaters of execution.”2 This was the
purpose of the proscription lists Sulla
announced: it was terrifying to ½nd
one’s name on such a list.

For centuries the list of names has
been an irremovable element of social
history: the lists of witches burned at
the stake; the lists of heretics examined
by the Inquisition; the lists of Jesuits
condemned to exile; the lists of Masons;
the lists of Jews; the lists of Christians
suspected of Jewish background; the
lists of Communists and those suspected
of having Communist sympathies; the
lists of royalists and other enemies of
revolution; the lists of agents of Tsarist
Okhrana; the lists of hostages; and the
lists of those beheaded by guillotine or
axe, or those who were shot.

Executions were usually preceded by
the lists of suspects–those suspected of
revolutionary or subversive activities, of
a sinful past or present, of betrayal. Sus-
picion marched ahead of accusation and
execution.

The French Revolution overturned an
absolute monarchy and established a
constitutional monarchy. “This consti-
tution was also vitiated,” wrote Hegel,
“by the existence of absolute mistrust;
the dynasty lay under suspicion, because
it had lost the power it formerly enjoyed
. . . . Neither government nor constitution
could be maintained on this footing, and
the ruin of both was the result.”

2 H. H. Scullard and M. Cary, Dzieje Rzymu
(Warszawa: n.p., 1992); translated from the
Polish edition.

Hegel later writes:

A government of some kind, however,
is always in existence. The question
presents itself then, Whence did it ema-
nate? Theoretically, it proceeded from
the people; really and truly, from the Na-
tional Convention and its Committees.
The forces now dominant are the abstract
principles–Freedom, and, as it exists
within the limits of the Subjective Will
–Virtue. This Virtue has now to con-
duct the government in opposition to
the Many, whom their corruption and
attachment to old interests, or a liberty
that has degenerated into license, and
the violence of their passions, render un-
faithful to virtue. Virtue here is a simple
abstract principle and distinguishes the
citizens into two classes only–those who
are favorably disposed and those who are
not. But disposition can only be recog-
nized and judged of by disposition. Suspi-
cion therefore is in the ascendant; but vir-
tue, as soon as it becomes liable to suspi-
cion, is already condemned. Suspicion
attained a terrible power and brought
to the scaffold the Monarch, whose sub-
jective will was in fact the religious con-
science of a Catholic. Robespierre set up
the principle of Virtue as supreme, and
it may be said that with this man Virtue
was an earnest matter. Virtue and Terror
were the order of the day; for Subjective
Virtue, whose sway is based on disposi-
tion only, brings with it the most fearful
tyranny. It exercises its power without
legal formalities, and the punishment it
inflicts is very simple–Death.

And it had begun so beautifully. The
Revolution began under a hopeful sign
of Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood.
The Bastille–a bastion and symbol of
tyranny–was captured. King Louis xvi

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Adam
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on
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chose a path of compromise with the
revolutionary camp; absolutism col-
lapsed. It looked like ‘the King with the
people, the people with the King.’

Speaking parenthetically: in July of
1789, the Bastille, where opponents of
the King had been imprisoned, had on-
ly seven prisoners–four counterfeiters,
two mentally ill, and one imprisoned
at the request of his father. Such was
this bastion of tyranny. Such a bastion;
such a tyranny. It was already absolut-
ism with broken teeth.

In spite of that, an historic event
took place, the event of an epoch: in
the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen it was proclaimed that peo-
ple are born and remain free and equal
under the law. The words of Marie Jo-
seph La Fayette were repeated: “People
become free as soon as they want to be
free.” And the revolutionaries repeated:
“It was different in England, where so
much blood was shed; our revolution
triumphed almost without bloodshed.”
And they repeated that the Revolution
opened the gate through which France
advanced from tyranny to freedom.

The Restoration also began beautifully.
After a quarter century of revolution-
ary and Napoleonic turmoil, there be-
gan–along with Louis xviii–a time
of gentle words and conciliatory ges-
tures. François René de Chateaubriand,
the most distinguished Bourbon ideo-
logue, wrote in 1814 that Louis xviii is
“a prince who is known for his enlight-
ened mind, is unsusceptible to preju-
dice, and is a stranger to vengeance.”
He quoted the words of Louis xvi: “I
forgive with all my heart those who for
no reason from my side became my ene-
mies, and I ask God to forgive them.”

Dædalus Winter 2007

Speaking on behalf of the supporters
of the Restoration, Chateaubriand de-
clared: “We want a monarchy based on
the principle of equal rights, the princi-
ple of morality, civic freedom, political
and religious tolerance.”

The Restoration did not end in words.

Louis xviii proclaimed a charter that
was an act of reconciliation between the
Restoration and the Revolution. It guar-
anteed the inviolability of property from
the Napoleonic period and maintained
the nobility of the status of the empire;
but it also declared the equality of citi-
zens and their fundamental freedoms.
And it even promised amnesty to those
who were involved in regicide.

Louis xviii wanted to reassure
Frenchmen that he did not want re-
venge, as his enemies claimed. He de-
clared that only “a system of modera-
tion could prevent France from tear-
ing itself apart with its own hands.”

VII

Every revolution has its own dynamic;
each is too slow, un½nished, betrayed.
From within each revolution is a de-
mand for acceleration, completion,
protection against betrayal.

On the very threshold of the French
Revolution the demand that the mon-
arch give in to the National Assembly
was revolutionary. A compromise be-
tween the Revolution and the monarch
on behalf of constitutional rule and a
Declaration of the Rights of Man was
celebrated as a victory of the revolution-
aries. But soon this compromise, built
on a dualism (the self-limitation of the
monarch in his power and of the Revo-
lution in its demands), turned out to
be fragile. The radical monarchists saw
in it the capitulation of the King; the
radical revolutionaries saw it as a betray-

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al of their ideals. The Revolution ought
to be crushed by the army. The King
ought to be removed; long live the Re-
public, retorted the revolutionary Jac-
obins.

