Opinion Day

In the French Republican calendar, the penultimate day is Opinion Day, apparently being the only day allowed for free speech. Here is what they wrote about it: 

      The quintidi, fifth and last of the Sanculottides, will be called the Feast of Opinion. Here rises a tribunal of a new kind, both gay and tetrible. 

      While the year lasted, the public officials, trustees of the law & of the national confidence, had to claim & have obtained the respect of the people & their submission to the orders they gave in the name of the law; they had to make themselves worthy not only of this respect, but also of the esteem and love of all citizens: if they failed to do so, let them beware of the celebration of Opinion, woe to them ! they will be struck, not in their fortune, not in their person, not even in the smallest of their rights of citizen, but in the opinion: In the unique and solemn day of the feast of the Opinion; the law opens the mouth to all citizens about the morale, personnel & actions of public officials; the law gives scope to the pleasant and gay imagination of the French. Pursuing public opinion on this day to manifest itself on this chapter in all ways: songs, allusions, caricatures, pasquinades, the salt of irony, the sarcasms of madness, will be on this day the salary of that of the elect of the people, who will have deceived him or who will have made himself disliked or hated by him. Private animosity and private vengeance are not to be feared; opinion itself would do justice to the rash detractor of an esteemed magistrate.

      It is thus that by its very character, by its natural gaiety, the French people will preserve their rights and sovereignty; one corrupts the courts, one does not corrupt public opinion. We dare to say it, this single day of celebration will better accommodate the magistrates in their duty during the course of the year, than would the laws of Dracon and all the courts of France. The most terrible and deepest of French weapons against the French is ridicule: the most political of courts is that of public opinion; & if e we want to deepen this idea & combine its spirit with the national character, one will find that this celebration of opinion alone is the most effective shield against the abuses & usurpations of the species.