Title: Robespierre: the Meaning of Virtue | VQR Online
Headings: Robespierre: the Meaning of Virtue
Robespierre: the Meaning of Virtue
By Francis Leary

Content: Relations cooled over whether the constitution should give the king a veto of legislation. Robespierre was decidedly against it, but Mirabeau was maneuvering to act as a secret conduit between the monarchy and the Assembly; he won the veto for the king. Robespierre was in his element when in August the Assembly whooped through the Declaration of the Rights of Man, inspired diversely by Rousseau, philosophes like Voltaire and Diderot, and the American Declaration of Independence. In an all-night session, the nobles, led by the due de Noailles, the beau-père of Lafayette, surrendered their feudal rights. In England, liberal reformers such as Charles James Fox and Richard Sheridan hailed these strides toward a consitutional monarchy as in Britain. The youthful English poet, William Wordsworth, then in Paris, hymned his praise: “ Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young were very heaven!” But it was a dawn of delusion. The king’s cousin, Philippe due d’Orléans, was busy spreading tales of orgies at the Court and troops assembling to massacre the starving people.