The Jacobins came out on top. Mon-
archists escaped abroad, and the King
was imprisoned, judged, and guillotined.
Any voice against the dissolution of the
monarchy–the constitutional one–
was called treason, as were voices that
demanded a normal judicial process
or at least a renunciation of the death
penalty.

The Revolution, begun in the name
of freedom, transformed itself into an
aspiration for a republican order against
the constitutional monarchy. It was not
about freedom anymore but about the
Republic, and any critic of this solution
was suspected of treason. And the con-
troversy over the Republic transformed
itself into a ruthless ½ght for power in
the revolutionary camp.

VIII

Every restoration has its own dynamic;
each is too slow, un½nished, betrayed.
Each restoration hides within itself the
guardians of the holy flame of past in-
stitutions and customs–the Ultras.
The Ultras have to reject any compro-
mise between tradition and revolution,
because the Revolution was for them an
absolute evil, without a grain of good
–the height of absurdity and moral de-
cay. It is “a pure impurity,” said Joseph
de Maistre. “It is a wonder of decay, a
wonder of absurdity, and a wonder of
banditry.”

For an Ultra then, the Charter of Lou-
is xviii was nonsense, an absurdity, “a
work of madness and darkness.” One
has to break with the chimera of the
Rights of Man, restore censorship and

the privileges of the aristocracy. And the
Catholic Church has to guard against
“the scum of equality.” The Ultras clear-
ly had nothing against France tearing it-
self apart with its own hands.

The Ultras
of moral
revolution

There is no reason to question the good
intentions of the Jacobins, those Ultras
of the Revolution. They really wanted to
save the Revolution from the royalists,
from foreign armies, from superstition,
from treason and corruption. They, dili-
gent readers of the Encyclopedists and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, really wanted
France to be ruled by virtue.

But in order to ½ght monarchists and
émigré aristocrats, the Jacobins con½s-
cated the aristocrats’ properties and
closed their newspapers; to win the war,
they demanded unity around the revolu-
tionary government and punished any-
one who deviated. To remove supersti-
tion, they demanded the loyalty of Cath-
olic priests and exiled those who refused
to take an oath. To prevent treason and
corruption, they announced a ‘Great
Vigilance’ with regard to traitors and
the corrupt. Moreover, they introduced
a law on suspects–each loyal citizen
was obliged to denounce suspects. The
measure of revolutionary fervor was the
number of denunciations. Long lists of
suspects were compiled, then long lists
of those imprisoned for being suspect.
France was taken over by fear. The Reign
of Terror had begun. The theater of the
revolutionary guillotine was launched.
The Jacobins saw in the guillotine an
instrument for the defense of the Revo-
lution. They believed that it was they
who were the Revolution and that they
were the guarantors of the durability
and continuity of the rule of Freedom
and Virtue. This is why they defended

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Adam
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on
nonviolence
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their power without scruples, and why
any critic was branded a traitor to the
Revolution.

It all began with the trial of Louis xvi.

Nobody cared to collect any evidence
of guilt or observe normal judicial pro-
cedures. The King was guilty because
he was King. He had to be guillotined;
the people had sentenced him through
their representatives. A motion was
made to ask French citizens whether
they supported the carrying out of the
death penalty. Antoine Louis de Saint-
Just, a Jacobin Ultra, retorted passion-
ately: “This appeal aims at creating a
conflict between the people and the
Legislature, and therefore a weakening
of the people. This intrigue is a way to
bring back the tyrant to his palace.”
The crime has wings, argued Saint-Just.
It will spread. This intrigue to save the
King through “votes bought by foreign
gold” will win the ear of the people. But
the monarchy is an eternal crime, and
the monarch is a barbarian, a tyrant, and
a foreigner. The public good requires the
death of the King, and the only ones who
could think otherwise are either allies
of the tyrant or people who have been
bribed.

After such arguments, which terror-
ized the National Assembly, the execu-
tion of the King was a mere formality.
Justice and the public good–as under-
stood by the Jacobins–won out over
the logic of mercy, forgiveness, and
conciliation.

Not only was Louis xvi guillotined,
but symbolically the old order was sen-
tenced to death. The guillotine for the
King de½ned the norms of the new or-
der. Freedom and Virtue entered into
a marriage with the guillotine.

In any revolution the dialectics of mod-
eration and radicalism takes place. At
each revolutionary turn, yesterday’s rad-
ical person turns out to be today’s mod-
erate. If he is lucky, he is accused of cow-
ardly opportunism; if he is not lucky, of
treason and participation in counterrev-
olutionary conspiracy.

Vladimir Lenin, quite fluent in revolu-

tions, wrote this about the Girondistes
(moderates): “They wanted to deal with
autocracy gently, in a reformative way,
without hurting the aristocracy, the gen-
try, the court–without destroying any-
thing.” But the Jacobins–according to
Lenin–wanted people “to deal with the
monarchy and the aristocracy ‘in a ple-
beian way,’ mercilessly exterminating
the enemies of freedom, strangling by
force their resistance, without making
any concessions on behalf of the ac-
cursed legacy of subjection.”

This is how Lenin imagined the Jac-
obin moral revolution, and this is how
–in a Bolshevik way–he implemented
it personally. It is not dif½cult to under-
stand why he glori½ed Jacobin terror,
calling it “plebeian.” It is more dif½cult
to understand why the gentle and com-
promising path of the Girondistes de-
served contempt; and why the Giron-
distes were still accused of moral rela-
tivism, of blurring the boundary be-
tween good and evil–why the aspira-
tion to pluralism and compromise with
opponents was taken as an abandon-
ment of moral principles.

