"Anonymous calumniators,çoisRené" I said, "have the courage to say who you are; a little shame is soon over; add your names to your articles: it will be only one contemptible word the more."
I used sometimes to laugh at the ministers, and I gave vent to that ironical propensity which I have always reproved in myself.
Finally, under date 5 December 1818, the _Conservateur_ contained a serious article on the morality of interests and on that of duty: it was this article, which made a stir, that gave birth to the phrase of "moral interests" and "material interests," first put forward by me, and subsequently adopted by everybody. Here it is, much abridged; it rises above the compass of a newspaper, and it is one of my works to which my reason attaches some value. It has not aged, because the ideas which it contains are of all time:
"The ministry has invented a new morality, the morality of interests; that of duties is abandoned to fools. Now this morality of interests, of which it is proposed to make the ground-work of our government, has done more to corrupt the people in a space of three years than the Revolution in a quarter of a century.
"That which destroys morality in the nations and, with that morality, the nations themselves is not violence, but seduction; and by seduction I mean all that is flattering and specious in any false doctrine. Men often mistake error for truth, because each faculty of the heart or the mind has its false image: coldness resembles virtue, reasoning resembles reason, emptiness resembles depth, and so on.
"The eighteenth century was a destructive century; we were all seduced. We distorted politics, we strayed into guilty innovations while seeking a social existence in the corruption of our morals. The Revolution came to rouse us: in pushing the Frenchman out of his bed, it flung him into the tomb. Nevertheless, the Reign of Terror is, perhaps, of all the epochs of the Revolution, that which was least dangerous to morality, because no conscience was forced: crime appeared in all its frankness. Orgies in the midst of blood, scandals that ceased to be so by dint of being horrible: that is all. The women of the people came and worked at their knitting round the murder-machine as round their fire-sides: the scaffolds were the public morals and death the foundation of the government. Nothing was clearer than the position of every one: there was no talk of 'speciality,' nor of 'practicality,' nor of a 'system of interests.' That balderdash of little minds and bad consciences was unknown. They said to a man, 'You are a Royalist, a nobleman, rich: die;' and he died. Antonelle[43] wrote that no count had been found against certain prisoners, but that he had condemned them as aristocrats: a monstrous frankness, which, notwithstanding, allowed moral order to subsist; for society is not ruined by killing the innocent as innocent, but by killing him as guilty.