"The only leaders we need...are Reason and Truth"

The Self-denying Ordinance - excerpt from “Robespierre”, J.M. Thompson 1935

As a lawyer and member of the Estates-General, the Constituent Assembly and the Jacobin Club, Robespierre was an outspoken advocate for the poor and for democratic institutions. He campaigned for universal male suffrage in France, price controls on basic food commodities and the abolition of slavery in the French colonies.

“The subject for discussion was the corps législatif  to be set up under the new Constitution; and Thouret had begun to give reasons why members of the old legislature should be eligible for the new, when Maximilien rose to a point of order. It was improper, he said, for deputies to discuss this question, for they could not do so impartially, so long as they were themselves eligible to the next legislature.

He therefore proposed that they should here and now declare themselves ineligible. The idea that any member of a parliament should voluntarily exclude himself from re-election, and persuade his fellow-members to do the same, has seemed so extraordinary, that historians have suggested all kinds of ulterior motives for Robespierre’s action. It has been said that he knew he would not be re-elected, and wanted company in retirement; or that he was tired of the Assembly, and wished to cover his retreat to the Jacobins; or that he intended to give up speaking for writing, and already saw himself in the editor’s chair; or that he knew the post of accusateur public was his for the asking, or even (it is his friend Desmoulins’ suggestion) that he sacrificed himself, to prevent the re-election of men such as Le Chapelier, Desmeuniers, d’André, or Beaumetz. The answer to all these conjectures lies in Robespierre’s speech. He is arguing from his own feelings for what he believes to be those of the whole House. History and conscience (he thinks) both suggest that, when the legislator’s work is done, he should retire.

Will it be difficult to fins another 720 deputies as patriotic as themselves? He does not believe it. Will there be a lack of leaders? The House will be more democratic without them. ‘The only leaders we need in a legislative assembly (he declares) are Reason and Truth’ (applause).

As for the retiring members, they will do more good out of the House than in it, by carrying revolutionary principles into every corner of the country.

The effect of these arguments was overwhelming. Robespierre’s motion was passed almost unanimously. A royalist deputy demanded the printing, at the public expense, of ‘this sublime discourse’. ‘The Assembly broke up,’ reported the Moniteur, ‘amid the applause of its own members; and the galleries emptied in silence’, as though amazed at the magnanimity of its representatives.

They were probably surprised themselves. Although many of them had outgrown the enthusiasm of 1789, and were finding the political atmosphere, like that of the Manége, increasingly mephitic; though there were some few who had no hope of re-election, and welcomed Robespierre’s motion as a dignified euthanasia; yet there can have been few unaffected by the loss of public position, and of eighteen livres a day. What were they thinking of – their wives doubtless put the question, if they did not ask it themselves – to throw up Paris life and a political career for a mere punctilio?

The wider results of this ‘Self-denying Ordinance’, though serious, were probably not so momentous as is commonly supposed. During the two and a half years of the Constituent Assembly a new generation had grown up, less simple in holding the revolutionary faith, but more experienced in applying it. The embarrassments into which the Legislative Assembly fell were due less to its personnel than to its circumstances; the old members were absent, but the consequences of their acts remained.