The Jacobins perceived their adver-
saries as conspirators against Freedom
and Virtue. In these they believed fanat-
ically, but they understood them in a pe-
culiar way. The symbol of Freedom was
the capture of the Bastille, from which
seven people were freed, while in the

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The Ultras
of moral
revolution

prison of France ruled by the Jacobins,
there were thousands. And Virtue? The
Reign of Terror, as Friedrich Engels, al-
so interested in the topic of revolution,
soberly wrote, was “a rule by people
who spread fear around them, and on
the other hand it was a rule by people
who were themselves full of fear.” Those
were “cruelties committed by people
who themselves were in fear,” and in
this way they reassured themselves.

Fear and denunciations, those were

the methods of Jacobin Virtue.

The Jacobins declared that they de-
fended Freedom against treason, against
enemy conspiracy, but conspiracy, sim-
ply speaking, was opposition to Jacobin
rule and the methods of governance ap-
plied by the Ultras. Conspiracy, in the
opinion of Furet, an historian of the
Revolution, is an idea typical of the tra-
ditional religious mentality, which is
“accustomed to treating evil as a product
of hidden forces.” It is also an idea char-
acteristic of revolutionary conscious-
ness. Thanks to this idea, any obstacle
could be explained as the result of ene-
my actions–high prices, food short-
ages, corruption scandals. The belief in
a conspiracy “reinforces the horror of
the crime because it cannot be admitted,
and expresses the cleansing function
of its elimination; it frees one from hav-
ing to point out the perpetrators of the
crime and from revealing what their
plans were, because one cannot describe
perpetrators who are hidden and whose
goals are abstract.”

Saint-Just unmasked the Girondistes:

he said that within the very body of
the National Convention conspirators
aimed at the restoration of tyranny had
built a nest. Their plans were “sinister”
and their actions “re½ned.” They were
neither courageous nor open enemies of
Freedom. They spoke its language; they
appeared to be its defenders.

The conspirators were unmasked–
some of them escaped, the rest were
imprisoned. “Not all the imprisoned,”
explained Saint-Just, “are guilty. The
majority of them were just confused.
But in the struggle with the conspiracy,
the salvation of the nation is the highest
law.” Then, it is very dif½cult to distin-
guish an error from a crime, and one has
to sacri½ce the freedom of a few in order
to save all. A faction of the conspirators,
“secretive and politically sophisticated,
seemingly caring about freedom and
order, skillfully opposed freedom with
freedom, did not distinguish inertia
from order and peace, nor republican
spirit from anarchy.” It walked with the
people and freedom to direct them to-
ward their goals–toward monarchy–
“by making current conditions and the
horror of these days look repugnant.”
This is the language of Saint-Just,
whom Albert Camus considered a great
man. Robespierre was also called ‘The
Incorruptible,’ ‘The Spotless.’ Yet it is
they, Robespierre and Saint-Just, who
became symbols of the cruel Terror, the
monstrosity of informers, and the guil-
lotine, which killed anybody who got in
the way.

It is worth remembering that behind

the backs of those idealists of cruelty
and apostles of terror hovered out-and-
out scoundrels, who used revolutionary
slogans and the guillotine to settle dirty
accounts, to blackmail, and to pursue
shady interests. The idealist fanatic is
followed by thugs, scoundrels, and hyp-
ocrites. This is the fate of every revolu-
tion. But the scoundrel is less interest-
ing–he appears wherever one can ½sh in
murky waters, get rich by informing on
others, get promoted through intrigue,
get famous by kicking someone who is
down.

More interesting is the idealist: this
one is ready to give his life for his ideals,

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Adam
Michnik
on
nonviolence
& violence

but more willingly he puts others to
death on behalf of those ideals. Before
he puts them to death by guillotine,
though, he puts them to death with
words. A fanatic idealist, he reaches for
mud before he reaches for his sword.
Before he exterminates his enemy, he
has to dehumanize him, de½le him. If
the absolutism of Jacobin Virtue was
to justify absolute terror, then their en-
emies–the victims of terror–had also
to be absolutely evil, the embodiments
of total treason and perfect degradation.
Among the Jacobins–including the
leaders–were plenty of corrupt people
hungry for power, privilege, and money;
people guilty of corruption and theft;
people with many complexes; ne’er-do-
wells; incurable schemers; careerists at
the service of any government. For ide-
alists, it could not have been very pleas-
ant. But, as they say in Polish, when you
chop wood, the chips fly. If an informer
served Virtue, his very contribution
eliminated all character flaws. If the in-
triguer hurt the enemies of Virtue, the
intrigue became the servant of the Revo-
lution. The service of Virtue manifested
itself in only one way: hatred of the ene-
mies of Virtue. Hatred–as Barbara Skar-
ga has recently reminded us–is a feeling
that does not know how to look at the
world other than from the perspective of
negation. Even in what to others seems
valuable and important, it notices exclu-
sively trickery and deceit. Because, for
one who hates, this is the natural state
of the human condition. Hatred does
not aim at improving. Quite to the con-
trary, it favors the existing situation and
with satisfaction cites every error and
unsuccessful endeavor, con½rming the
correctness of its attitude. But above all,
with such an orientation, it wants to poi-
son everybody around. And it begins to
ooze out until it embraces the whole so-
ciety.

France ruled by the Jacobins was tak-
en over by the madness of searching for
enemies and traitors. Informers, revo-
lutionary tribunals, guillotines–every-
body was suspect. Denunciations tri-
umphed along with meanness and fear
–all in the name of Virtue.

