History of the Girondists, Volume I / Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution

by Alphonse de Lamartine

BOOK VI.

I.

Such were the mutually threatening dispositions of France and Europe at the moment when the Constituted Assembly, after having proclaimed its principles, left to others to defend and apply them; like the legislator who retires into private life, thence to watch the effect and the working of his laws. The great idea of France abdicated, if we may use the expression, with the Constituted Assembly; and the government fell from its high position into the hands of the inexperience or the impulses of a new people. From the 29th of September to the 1st of October, there seemed to be a new reign: the Legislative Assembly found themselves on that day face to face with a king who, destitute of authority, ruled over a people destitute of moderation. They felt on their first sitting the oscillation of a power without a counterpoise, that seeks to balance itself by its own wisdom, and changing from insult to repentance, wounds itself with the weapon that has been placed in its grasp.

II.

An immense crowd had attended the first sittings; the exterior aspect of the Assembly had entirely changed; almost all the white heads had disappeared, and it seemed as though France had become young again in the course of a night. The expression of the physiognomies, the gestures, the attire of the members of the Assembly were no longer the same; that pride of the French noblesse, visible alike in the look and bearing; that dignity of the clergy and the magistrates; that austere gravity of the deputies of the Tiers état had suddenly given place to the representatives of a new people, whose confusion and turbulence announced rather the invasion of power than the custom and the possession of supreme power. Many members were remarkable for their youth; and when the president, by virtue of his age, summoned all the deputies who had not yet attained their twenty-sixth year, in order to form the provisional bureau, sixty young men presented themselves, and disputed the office of secretary to the Assembly. This youth of the representatives of the nation alarmed some, whilst it rejoiced others; for if, on the one hand, such a representation did not possess that mature calmness and that authority of age that the ancient legislators sought in the council of the people; on the other, this sudden return to youth of the representatives of the nation, seemed a symptom of the regeneration of all the established institutions. It was visible to every body that this new generation had discarded all the traditions and prejudices of the old order of things; and its very age was a guarantee opposite to established rule, and which required that every statesman should by his age give pledges for the past, whilst from these was required guarantees for the future. Their inexperience was made a merit, their youth an oath. Old men are needed in times of tranquillity, young ones in times of revolutions.

Scarcely was the Assembly constituted, than the twofold feeling that was destined to dispute and contest every act—the monarchical and republican feeling—commenced upon a frivolous pretext, a struggle, puerile in appearance, serious in reality, and in which each party in the course of two days was alternately the conqueror and the conquered. The deputation that had waited on the king to announce to him the constitution of the Assembly, reported the result of its mission through the medium of the député Ducastel, the president of this deputation. "We deliberated," said he, "as to what form of words we should make use of in addressing his majesty, as we feared to wound the national dignity or the royal dignity, and we agreed to use these terms:—'Sire, the Assembly is formed, and has deputed us to inform your majesty.' We proceeded to the Tuileries; the minister of justice announced to us that the king could not receive us before to-day at one o'clock. We, however, thought that the public safety required that we should be instantly admitted to the king's presence, and we therefore persisted. The king then informed us he would give us audience at nine o'clock, at which hour we again presented ourselves. At four paces distance from the king I saluted him, and addressed him in the terms agreed upon; he inquired the names of my colleagues, and I replied, 'I do not know them;' we were about to withdraw, when he recalled us, saying, 'I cannot see you before Friday.'"

An ill-repressed agitation, which had hitherto pervaded the ranks of the Assembly, now broke forth at these last words. "I demand," cried a deputy, "that this title of Majesty be no longer employed." "I demand," added another, "that this title of Sire be abolished; it is only an abbreviation of Seigneur, which recognises a sovereignty in the man to whom it is given." "I demand," said the deputy Bequet, "that we be no longer treated as automata, obliged to sit down or stand, just as it pleases the king to rise or to sit down." Couthon made his voice heard for the first time, and his first speech was a threat against royalty. "There is no other majesty here," said he, "than that of the law and the people. Let us leave the king no other title than that of King of the French. Let this scandalous chair be removed, the gilded seat brought for his use the last time he appeared in this chamber, if he really is anxious to fill the simple place of the president of a great people. Let an equality exist between us as regards ceremony: when he is uncovered and standing, let us stand and uncover our heads; when he is covered and seated, let us sit and wear our hats." "The people," said Chabot, "has sent you here to maintain its dignity; will you permit the king to say 'I will come at three o'clock,' as if you were unable to adjourn the Assembly without awaiting him?"

It was decreed that every member should have the right to sit covered in the king's presence. "This decree," observed Garrau de Coulon, "is calculated to create a degree of confusion in the Assembly; this privilege, given indiscriminately, would enable some to display pride, and others flattery." "So much the better," said a voice; "if there are any flatterers, we shall know them." It was also decreed that there should be only two chairs, placed in a line, one for the king, the other for the president; and lastly, that the king should have no other title than that of King of the French.

