On the eve of the French Revolution, few subjects were capable of arousing more indignation in “enlightened” circles in France than the miscarriages of justice allegedly being perpetrated by an irrational and inhumane judicial system. Responding to a sustained campaign by an energetic group of publicists and reformers, the “tribunal of public opinion” had ruled almost unanimously by the 1780s that French justice was too severe, too arbitrary, and, in general, scandalously and shamefully “barbaric,” considering that it was almost the end of the eminently civilized eighteenth century. As Condorcet put it in 1793:

Yet, these words were written, as is well known, by a man who at that very moment was being hunted and tracked down by a regime which was in the process of making a mockery of the supposed “principles” of this supposed “common faith.” Classified by the Montagnards as a leading Girondin, Condorcet was arrested in March 1794 and apparently committed suicide soon afterwards to avoid almost certain execution.