Terror, salutary terror, is here in truth the order of the day; it represses all the efforts of the wicked ; it divests crime of all covering and tinsel!
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In a letter to the Committee of Public Safety while Representative on Mission in the City of Lyon, December 1793; reported in The Court and Camp of Buonaparte (1829), p. 65. See also Caroline Moorehead, Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour Du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era (2010), p. 177, quoting the phrase as "Terror, salutary terror, is the order of the day".