In trying to describe the people of
hatred, Skarga writes about those who
have a dispersed identity, about people
who are “weak” and “susceptible to in-
fluence,” “ambition-driven,” “pathet-
ic” people. Indeed, there were plenty
of those in Jacobin clubs and revolution-
ary tribunals. But more fascinating are
the strong people, the honest ones, the
idealistic, who are blinded by the drug
of revolution and transformed into skill-
ful manipulators, cynics of the political
game, demagogues of fluent speech and
dried-up heart–people of a religious
sect transformed into a gang of bandits.
The idealist fanatic, the Jacobin Ultra,

believed that one could build a better
world according to the ideals of Rous-
seau and through revolutionary meth-
ods, by excluding from public life the
people of the ancien régime, which had
been based on the oppression of subjects
by the mighty of the world. Rousseau
said, “I hate subjection because it is the
source of all evil.” The Ultra Jacobin be-
lieved that the revolution would help to
end all evil. This is why the Jacobin nev-
er spoke in his own name; but in the
name of the Revolution and the Nation,
in the name of Freedom and Virtue, in
the name of those humiliated by subor-
dination, he sent to the guillotine people
suspected of vice. Virtue is possible and
fascinating only when surrounded by
vice. This is why the ‘just and spotless’
need popular injustice and all-embracing
sin.

The Jacobin “glori½es the poor,”
observes Hannah Arendt, so that “his
praise of suffering as the spring of Vir-

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The Ultras
of moral
revolution

tue” becomes dangerous, usually serving
as a “mere pretext for lust for power.”3
Was the Jacobin sincere in declaring his
compassion for the poor and the suffer-
ing? We have no reason to doubt it. On
the other hand, it was not a compassion
for any speci½c, individual persons. The
Jacobin identi½ed with the “boundless
suffering of the masses,” the suffering
of millions. “By the same token,” wrote
Arendt, “Robespierre lost the capacity to
establish and hold fast to rapports with
persons in their singularity; the ocean of
suffering around him”4 drowned all par-
ticular reasons–reasons of friendship,
truthfulness, loyalty to principles. The
Revolution in the name of Virtue and
Freedom turned into a dictatorship of
sacrilegious liars–the Jacobins in pow-
er became perfectly indifferent to the
fate of individuals who had been victim-
ized or humiliated. Such people could
already be sacri½ced without scruples
in the name of Revolutionary Cleansing.
The cleansing became a purge–a purge
that was meant to wash the dirt of hy-
pocrisy and duplicity from the clean face
of revolutionary Virtue.

“The Revolution,” wrote Arendt, “be-
fore it proceeded to devour its own chil-
dren, unmasked them.” In the end, “No
one is left among the chief actors who
does not stand accused, or at least sus-
pected, of corruption, duplicity, betray-
al, conspiracy with the court, and ac-
cepting money and instructions from
London or Vienna.”5

Preparing the accusation of Danton,

Robespierre wrote in his notebook:

3 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York:
Viking Press, 1963), 89.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., 98.

There is in Danton a certain feature which
reveals a thankless and petty soul: he
praised the recent productions of Des-
moulins, at the Jacobins he dared to de-
mand for them freedom of the press,
when I suggested to them the privilege of
burning. [ . . . ] When I showed him the
system of calumny of the Girondistes,
he answered, ‘What does that matter to
me? Public opinion is a whore, posterity
is nonsense!’ The word Virtue made Dan-
ton laugh: ‘There is no more reliable vir-
tue,’ he said laughingly, ‘than that which
I cultivate every night with my wife.’ How
could this man, to whom any moral idea
was alien, be a defender of Freedom? An-
other maxim of Danton’s was that one
ought to use rascals; that is why he was
surrounded by the dirtiest intrigants. He
believed in a tolerance for vice, which was
to ensure him as many supporters as there
are corrupted people in this world. [ . . . ]
At every time of crisis Danton took a vaca-
tion.

When the Jacobins were cursed,

he remained silent. When he was attacked
himself, he forgave. All the time he ap-
peared to the Girondistes as a tolerant
mediator, he bragged publicly that he had
never denounced any enemy of freedom,
he constantly reached out to them with
an olive branch. [ . . . ] He did not want the
death of the tyrant; he wanted people to
be satis½ed with his exile. [ . . . ] He desired
amnesty for all of the guilty; therefore he
wanted counter-revolution.

This is an accounting of Danton’s
crimes drafted by Robespierre. And a
close friend of Danton said to the Jac-
obins: if you kill the Girondistes, the
next ones will do the same with you.
And that is what happened. The day
before his execution Danton was to
say: “In revolutions power remains at
the end with the biggest scoundrels.”

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Adam
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on
nonviolence
& violence

Led to the square where the guillotine
loomed, he was to shout, “Robespierre!
You will be following me!” And that is
what happened four months later. Lou-
is Auguste Blanqui, an icon of French
revolutionaries in the nineteenth centu-
ry, imprisoned in 1848, prepared a ruth-
lessly honest portrait of Robespierre,
whom he called “a would-be Napoleon.”
He wrote: “No other personality was
as destructive as he was; when he de-
manded that others give up their per-
sonal dreams, it was only so that they
could put them onto the altar of his own
pride.” The National Convention, the
highest revolutionary power, “was like
a herd speechless from fear, standing
at the gate to the slaughterhouse. All
tongues were frozen, all eyes were
glazed, all gestures were petri½ed in hor-
ror.”

Robespierre declared: “We need to in-
still in each person a religious respect for
man, this deep sense of obligation that
constitutes the only guarantee for intro-
ducing a state of social happiness.” Blan-
qui commented:

It was apparently in order to instill reli-
gious respect of man for man that Robes-
pierre sent to the guillotine all his rivals,
including the least dangerous opponents.
A furtive glance was enough to send his
best friend to the guillotine. Camille Des-
moulins, a friend from youth and a com-
rade in the struggle and an admirer, was
executed because he dared to say ‘Burn-
ing is not an answer.’

All of those godlike warriors were
cruel people, hungry for power, armed
with hypocrisy and their blessed stilet-
tos. Robespierre, mercilessly beheading
all those who opposed his ambitions or
awakened distrust, constantly present-
ed himself as a victim. On the heaps of
corpses murdered by his hand, he con-

sistently repeated the pathetic refrain
of Socrates: “They want to force me to
drink hemlock . . . and I know that I will
drink it.” A magni½cent pretext for serv-
ing it to his opponents.