III.

These decrees humiliated the king, spread consternation amongst the constitutional party, and agitated the people. All had hoped that harmony would be established between the powers, and yet this understanding was destroyed at the outset, and the constitution tottered at its first step. This deprivation of the titles of royalty seemed a greater humiliation than the deprivation of the absolute power. Had we alone kept our king to expose him to the insults and derision of the people's representatives? how will a nation that does not respect its hereditary chief, respect its elected representatives? and is it by such outrages that liberty hopes to render herself acceptable to the throne? Or, is it by infusing similar feelings of resentment in the breast of the king, that he will be induced to protect the constitution, and to aid the maintenance of the rights of the people? If the executive power be a necessary reality, we must respect it, even in the king; if it be but a shadow, still should we respect and honour it. The ministerial council assembled, and the king declared that he was not forced by the new constitution to expose the monarchical dignity represented in his person to the outrages of the Assembly, and that he would order the ministers to preside at the opening of the legislative body.

This rumour created a reaction in Paris in favour of the king. The Assembly, as yet undecided, felt the blow; and that the popularity it sought was fast disappearing. "What has been the result of the decree of yesterday?" said the deputy Vosgien, at the opening of the sitting of the 6th of October. "Fresh hopes for the enemies of the public welfare, agitation of the people, depreciation of our credit, general disquietude. Let us pay to the hereditary representative of the people the respect that is his due. Do not let him believe that he is destined to be the mockery and the plaything of each fresh legislation; it is time for the constitution to cast anchor, and fix itself with firmness and stability."

Vergniaud, the hitherto unknown orator of the Gironde, displayed in his opening speech that audacious yet undecided character that was the type of his policy. His speeches were uncertain as his mind; he spoke in favour of one party, and voted for the other. "We all appear to agree," said he, "that if this decree concerns our internal regulations, it should be instantly put into execution; and it is evident to me that the decree does concern our internal regulations, for there can be no connection of authority between the legislative body and the king. It is merely a question of those marks of respect which are demanded to be shown to the royal dignity. I know not why the titles of Sire and Majesty, which recall feudality, should be restored; for the king ought to glory in the title of King of the French. I ask you, whether the king demanded a decree to regulate the etiquette of his household when he received your deputation? However, to speak my opinion without reserve, I think that if the king, as a mark of respect to the Assembly, rises and uncovers his head, the Assembly, as a mark of respect to the king, should imitate his example."

Hérault de Séchelles demanded the repeal of the decree, and Champion, deputy of the Jura, reproached his colleagues for employing their meetings in such puerile debates. "I do not fear that the people will worship a gilded chair," said he, "but I dread a struggle between the two powers. You will not permit that the words sire and majesty be used, you will not even permit us to applaud the king; as if it were possible to forbid the people from manifesting their gratitude when the king has merited it. Do not let us dishonour ourselves, gentlemen, by a culpable ingratitude towards the National Assembly, who has retained these marks of respect for the king. The founders of liberty were not slaves; and previous to fixing the prerogatives of royalty, they established the rights of the people. It is the nation that is honoured in the person of its hereditary representative. It is the nation who, after having created royalty, has invested it with a splendour that remounts to the source from whence it sprung, and gives it a double lustre."

Ducastel, the president of the deputation sent to the king, spoke on the same side, but having inadvertently used the expression sovereign, in speaking of the king, and that the legislative power was vested in the Assembly and the king, this blasphemy and involuntary heresy raised a terrible storm in the chamber. Every word of this nature seemed to them to threaten a counter-revolution; for they were still so near despotism, that they feared at each step again to fall into its toils. The people was a slave, freed but yesterday, and who still trembled at the clank of his chains. However, the offensive decree was repealed, and this retraction was rapturously hailed by the royalists and the national guard. The constitutionalists saw in it the augury of renewed harmony between the ruling powers of the state; the king saw in it the triumph of a fidelity that had been deadened, but which blazed forth again on the least appearance of outrage to his person.

They were all deceived: it was but a movement of generosity, succeeding one of brutality; the hesitation of a nation that dares not, at one stroke, destroy the idol before which it has so long bowed the knee.

The royalists, however, attacked this return to moderation in their journals. "See," they cried, "how contemptible is this revolution—how conscious of its own weakness! This feeling of its own feebleness is a defeat already anticipated; see in two days how often it has given itself the lie. The authority that concedes is lost unless it possess the art of masking its retreat, of retreating by slow and imperceptible steps, and of causing its laws to be rather forgotten than repealed. Obedience arises from two causes, respect and fear. And both have been alike snapped asunder by the sudden and violent retrograde movement of the Assembly; for how can we respect or dread that power that trembles at its own audacity? The Assembly has abdicated by not completing that which it had dared to commence: the revolution that does not advance, retreats; and the king has conquered without striking a blow."

