No doubt in many cases the action of the Terrorists was based upon honest conviction. Certain members of the Government, like St. Just and Robespierre, were idealists convinced that their tyranny was needed to secure the reign of virtue in the world. Even among the politicians of the Commune, from whom emanated most of the socialist experiments and most of the extreme measures of the Terror, and with whom many of its worst instruments were closely allied, there were, no doubt, some men who, like Chaumette, meditated projects of benevolent philanthropy for the reform of criminals, the alleviation of suffering and the suppression of vice. These men saw round about them grave inequalities and serious distress. They wished to render social wrong impossible, and to make all men happy, patriotic and enlightened on the spot. They wished to break down conventions which sometimes worked hardship, and to banish what they regarded as the superstitions of the past. And thus, having seized on absolute power, they used it to found their dimly-seen ideal by desperate measures and in desperate haste. But while making full allowance for the intentions of these men, and passing over for the moment their ruinous unwisdom, we cannot shut our eyes to the methods which they used. Political passion warps history to its uses, and writers who have sympathised with the Terrorist ideals, have too often refused to consider anything else. But after all, these men were a small minority, whose maxims their colleagues adopted, but whose scruples they pushed aside. It is not by the hopes of a few theorists, but by the actions and character of the practical agents of the Terror that that system must be judged. And it is on the ground of their actions and character that the Terrorists as a party stand condemned. The overwhelming evidence of their own statements, of official papers and of judicial reports cannot be rejected as idle slander. No doubt some of them acted in a delirium, under an imminent sense of peril and at the risk of death. No doubt they all suffered from that blunting of the moral sense, which the reckless excitement of the Revolution seems to have produced in many minds, which alone rendered the Terror possible, and which is so conspicuous in Napoleon, the Revolution's conqueror and child. But still, admitting all excuses, the record of the Terrorists is dark. Some of them, at the head, were dangerous zealots, and some were colourless or unwilling assistants. But many of them, especially the subordinate agents and those who were ranked among the followers of Hébert, were ignorant and unprincipled, cruel and corrupt.