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Excerpt from "On the Moral and Political

Principles of Domestic Policy"

Speech delivered on February 5, 1794

"Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation [something which emerges from a central source] of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs."

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) became the leader of the Committee of Public Safety, which governed France for about a year during the most radical phase of the French Revolution. It was the period known to history as "The Terror," and it gave rise to the term "terrorism" to describe political violence.

The French Revolution had begun with a dramatic act: storming a government prison, the Bastille, in Paris and seizing arms on July 14, 1789. The king of...