On their side the revolutionary party assembled that evening at the Jacobins, deplored their defeat, accused every one, and mutually recriminated on each other. "See," said their orators, "what underhand work has been accomplished in one night; what a triumph of corruption and fraud! The members of the former Assembly have mixed with the new members in the chamber, and have infused into the ears of their successors those concessions that have ruined them. After the sitting of that evening they mingled with the groups in the Palais Royal, spread alarm around, hinted of a second flight of the king, prognosticated trouble and anarchy, and made the people of Paris, who prefer their own private interests to the public weal, fear the utter destruction of confidence and the depression of the public credit. Can this venal race resist such arguments?"

All the real feelings of Paris were infused the next day into the attitude and discourses of the Assembly. "At the opening of the sitting," says a Jacobin, "I took my place amongst the deputies who were discussing the best means to obtain the repeal of the decree. I remarked that the decree having been carried the previous evening almost unanimously, it appeared impracticable to reckon upon so sudden and so scandalous a change of opinion. 'We are sure of the majority,' was their reply. I quitted my seat and took another, where precisely the same conversation passed. I then took refuge in that part of the chamber that had been so long the sanctuary of patriotism: there I heard the same arguments, the same apostacy. All had been purchased in the course of the night, and the best proof that this work of corruption had been accomplished before the deliberation is, that all the orators who spoke against the decree had their speeches ready written. Whence arises this surprise of the patriots? Because the well-intentioned members of the Assembly do not know each other; they have not met or reckoned their numbers here. It is true that you have opened your doors to receive them: they have entered this room to examine your countenance and ascertain your forces; but they are not as yet associated and knit together; nor have they acquired, by frequent visits here, and by listening to your discourses, that confidence and patriotism that form the great and good citizen."

The people, who sighed for repose after so many exciting scenes, destitute of work, money, and food, and intimidated by the approach of a severe winter, saw with indifference the attempt and the retraction of the Assembly, and suffered the deputies who had supported the decree to be insulted with impunity. Goupilleau, Couthon, Basire, Chabot, were threatened in the very Assembly by the officers of the national guard. "Beware!" said these soldiers of the people, bought over to the cause of the throne; "we will not suffer the Revolution to advance another step. We know you—we will watch you—you shall be hewed to pieces by our bayonets." These deputies, seconded by Barrère, came to the Jacobins' club, to denounce these outrages; but no effect was produced, and they gained nothing save expression of sterile indignation.

IV.

The king, reassured by this state of public feeling, proceeded, on the 7th, to the Assembly, where his appearance was the signal for unanimous acclamations. Some applauded the king, others applauded the constitution, in the person of the king. It inspired with real fanaticism that mass that judges of things by words alone, and believes all that the law proclaims sacred to be imperishable. Not content with crying Vive le Roi, they cried also Vive sa Majesté; and the acclamations of one part of the people thus avenged themselves on the offences of the others, and revered those titles that a decree had striven to efface. They even applauded the restoration of the royal chair beside that of the president, and it seemed to the royalists that this chair was a throne on which the people replaced the monarchy. The king addressed them, standing and bareheaded; his speech reassured their minds and touched their hearts; and if he lacked the language of enthusiasm, he had at least the accent of sincerity. "In order," said he, "that our labours may produce the beneficial results we have a right to expect, it is necessary that a constant harmony and an unalterable confidence should exist between the king and the legislative body. The enemies of our repose will seek every opportunity to spread disunion amongst us, but let the love of our country ally us, the public interest render us inseparable. Thus, public power will unfold itself without opposition, and the administration be harassed by no vain fears. The property and the opinions of every man shall be protected, and no excuse will remain for any one to live away from a country where the laws are in force, and the rights of all respected." This allusion to the emigrés, and this indirect appeal to the king's brothers, caused a sensation of joy and hope to pervade the ranks of the Assembly.

The president Pastoret, a moderate constitutionalist, beloved alike by the king and the people, because, with the doctrines of power, he possessed the acuteness of the diplomatist and the language of the constitution, replied,—"Sire, your presence in this assembly is a fresh oath you take of fidelity to your country: the rights of the people were forgotten and all power confused. A constitution is born, and with it the liberty of France. As a citizen, it is your duty to cherish—as a king, to strengthen and defend it. Far from shaking your power, it has confirmed it, and has given you friends in those who formerly were styled your subjects. You said a few days ago in this temple of our country, that you have need of being beloved by all Frenchmen, and we also have need of being beloved by you. The constitution has rendered you the greatest monarch in the world; your attachment to it will place your majesty amongst those kings most beloved by the people. Strong by our union, we shall soon feel its salutary effects. To purify the legislation, support public credit, and crush anarchy,—such is our duty, such are our wishes. Such are yours, sire; and the blessing of the French nation will be the recompence."