For Robespierre, the end justi½ed the

means, even the most vicious means,
when the real goal, wrote Blanqui, was
“the desire for power.”

But every restoration also swings from
moderation to radicalism. Every restora-
tion is un½nished, inconsistent; it does
not ful½ll the expectations of its support-
ers.

After initial declarations on behalf of

moderation, conciliation, and accord
comes a moment when the Ultras of
restoration–also known as White Jac-
obins–feel disappointed. In France,
after a short honeymoon, Napoleon
returned to power for a hundred days;
after those hundred days, the Ultras re-
taliated against the thankless French. If
the symbol of the beginning of restora-
tion were the appeals to forget about the
hatred dividing France, now the Ultras
declared that conciliatory Louis xviii
was a “Jacobin with a lily.” They called
to stop the appeals for reconciliation
because there can be no reconciliation
between the party of the hangmen and
the party of the victims. The time of do-
ing justice had begun–in the name, of
course, of the Great Cleansing of France
from this hellish dirt of both the Revo-
lution and the empire. Because–the Ul-
tra argued–revolution was the child of
haughtiness and madness, which fed up-
on corpses; it was a monster enjoying
looting, arson, and butchering. Now one
ought to bring back the old prerevolu-
tionary laws, customs, and privileges for
the gentry, aristocracy, and the Church–

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The Ultras
of moral
revolution

as well as discipline and censorship.
“The freedom to print and freedom of
the press,” said the Ultra, “are the most
horrible plague of our unfortunate
times.”

And he was sincere in these confes-
sions: he believed that the return to the
prerevolutionary golden age is neces-
sary and realistic, but he warned that
the revolutionary forces are still power-
ful, that the majority of the positions in
the administration are still occupied by
Jacobins and Bonapartists. This is why
a Great Cleansing is needed. “The time
for handling with kid gloves is over!”
And indeed it was over. The White
Terror flooded France with blood; para-
military units of royalist guerillas intro-
duced a climate of vengeance, inquisi-
tion, and repression aimed at all sus-
pects; and anybody could be suspected
of Jacobinism, of Bonapartism, of any-
thing. In Avignon, the Napoleonic Mar-
shal Brune was murdered. His body was
dragged down the street and thrown in-
to the Rhône.

The royal government released pro-
scription lists of enemies; censorship
was restored. A ban was announced on
“provocative shouting and subversive
journals.” The newly created lists of
suspects were kept secret. After the ½rst
trials, the ½rst heads rolled. The acts of
the executioner brought order and calm.
“There is a need for chains, hangmen,
torturers, death; let the heads of the Jac-
obins roll; there is the need for a fear
that redeems.”

Among those the Chamber of Peers
judged was a famous Napoleonic Mar-
shal, Michel Ney. The per½dy of this tri-
al was that those who were to sentence
him were his comrades-in-arms. And
it was to be chaired by Marshal Jeannot
de Moncey. Distressed by the situation,
de Moncey sent a letter to Louis xviii
in which he wrote: “Allow me to ask

His Majesty, where were his accusers
when Ney was ½ghting on so many bat-
tle½elds? Can France forget about a he-
ro of the Bersina battle? Am I to put to
death someone who has saved so many
French lives? I know that I am arousing
the hatred of the courtiers, but stand-
ing near my grave, I can say, like one of
your distinguished ancestors: ‘All lost
but honor.’ I will die satis½ed.” For these
words de Moncey was thrown out of the
Chamber of Peers and locked up in a for-
tress.

The witness for the defense was Mar-
shal Louis Nicolas Davout, who defend-
ed Ney to the very end. Unfortunately,
other marshals were short on honor
and courage. So Ney was sentenced and
shot. In the name of the restoration of
knightly virtues, people were used as
marshals who had behaved despicably,
choosing obsequiousness, cowardice,
and betrayal.

The violence that was to guarantee
Virtue became an instrument of vil-
lainy. The moderate and the lenient in
the camp of restoration were losing;
the Ultras were winning. Their restor-
ation was to be the Grand Counterrev-
olution, that is, revolution–also moral
–with a minus sign. All changes intro-
duced by the Revolution were to be
erased; all the chimeras of the philoso-
phers of the Enlightenment concerning
the state of nature, the social contract,
the constitution, the rights of man and
the citizen, and parliamentary repre-
sentation were to be abandoned. The
absolute monarchy was to be restored,
as this was the only way to return to
God’s order guarded by the Catholic
Church.

Tradition provided an easy model: the

Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition,
argued the Ultra, understood that one
needs to beat to death any serious as-
sassination of religion. Nobody has the

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Adam
Michnik
on
nonviolence
& violence

right to criticize the kings of Spain. They
know their enemies, and under the law
they can punish them. Nobody ought
to feel sorry for evildoers, who deserve
the punishment for questioning Span-
ish dogmas. Those who spread heresies
ought to be put among the worst crimi-
nals. After all, heresy led Europe to the
Thirty Years’ War.

If there had been an active Inquisition

in France, the Revolution would never
have happened. Therefore, the ruler who
does without the stakes of the Inquisi-
tion deals a deadly blow to humanity.
“The Inquisition on its own,” argued de
Maistre, the perfect Ultra, “is a blessed
institution that provides Spain with an
extraordinary service which a sectarian
and philosophical fanaticism has derid-
ed, and shamelessly.”

The direct consequence of such rea-
soning was a law on sacrilege that the
Ultras introduced during the Restora-
tion. It stated that “sacrilege is recog-
nized as any active insult to religion
made consciously and out of hatred.
The profanation of Church vessels is
subject to the death penalty. The prof-
anation of consecrated bread calls for
the same punishment as parricide.”

We should add that those guilty of par-

ricide ½rst have their hand cut off and
then their head. The Ultra argued eager-
ly that “as far as someone guilty of sacri-
lege is concerned, in sentencing him to
death one is after all simply sending him
to face his natural judge.” The author
of those words, Louis Gabriel Bonald, a
philosopher of the Ultra camp, certainly
believed that it would serve the Cleans-
ing and the Moral Revolution.

