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crimes. In the name of what laws? They invented laws. What penalties did
they inflict? They invented penalties. Did they know the accused? No.
Did they listen to him? No. What advocates did they listen to? None.
What witnesses did they question? None. What deliberation did they enter
upon? None. What public did they call in? None. Thus, no public, no
deliberation, no counsellors, no witnesses, judges who are not
magistrates, a jury where none are sworn in, a tribunal which is not a
tribunal, imaginary offences, invented penalties, the accused absent,
the law absent; from all these things which resembled a dream there came
forth a reality: the condemnation of the innocent.
Exile, banishment, transportation, ruin, home-sickness, death, and
despair for 40,000 families.
That is what History calls the Mixed Commissions.
Ordinarily the great crimes of State strike the great heads, and content
themselves with this destruction; they roll like blocks of stone, all in
one piece, and break the great resistances; illustrious victims suffice
for them. But the Second of December had its refinements of cruelty; it
required in addition petty victims. Its appetite for extermination
extended to the poor and to the obscure, its anger and animosity
penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social
subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local
triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one
head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish
the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited;
the coup d'état achieved this wonderful feat of adding misfortune to
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