This day awakened hope once more in the hearts of the king and queen. They believed they had again found their subjects; and the people believed that they had again found their king. All recollections of what had passed at Varennes seemed buried in oblivion; and popularity had one of those sudden blasts that drive away the clouds in the sky for a short space, and deceive even those who have learnt to mistrust them. The royal family wished to enjoy it, and to let Madame and the dauphin profit by it; for these two infants knew nothing of the people save their fury; they had alone seen the nation through the bayonets of the 6th of October,—the rags of the émeute,—of the dust of the return from Varennes; the king wished they should now see them in a state of tranquillity and affection for him, for he taught his son to love the people, and not to avenge their offences towards him. In the pangs he had suffered, the most bitter was rather the ingratitude of the nation, than his own personal humiliations; for, to be misconstrued by the nation, was, in his eyes, far more painful than to be persecuted by them. One moment of justice on the part of public opinion made him forget two years of outrage. He went that evening to the Théâtre Italien with the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his children. The hopes to which the events of the day had given rise—his words of that morning—the expression of confidence and affection on his features—the beauty of the two princesses—the infantine grace of his children, produced on the spectators one of those impressions, where pity vies with respect, and enthusiasm softens the heart into veneration.

The theatre rang with applause mingled with sobs; every eye was fixed on the royal box, as though in mute reparation for so many insults offered to the king and his family. The populace can never resist the sight of children, there are so many mothers in every crowd; the dauphin, a lovely child, seated on the lap of his mother, and absorbed in the play, repeated the gestures of the actors to his mother as though to explain the piece to her. This careless tranquillity of innocence between the two storms—this childish sport at the foot of a throne, so soon to become a scaffold—this expansion of the heart of the queen, that had been so long closed to joy and security, filled every eye with tears, not excepting the king himself.

There are moments in every revolution when the most furious and enraged populace becomes gentle and compassionate; it is when it suffers nature and not policy to sway it; and instead of being a people, it becomes a man. Paris had such an instant: it was of short duration.

V.

The Assembly was very anxious to re-acquire the public feeling of which a momentary weakness had dispossessed it. It already blushed at its moderation for a day, and was anxious to cast fresh jealousies between the throne and the nation. A numerous party in the chamber was desirous of pushing matters to extremities, and to tighten the cord of the present posture of affairs until it snapped. For this purpose the party required agitation; tranquillity by no means suited its designs. It had ambitious desires as vast as its talents, ardent as its youth, impatient as its thirst for advancement. The Constituent Assembly, composed of reflective men of eminence in the state, and in the social hierarchy, had but the ambition of advancing the ideas of liberty and fame; the new Assembly had that of tumult, fortune, and power. Formed of obscure, poor, and unknown men, it aspired to the acquisition of all in which it was deficient.

This latter party, of which Brissot was the journalist, Pétion the popular member, Vergniaud the genius, the party of the Girondists the body, entered on the scene with the boldness and unity of a conspiracy. It was the bourgeoisie triumphant, envious, turbulent, eloquent, the aristocracy of talent, desiring to acquire and control by itself alone liberty, power, and the people. The Assembly was made up of unequal portions of three elements; the constitutionalists, who formed the aristocratic liberty and moderate monarchy party; the Girondists, the party of the movement, sustained until the Revolution fell into their hands; the Jacobins, the party of the people, and of philosophy in action; the first arrangement and transition, the second boldness and intrigue, the third fanaticism and devotion. Of these last two parties the Jacobin was not the most hostile to the king. The aristocracy and the clergy destroyed, that party had no repugnance to the throne; it possessed in a high degree the instinct of the unity of power; it was not the Jacobins who first demanded war, and who first uttered the word republic, but it was the first who uttered and often repeated the word dictatorship. The word republic appertained to Brissot and the Girondists. If the Girondists, on their coming in to the Assembly, had united with the constitutional party in order to save the constitution by moderate measures, and the Revolution by not urging it into war, they would have saved their party and controlled the throne. The honesty in which their leader was deficient was also wanting in their conduct—they were all intrigue. They made themselves the agitators in an assembly of which they might have been the statesmen. They had not confidence in the republic, but feigned it. In revolutions sincere characters are the only skilful characters. It is glorious to die the victim of a faith; it is pitiful to die the dupe of one's ambition.

VI.

Three causes of uneasiness agitated men's minds at the moment when the Assembly opened its sittings—the clergy, emigration, and impending war.

The Constituent Assembly had committed a gross error in stopping at a half measure in reforming the clergy in France. Mirabeau himself had been weak on this question. The Revolution was at the bottom only the legitimate rising of political liberty against despotism, and of religious liberty against the legal domination of Catholicism, because a political institution. The constitution had emancipated the citizens, and it was necessary to emancipate the faithful, and to claim consciences for the state, in order to restore them to themselves, to individual reason, and to God. This is what philosophy desired, which is only the rational expression of the mind's impulses.