Chateaubriand–an unquestioned le-
gitimist–tried unsuccessfully to argue
that the principle of religion is mercy,
and if it needs the guillotine it is only a
triumph for their [the Church’s] mar-

tyrs. The Ultras won. Because they
believed that only the use of similarly
forceful means could prevent huge po-
litical defeats and push back particular-
ly forceful attacks on the state. And the
most effective of those means was vio-
lence; it is violence that creates order,
“that stops the hand of man, and threat-
ens with chains, with the sword, with
the knout, and with the guillotine.”
Against rebels one ought to send “sol-
diers and executioners.”

The executioner is the guarantor of or-

der who struggles with chaos, dirt, and
rebellion. The executioner is a man who
metes out punishment.
De Maistre asked:

Who is this inexplicable being, who, when
there are so many agreeable, lucrative,
honest and even honourable professions
to choose among, in which a man can ex-
ercise his skill or his powers, has chosen
that of torturing or killing his own kind?
This head, this heart, are they made like
our own? Is there not something in them
that is peculiar, and alien to our nature;
Myself, I have no doubt about this. He is
made like us externally. He is born like all
of us. But he is an extraordinary being,
and it needs a special decree to bring him
into existence as a member of the human
family–a ½at of the creative power. He is
created like a law unto himself.

Consider what he is in the opinion of
mankind, and try to conceive, if you can,
how he can manage to ignore or defy this
opinion. Hardly has he been assigned to
his proper dwelling-place, hardly has he
taken possession of it, when others re-
move their homes elsewhere whence they
can no longer see him. In the midst of this
desolation, in this sort of vacuum formed
round him, he lives alone with his mate
and his young, who acquaint him with the
sound of the human voice: without them
he would hear nothing but groans.

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The gloomy signal is given; an abject
servitor of justice knocks on his door to
tell him that he is wanted; he goes; he
arrives in a public square covered by a
dense, trembling mob. A poisoner, a
parricide, a man who has committed
sacrilege is tossed to him: he seizes him,
stretches him, ties him to a horizontal
cross, he raises his arm; there is a hor-
rible silence; there is no sound but that
of bones cracking under the bars, and
the shrieks of the victim. He unties him.
He puts him on the wheel; the shattered
limbs are entangled in the spokes; the
head hangs down; the hair stands up,
and the mouth gaping open like a fur-
nace from time to time emits only a few
bloodstained words to beg for death. He
has ½nished. His heart is beating, but it
is with joy: he congratulates himself, he
says in his heart, ‘Nobody quarters as
well as I.’ He steps down. He holds out
his bloodstained hand; the justice throws
him–from a distance–a few pieces of
gold, which he catches through a double
row of human beings standing back in
horror. He sits down to table, and he eats.
Then he goes to bed and sleeps. And on
the next day, when he wakes, he thinks of
something totally different from what he
did the day before. Is he a man? Yes. God
receives him in his shrines, and allows
him to pray. He is not a criminal. Never-
theless no tongue dares declare that he
is virtuous, that he is an honest man, that
he is estimable. No moral praise seems
appropriate to him, for everyone else is
assumed to have relations with human
beings: he has none.

And yet all greatness, all power, all sub-

ordination rest on the executioner. He is
the terror and the bond of human associa-
tion. Remove this mysterious agent from
the world, and in an instant order yields
to chaos: thrones fall, society disappears.
God, who has created sovereignty, has
also made punishment; he has ½xed the

earth upon these two poles: ‘For Jehovah
is master of the twin poles and upon them
he maketh turn the world’ . . . . 6

The Ultras
of moral
revolution

“Translating this apology of the exe-
cutioner,” the modernist writer Boleslaw
Micinski wrote in an essay, On Hatred,
Cruelty, and Abstraction, “I had the im-
pression that my ½ngers were stained
with blood.”

One must analyze the style of this ex-
cerpt to notice,” wrote Micinski, “that
the source of this spirit is sadism. From
behind the mask of the defender of con-
servative principles, “the face of a sadist
appears.” And also the conviction arises
that “man is evil and must therefore be
ruled with an iron truncheon.”

So much for Micinski. Isaiah Berlin,
after reading The Saint Petersburg Dia-
logues, observed that de Maistre is sin-
cerely convinced that “men can only
be saved by being hemmed in by the
terror of the authorities [ . . . ] must be
purged by perpetual suffering, must be
humbled by being made conscious of
their stupidity, malice, and helplessness
at every turn. [ . . . ] Their appointed mas-
ters must do the duty laid upon them by
their maker who has made nature a hier-
archical order by the ruthless imposition
of the rules–not sparing themselves–
and equally ruthless extermination of
the enemy.”7 All in the name of Moral
Counterrevolution and Cleansing.

6 Joseph De Maistre, http://www.newphilsoc.
org.uk/Freedom/berlinday/a_great_and_virtu-
ous_man.htm; St. Petersburg Dialogues, quoted
in Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Human-
ity (New York: Knopf, 1991), 116–117; also in
http://maistre.ath.cx:8000/st_petersburg.
html, quoted in ibid.

7 Ibid., 118–119.

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Adam
Michnik
on
nonviolence
& violence

XII

Who is the enemy poisoning the order
of Freedom and Virtue during the Rev-
olution? Who is the enemy destroying
God’s order on earth and the established
hierarchy with Christ’s envoy at the top?
The Red Ultra will answer the same way
as the White Jacobin: this enemy is a
sect. There exists in France a political
sect, argued Saint-Just. This sect that
poisons public life is made out of mon-
archists both open and hidden, who
wanted to remove Louis xvi but did not
want to end the monarchy. Today the
members of this sect demand modera-
tion and leniency, amnesty for the ene-
mies, and reconciliation with the ene-
mies of Virtue. Those people are crimi-
nal and arrogant; they are émigrés and
British agents. They are corrupted and
depraved, thieves, bribe-takers, and
dishonest speculators; people who are
weak and vain, malcontents and sowers
of disagreement, hypocrites and fruit-
less shouters.

