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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: History
Topic: The French Revolution

‘Citizenness Roland to the minister of justice. - Jeanne Marie Roland de la Platière, An Appeal to Impartial Posterity, by Citizenness Roland [1793]

Edition used:

An Appeal to Impartial Posterity, by Citizenness Roland, wife of the Minister of the Home Department, or A Collection of Pieces written by her during her Confinement in the Prisons of the Abbey and St. Pelagie, Part I (London: J. Johnson, 1795). Vol. 1.

Part of: An Appeal to Impartial Posterity, by Citizenness Roland, 2 vols.

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‘Citizenness Roland to the minister of justice.

Prison of the Abbey, june 8, 1793.

‘I AM suffering oppression: I am entitled, therefore, to remind you of my rights and your duties.

‘An arbitrary order, without specifying any charge, has plunged me into a place prepared for culprits. In it I have resided a week, without being examined.

‘The laws are known to you. They direct you to visit the prisons, and to set at liberty them, who are detained without cause. Lately, too, a decree has been passed, which enjoins you to take care, that the orders for arrests are shown to you, to examine whether they allege any charge, and to cause the persons who are imprisoned to be interrogated.

‘I transmit to you an attested copy of that, by virtue of which I have been forced from my home, and brought hither.

‘I demand the execution of the law, on my own account, and on your’s. Innocent and firm, injustice reaches without debasing me, and I can submit to it with pride, at a time when virtue is proscribed* . Of your will, placed as you are between the law and dishonour, there can be no doubt; and you are to be pitied, if you have not courage to act according to it.’

[* ]Here followed originally: ‘But it is incumbent on you, placed between the law and dishonour, either to fulfil the duties of your place, or resign it; else must you incur that infamy, with which posterity will brand weakness like your’s.’