The philosophers of the Constituent Assembly receded before the difficulties of this labour. Instead of an emancipation, they made a compact with the power of the clergy, the dreaded influences of the court of Rome, and the inveterate habits of the people. They contented themselves with relaxing the chain which bound the state to the church. Their duty was to have snapped it asunder. The throne was chained to the altar, they desired to chain the altar to the throne. It was only displacing tyranny,—oppressing conscience by law instead of oppressing the law by conscience.

The civil constitution of the clergy was the expression of this reciprocal false position. The clergy was deprived of these endowments in landed estates, which decimated property and population in France. They deprived it of its benefices, its abbeys, and its tithes—the altar's feudality. It received in lieu an endowment in salaries levied on the taxes. As the condition of this arrangement, which gave to the working clergy an existence, influence, and a powerful body of ministers of worship paid by the state, they required the clergy to take the oath of the constitution. This constitution comprised articles which affected the spiritual supremacy and administrative privileges of the court of Rome. Catholicism became alarmed and protested; consciences were disturbed. The Revolution, until then exclusively political, became schism in the eyes of a portion of the clergy and the faithful. Amongst the bishops and the priests, some took the civil oath, which was the guarantee of their existence; others refused, or, after having taken it, retracted. This gave rise to trouble in many minds, agitation in consciences, division in the temples. The great majority of parishes had two ministers,—the one a constitutional priest, salaried and protected by the government, the other refractory, refusing the oath, deprived of his income, driven from the church, and raising altar opposing altar in some clandestine chapel, or in the open field. These two ministers of the same worship excommunicated each other, the one in the name of the constitution, and the other in the name of the Pope and of the church. The population was also divided according to the greater or lesser degree of revolutionary spirit prevailing in the province. In cities and the more enlightened districts the constitutional worship was exercised almost without dispute. In the open country and the less civilised departments, the priest who had not taken the oath became a consecrated tribune, who at the foot of the altar, or in the elevation of the pulpit, agitated the people and inspired it, in all the horror of a constitutional and schismatic priesthood, with hatred of the government which protected it. This was not actually persecution or civil war, but the sure prelude to both.

The king had signed with repugnance and even constraint the civil constitution of the clergy: but he had done so only as king, and reserving to himself his liberty and the faith of his conscience. He was Christian and Catholic in all the simplicity of the Gospel, and in all the humility of obedience to the church. The reproaches he had received from Rome for having ratified by his weakness the schism in France, wounded his conscience and distracted his mind. He had never ceased to negotiate officially or secretly with the pope, in order to obtain from the head of the church either an indulgent concession to the necessities of religion in France, or prudent temporising. It was on these terms only that he could restore peace to his mind. Inexorable Rome had only granted him its pity. Fulminating bulls were in circulation by the hands of nonjuring priests, cast at the heads of the population, and only stopping at the foot of the throne. The king trembled, to see them burst one day on his own head.

On the other hand, he felt that the nation, of which he was the legitimate head, would never forgive him for sacrificing it to his religious scruples. Placed thus between the menaces of Heaven and the threats of his own people, he procrastinated with all his might the denunciations of Rome and the votes of the Assembly. The Constitutional Assembly understood this anxiety of the king's feelings and the dangers of persecution. It had given time to the king, and displayed forbearance to men's consciences: it had not intermeddled with the faith of the simple believer, but left each at liberty to pray with the priest of his choice. The king had been the first to avail himself of this liberty, and had not thrown open the chapel of the Tuileries to the constitutional worship. The choice of his confessor sufficiently indicated the choice of his conscience. The man in him protested against the political necessities which oppressed the monarch. The Girondists wished to compel him to declare himself. If he yielded to them, he infringed upon his dignity; if he resisted, he lost the remaining shreds of his popularity. To compel him to decide was a great point for the Girondists.

The public feeling served their designs. Religious troubles began to assume a political character. In ancient Brittany the conforming priests became objects of the people's horror, and they fled from contact with them. The nonjuring priests all retained their flocks. On Sundays large bodies of many thousand souls were seen to follow their ancient pastors, and go to chapels situated two or three leagues from any dwelling, or in concealed hermitages, sanctuaries which had never been stained by the ceremonies of a constitutional worship. At Caen blood had even flowed in the very cathedral, where the nonjuring priest disputed the altar with the conforming pastor. The same disorders threatened to spread over all parts of the kingdom: every where were to be seen two pastors and a divided flock. Resentment, which already displayed itself in insult, of necessity soon arrived at bloodshed. The one half of the people, disturbed in its faith, reverted to the aristocracy out of love for its worship. The Assembly must thus alienate the popular element, which it had so recently caused to triumph over royalty. It was highly necessary to provide against this unexpected peril.