Public life is entangled in the web of
this sect. Should not such a society–in
which self-interest and envy are the hid-
den springs of many enemies and crimi-
nals who through bribery want to escape
justice–launch the greatest possible ef-
fort to cleanse itself? And those who try
to stop this cleansing, are they not trying
to corrupt society? And those who want
to corrupt it, are they not trying to de-
stroy it?

“There is no hope of prosperity,” ex-
plained Saint-Just, “if the last enemy of
Freedom would breathe; you ought to
punish not only traitors but also those
who are neutral; you ought to punish
everyone in the Republic who is passive
and does not do anything for it.” The
flame of Freedom would cleanse us just
as liquid crude iron throws off any dirt.

“It is time,” appealed Saint-Just, “for
everybody to return to moral principles,
and for terror to be used against the en-
emies. It is time to declare war against
wild corruption, and to require every-
body to lead modest and frugal lives and
to observe civic virtues, and to wipe out
the enemies of the people who favor
crime and the passions of the depraved.”
In this way Saint-Just declared war on
the sect and announced a Great Cleans-
ing and Moral Revolution.

And what was ‘the sect’ for de Mai-
stre? They are those who try to corrupt
people or overthrow the existing order.
“They are the disturbers and subverts,”
wrote Berlin. “To the Protestants and
Jansenists he now adds Deists and Athe-
ists, Freemasons and Jews, Scientists
and Democrats, Jacobins, Liberals, Utili-
tarians, Anti-clericals, Egalitarians, Per-
fectibilians, Materialists, Idealists, Law-
yers, Journalists, Secular Reformers, and
intellectuals of every breed; all those
who appeal to abstract principles, who
put faith in individual reason or individ-
ual conscience; believers in individual
liberty or the rational organization of
society; reformers and revolutionaries:
these are the enemy of the settled order
and must be rooted out at all costs. This
is ‘la secte,’ and it never sleeps; it is forev-
er boring from within.”8

This sect ought to be annihilated by

force, ½rmly and mercilessly, in the
name of the divine order. De Maistre–
like any conservative–was convinced
that those who launch revolutions in
the name of freedom end up as tyrants.
Summarizing the Jacobins’ doctrine, he
remarked sarcastically what people hear
from their leaders: “You think that you
do not want this law, but we want to as-
sure you that in fact you really desire it.
If you dare to reject it, we will punish

8 Ibid., 119.

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you by shooting you for not wanting
what you want.” And that is what they
do, concluded de Maistre.

One ought to agree with this ‘White
Jacobin,’ the most distinguished of the
Ultras. This is exactly how the Jacobins,
the Red Ultras, acted. They proclaimed
themselves the emancipation of Free-
dom and Virtue; they privatized the
Revolution in order to privatize the na-
tion. The guillotine caused all the French
people to become the property of the
Revolution. But the White Ultras priva-
tized God and proclaimed themselves
the emancipation of the evangelical
teachings, while undertaking, intellectu-
ally and practically, an effort to convert
the French using the executioner’s axe.
Blanqui accused Robespierre of send-
ing to the guillotine spokesmen of athe-
ism in order to win back the favor of the
Church. This is why he presented as an
offering to Catholic priests the head of
Chaumette, a preacher of atheism. Blan-
qui wrote: “What a pleasant surprise it
was for the sons and heirs of the Inqui-
sition to see that God had again found
Himself under the care of the guillotine.
The beautiful times of the mightiness
of the divine spirit could be reborn as
heads rolled to honor the immortality
of the soul.” Heretics were made depen-
dent upon the supreme ruler of the tor-
turer. The guillotine had replaced the
stake.

Let us set aside the tone of anticlerical-

ism typical of French revolutionary cir-
cles, here carried ad absurdum, because
it is absurd to think that Catholic priests
appreciated the cult of the Supreme Be-
ing created by Robespierre. Let us em-
phasize, rather, the well-captured inti-
mate relationship between the guillotine
and the stake. The guillotine of the Jac-
obins was the natural daughter of the
Inquisition’s stake. And it doesn’t really
matter at this point that it was an illegit-

imate daughter. Both the stake and the
guillotine were to serve the Cleansing,
Moral Revolution, but they have always
served the arbitrary claims of the au-
thorities, convinced that they have Ab-
solute Virtue at their disposal.

And such thinking has always ended

The Ultras
of moral
revolution

badly.

XIII

The Red Ultras, whether Robespierre or
Saint-Just, have legions of defenders. So
does the White Jacobin de Maistre.

The defenders emphasize that Robes-

pierre was spotless, incorruptible, in-
domitable; that Saint-Just, a fascinating
dreamer, was a good and pure man; that
de Maistre was famous for his personal
charm and kindness toward people, and
that his apology for the executioner was
the result of his horror at the Jacobin ter-
ror, a kind of revenge, as he saw in the
victim of the executioner either Robes-
pierre or Saint-Just, not just an ordinary
mortal.

I gladly agree with the advocates of
the Red Ultras and the White Jacobins.
But in the rhetoric and mentality of the
Red Ultras we can recognize, after all,
the early outlines of the rhetoric and
mentality of the Bolsheviks; in the icon
of Robespierre we can see Lenin and
Stalin; and in the terror of the Jacobin
guillotine we can see a preview of the
platoons of CheKa death squads.9

On the other hand, in the catalog of
opponents of the Divine Order prepared
by de Maistre we see the same people
twentieth-century Fascism added to
their enemy list.

“De Maistre’s violent hatred of free

traf½c in ideas,” wrote Isaiah Berlin,

9 VeCheKa, known better as CheKa, stands for
Vserossykaya Chrezvychainaya Komissiya (All-
Russian Extraordinary Commission).