There were only two means of extinguishing this flame at its source: either by freedom of conscience, stoutly maintained by the executive power, or persecution of the ministers of the ancient faith. The undecided Assembly wavered between these two parties. On a report of Gallois and Gensonné, sent as commissioners into the departments of the west, to investigate the causes of the agitation and the feelings of the people, the discussion commenced. Fauchet, a conforming priest and celebrated preacher, subsequently constitutional bishop of Calvados, opened the debate. He was one of those men who, beneath an ecclesiastical garb, conceal the heart of a philosopher. Reformers from feeling, priests by the state, sensible of the wide discrepancy between their opinions and their character, a national religion, a revolutionary Christianity, was the sole means remaining to them to reconcile their interest and their policy: their faith, wholly academic, was only a religious convenience. They desired to transform Catholicism insensibly into a moral code, of which the dogma was now but a symbol, which, in the people's eyes, comprised sacred truths; and which, gradually stripped of holy fictions, would allow the human understanding to glide insensibly into a symbolic deism, whose temple should be flesh, and whose Christ should be hardly more than Plato rendered a divinity. Fauchet had the daring mind of a sectarian and the intrepidity of a man of resolution.

VII.

"We are accused of a desire to persecute. It is calumny. No persecution. Fanaticism is greedy of it, real religion repulses it, philosophy holds it in horror. Let us beware of imprisoning the nonjurors; of exiling, even of displacing them. Let them think, say, write all they please against us. We will oppose our thoughts to their thoughts; our truths to their errors; our charity to their hatred. Time will do the rest. But in awaiting its infallible triumph we must find an efficacious and prompt mode of hindering them from prevailing over weak minds, and propagating ideas of a counter-revolution. A counter-revolution! This is not a religion, gentlemen! Fanaticism is not compatible with liberty. Look else at these ministers—they would have swum in the blood of patriots. This is their own expression. Compared with these priests, atheists are angels. (Applause.) However, I repeat, let us tolerate them, but do not let us pay them. Let us not pay them to rend our country in pieces. It is to this measure only that we should confine ourselves. Let us suppress all salary from the national treasury to the nonjuring priests. Nothing is due to them but in their clerical capacity. What service do they render? They invoke ruin on our laws; and they say they follow their consciences! Must we pay consciences which push them to the extremity of crime against their country? The nation supports them: is not that enough? They appeal to the article of the constitution, which says, 'The salaries of the ministers of Catholic worship form a portion of the national debt.' Are they ministers of the Catholic worship? Does the state recognise any other Catholicity than its own? If they would attempt any other it is open to them and their sectarians! The nation allows all sorts of worship, but only pays one. And what a saving for the nation to be freed from thirty millions (of francs), which she pays annually to her most implacable enemies! (Bravo.) Why have we these phalanx of priests, who have abjured their ministry? these legions of canons and monks; these cohorts of abbés, friars, and beneficed clergy of all sorts, who were not remarkable otherwise, except for their pretensions, inutility, intrigues and licentious life; and are only so to-day by their vindictive interference, their schemes, their unwearied hatred of the Revolution? Why should we pay this army of dependents from the funds of the nation? What do they do? They preach emigration, they send coin from the realm, they foment conspiracies against us from within and without. Go, say they to the nobility, and combine your attacks with the foreigner; let blood flow in streams, provided that we recover our privileges! This is their church! If hell had one on earth it is thus that it would speak. Who shall say we ought to endow it?"

Tourné, the constitutional bishop of Bourges, replied to the Abbé Fauchet as Fénélon would have answered Bossuet. He proved that, in the mouth of his adversary, toleration was fanatical and cruel. "You have proposed to you violent remedies for the evils which anger can only envenom; it is a sentence of starvation which is demanded of you against our nonjuring brethren. Simple religious errors should be strangers to the legislator. The priests are not guilty—they are only led astray. When the eye of the law falls on these errors of the conscience, it envenoms them. The best means of curing them is not to see them. To punish by the pangs of hunger simple and venial errors, would be an opprobrium to legislation—a horror in morals. The legislator leaves to God the care of avenging his own glory, if he believe it violated by an indecorous worship. Would you, in the name of tolerance, again create an inquisition which would not have, like the other, the excuse of fanaticism? What, gentlemen, would you transform into arbitrary proscribers the founders of liberty? You will judge, you will exile, you will imprison, en masse, men amongst whom, if there are some guilty, there are still more innocent! Crimes are no longer individual, and guilt would be decreed by category; but were they all and all equally guilty, could you have the cruelty to strike, at the same time, this multitude of heads; when under similar circumstances the most cruel despots would be content with decimating them? What then have you to do? One thing only: to be consistent, and found practical liberty and the peaceable co-existence of different worships on the bases of tolerance. Why do not our brethren of the priesthood enjoy the power of worshiping beside us the same God—whilst in our cities, where we refuse them the right of celebrating our holy mysteries, we allow heathens to celebrate the mysteries of Iris and Osiris? Mahometans to invoke their prophet? the rabbin to make his burnt-offerings? To what extent, I ask, shall such strange tolerance be permissible? to what extent, I ask also, will you push despotism and persecution? When the law shall have regulated the civil arts, births, marriage, burial, with religious ceremonies, by which Christians consecrate them; when the law will permit the same sacrifice on two altars, with what consistency can it forbid the virtue of the same sacraments? These temples, it will be repeated, are the council-chambers of the factious. True, if they be rendered clandestine, as the persecutors would make them; but if these temples be open and free, the eye of the law will penetrate there and every where else: it will be no longer religious worship, it will be crime they will watch and detect—and what do you fear? Time is with you; this class of the nonjurors will be extinct, and never renewed. A worship supported by individuals, and not by the state, constantly tends to weaken itself; at least, the factious, who are in their commencement animated by the divinity of their faith, gradually become reconciled, and identify themselves with the general freedom. Look at Germany—look at Virginia—where opposite creeds mutually borrow the same sanctuaries, and where different sects fraternise in the same patriotism. This is what we should tend to; these are the principles which ought gradually to implant themselves widely amongst a people: light ought to be the great precursor of the law. Let us leave to despotism to prepare its slaves for its commands by ignorance."