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Adam
Michnik
on
nonviolence
& violence

“and his contempt for all intellectuals,
are not mere conservatism, . . . but some-
thing at once much older and much
newer–something that at once echoes
the fanatical voices of the Inquisition,
and sounds what is perhaps the earliest
note of the militant anti-rational Fas-
cism of modern times.”10

You will say that those are just words,

just ideas, written down on paper. But
words are not innocent. They have a life
of their own. Words create a system of
ethical and intellectual interpretation of
the world, an interpretation that allows
one to see in the guillotine a gate to Free-
dom and Virtue and in the executioner’s
axe a path to God. The history of the Jac-
obins and Ultras, Red or White, teaches
us that there is a need for ethical knowl-
edge, that there are no honest values that
would justify reaching for such peculiar-
ly dishonest means and methods. This is
why one cannot put people down in the
name of lifting them up; this is why one
cannot spread the poison of fear in the
name of Virtue and Moral Revolution;
this is why one cannot push the drug
of suspicion in the name of Truth and
Cleansing. This is why one cannot for-
get that God did not give any person
power over any other person; that no
one should give up caring about one’s
own salvation in caring about someone
else’s salvation; that one cannot force
anyone into faith either through force
or blackmail; and that the cross is the
symbol of the Lord’s suffering, not a
baseball bat for clubbing adversaries.

XIV

I already hear the ironic commentaries:
those are the nauseating platitudes of an
aesthete, empty moralizing that does not

10 Berlin, The Crooked Timber, 150.

Dædalus Winter 2007

wish to understand that revolution has
its rights.

Jacobins and Ultras always reply the
same way. After all, to be a Jacobin is to
transcend limits. It means to attack the
constitution in the name of utopia, and
the republic in the name of a perfect re-
public. It means to criticize the guillo-
tine for being too gentle to enemies; to
label the partisans of moderation trai-
tors of the revolution; to be redder than
the Reds, more plebeian than the plebe-
ians, more ‘mad’ than the extreme radi-
cals, more vigilant than the tribunals of
vigilantism, more suspicious than the
lieutenants of suspicion. To be oppo-
nents of the death penalty while order-
ing new executions daily; to be such a
relentless hound of the ‘tolerant’ left
that one ½nds oneself to the left of com-
mon sense; to be such an enthusiastic
defender of the Revolution that one
sends other revolutionaries to the guillo-
tine.

“To be ultra,” wrote Victor Hugo,

is to go beyond. It is to attack the scepter
in the name of the throne, and the mitre
in the name of the attar; it is to ill-treat
the thing which one is dragging; it is to
kick over the traces; it is to cavil at the
fagot on the score of the amount of cook-
ing received by heretics; it is to reproach
the idol with its small amount of idolatry;
it is to insult through excess of respect;
it is to discover that the Pope is not suf½-
ciently papish, that the King is not suf½-
ciently royal, and that the night has too
much light; it is to be discontented with
alabaster, with snow, with the swan and
the lily in the name of whiteness; it is to
be a partisan of things to the point of be-
coming their enemy; it is to be so strong-
ly for, as to be against.11

11 Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, ch. 3, http://
www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/les_
miserables/170/.

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The Jacobin and the Ultra will agree
on one thing: when one chops the wood,
chips fly. Well, I am such a chip. And be-
fore I am treated like such a chip by mor-
al revolutionaries in the name of Virtue
and Freedom, in the name of the Divine
Order and Revealed Truth, allow me to
say, “Without me, ladies and gentlemen.
I have already learned this lesson.” Then
you will ask me, “Do you know, you
Malcontent from the sect of the eternal-
ly dissatis½ed and afraid, any revolution
that would be different?” And I would
answer, “Well, there have been different
revolutions . . . . ”

The English Revolution of 1689 was
called the Glorious Revolution, and not
because of heroic acts and victorious
battles, nor even because of a victory
over a stupid monarch. “The true glory
of the British revolution,” wrote George
Macaulay Trevelyan, “lay in the fact that
it was bloodless, that there was no civil
war, no massacre, no proscription, and
above all that a settlement by consent
was reached of the religious and politi-
cal differences.” This settlement stood
the test of time; it stabilized freedom in
political life and practical compromise
in the world of religious passions.

“The men of 1689 were not heroes.
Few of them were even honest men. But
they were very clever men, and, taught
by bitter experience, they behaved at
this supreme crisis as very clever men do
not always behave, with sense and mod-
eration.”12

This dangerous situation compelled
the bickering Whigs and Tories to make
a compromise known as the Revolution
Settlement. This was accompanied by
the Toleration Act, in which some saw
the right to live according to one’s con-

12 G. Macaulay Trevelyan, History of England
(New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926),
473.

science, and others “a necessary com-
promise with error.”13 That compromise
ended “continuous and mass sufferings,
hatreds and wrongs.”

The Ultras
of moral
revolution

“After a thousand years,” concluded

Trevelyan, “religion was at length re-
leased from the obligation to practice
cruelty on principle, by the admission
that it is the incorrigible nature of man
to hold different opinions on specula-
tive subjects.”14

The Toleration Act will be called by
this historian “a curious patchwork of
compromise, illogicality, and political
good sense.”15 Wise Britons, wise Ma-
cauley Trevelyan.

We, the Malcontents from the sects
of the eternally unsatis½ed and afraid,
dream of something similar. We do not
want further moral revolutions; a tight-
ening of the reins; special commissions
to track down the enemies of Virtue or
the Divine Order; the proscription list
of enemies, those who are suspected of
animosity. We the Malcontents dream
of just such a patchwork of compromise
and good sense. We the Malcontents do
not want further revolutions in a coun-
try that has not yet recovered from the
last several . . . .

13 Ibid., 474.

14 Ibid., 476.

15 Ibid.

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