VIII.

Ducos, a young and generous-hearted Girondist, with whom enthusiasm for the honest carried him beyond the policy of his party, moved for the printing of this speech. His voice was drowned amidst the applause and murmurs which followed—a testimony of the indecision and impartiality of men's minds. Fauchet replied at the next sitting, and pointed out the connection between civil troubles and religious quarrels. "The priests," he said, "are of unreasonable tyranny, which still maintains its hold on consciences by the ill-broken thread of its power. It is a faction 'scotched, not killed'—it is the most dangerous of factions."

Gensonné spake like a statesman, and counselled toleration towards conscientious priests, and the repulsion by force of law of the turbulent clergy. During this discussion, couriers daily arriving from the country, brought news of fresh disorders. Every where the constitutional priests were insulted, driven away, massacred at the foot of the altars. The country churches, closed by order of the National Assembly, were burst open by axes, the nonjuring priests returned to them, urged by the fanaticism of the people. Three cities were besieged and on the point of being burnt down by the country people. The threatened civil war seemed the prelude to the counter-revolution. "See," exclaimed Isnard, "whither the toleration and impunity you have preached, conduct you!"

Isnard, deputy of Provence, was the son of a perfumer of Grasse. His father had educated him for a literary life, and not for business. He had studied politics in the antiquities of Greece and Rome. He had in his mind the idea of one of the Gracchi; he had his courage in his soul and his tone in his voice. Still very young, his eloquence was as fervent as his blood; his language was but the fire of his passion, coloured by a southern imagination; his words poured forth like the rapid bursts of impatience. He was the revolutionary impetus personified. The Assembly followed him breathless, and with him arrived at fury before it attained conviction. His discourses were magnificent odes, which elevated discussion to lyric poetry, and enthusiasm to convulsion; his action bespoke the tripod rather than the tribune. He was the Danton of the Gironde, as Vergniaud was to become its Mirabeau.

IX.

It was his maiden speech in the Assembly. "Yes," he said, "look at the point to which impunity conducts us! It is always the source of great crimes, and is now the sole cause of the disorganised state into which society is plunged. The plans of toleration proposed to you are very well for tranquil times; but can we tolerate those who will neither tolerate the constitution nor the laws? Will it be when French blood has at last stained the waves of the sea, that you will become sensible of the dangers of indulgence? It is time that every thing is submitted to the will of the nation; that tiaras, diadems, and censers should yield to the sceptre of the laws. The facts you have just heard are but the prelude of what is about to occur in the rest of the kingdom. Consider the circumstances of these troubles, and you will see that they have the effect of a disorganised system contemporary with the constitution. This system was born there! (the orator pointed to the right) it is sanctioned at the court of Rome. It is but a real fanaticism we have to unmask—it is but hypocrisy! The priests are the privileged brawlers, who ought to be punished by penalties more severe than mere private individuals. Religion is an all-powerful weapon. 'The priest,' says Montesquieu, 'takes the man from the cradle, and accompanies him to the tomb;' is it then astonishing that he should have so much control over the mind of the people, and that it is requisite to make laws, in order that under a pretence of religion it should not trouble the public peace? What should be the nature of such a law? I maintain that one only can be efficacious, and that is banishment from the realm. (The tribunes hailed this with loud applause.) Do you not see that it is necessary to separate the factious priest from the people whom he misleads, and send away these plague-spotted men to the lazarettos of Italy and Rome? I am told that the measure is too severe. What!—you are then blind and mute at all that occurs! Are you then ignorant that a priest can effect more mischief than all your enemies? I am answered, 'Ah! you should not persecute.' My answer is, that to punish is not to persecute. I answer thus to those who repeat what I heard retorted here on the Abbé Maury, that nothing is more dangerous than to make martyrs. This danger only exists when you have to strike fanatics in earnest, or men really pious, who believe the scaffold to be the nearest footstool to heaven. This is not the present case; for if there be priests who earnestly reject the constitution, they will not give any trouble to public order. Those who really trouble it, are men who only weep over religion in order to recover their lost privileges; those who should be punished without pity; and be assured that you will not thereby augment the strength of the emigrants: for we know that the priest is cowardly—as cowardly as vindictive—that he knows no other weapon but superstition; and that, accustomed to combat in the mysterious arena of confession, he is a nullity in every other battle-field. The thunders of Rome will fall harmless on the bucklers of liberty. The foes to your regeneration will never grow weary; no, they will never grow weary of crimes, so long as you leave them the means! You must overcome them, or be overcome by them; and whosoever sees not this is blind. Open the page of history; you will see the English sustaining for fifty years a disastrous war, in order to maintain their revolution. You will see in Holland seas of blood flowing in the war against Philip of Spain. When, in our times, the Philadelphians would be free, have we not also seen war in the two hemispheres? You have been witnesses of the recent outbreaks in Brabant, and do you believe that your Revolution, which has snatched the sceptre from despotism, and from aristocracy its privileges, from nobility its pride, from the clergy its fanaticism—a Revolution which has dried up so many golden sources from the grasp of the priesthood, torn so many frocks, crushed so many theories—do you believe that such a Revolution will absolve you? No—no!—this Revolution will have a dénouement, and I say—and with no intention of provocation—that we must advance boldly towards this dénouement. The more you delay, the more difficult and blood-stained will be that triumph!" (Violent murmurs.)

"But do you not see," resumed Isnard; "that all counter-revolutionists are obstinate, and leave you no other part than that of vanquishing them? It is better to have to contend against them, whilst the citizens are still up and stirring, and well remember the perils they have encountered, than to allow patriotism to grow cold! Is it not true that already we are no longer what we were in the first year of liberty; (some of the chamber applaud, whilst others disapprove). If fanaticism had then raised its head, the law would have been subjected! Your policy should be to compel victory to declare itself; drive your enemies to extremities, and you Will have them return to you from fear, or you will subdue them by the sword. Under important circumstances, prudence is a weakness. It is especially with respect to rebels that you should be decisive and severe; they should be hewn down as they rise. If time be permitted to them to have meetings and earnest partisans, then they spread over the empire like an irresistible torrent. It is thus that despotism acts, and it was thus that one individual kept beneath his yoke a whole nation. If Louis XVI. had employed this great means whilst the Revolution was but yet in its cradle, we should not now be here! This rigour, the vice of a despot, is the virtue of a nation. Legislators, who shrink from such extreme means, are cowards—criminals: for when the public liberty is assailed, to pardon is to share the crime. (Great applause.)

"Such rigour might perchance cost an effusion of blood? I know it! But if you do not make use of it, will not more blood flow? Is not civil war a still greater misfortune? Cut off the gangrened member to save the whole frame.[10] Indulgence is the snare into which you are tempted. You will find yourselves abandoned by the nation for not having dared to sustain, nor known how to defend, it. Your enemies will hate you no less. Your friends will lose confidence in you. The law is my God: I have no other—the public good, that is my worship! You have already struck the emigrants—again a decree against the refractory priests, and you will have gained over ten millions of arms! My decree would be comprised in two words: compel every Frenchman, priest or not, to take the civil oath, and ordain that every man who will not sign shall be deprived of all salary or pension. Sound policy would decree that every one who does not sign the contract should leave the kingdom. What proofs against the priest do we require? If there be but a complaint lodged against the priest by the citizen with whom he lives, let him be at once expelled! As to those against whom the penal code shall pronounce punishment more severe than exile, there is but one sentence left: Death!!"

X.

This oration, which pushed patriotism even to impiety, and made of the public safety an implacable deity, to which even the innocent were to be sacrificed, excited a frantic enthusiasm in the ranks of the Girondist party, a bitter indignation amongst the moderate party. "To propose the printing of such a speech," said Lecos, a constitutional bishop, "is to propose the printing of a code of atheism. It is impossible that a society can exist, if it have not an immutable morality derived from the idea of a God." Derisive sneers and murmurings hailed this religious protest. The decree against the priests, presented by François de Neufchâteau, and adopted by the legislative committee, was couched in these terms:—"Every ecclesiastic not taking the oaths is required to present himself before the expiration of the week at his municipality, and there take the civil oath.

"Those who shall refuse are not entitled in future to receive any allowance or pension from the public treasury.

"Every year there shall be an aggregate made of those pensions which the priests have forfeited, and this sum shall be divided amongst the eighty-three departments, to be employed in charitable works, and in giving succour to the indigent.

"These priests shall be, moreover, from their simple refusal of the oath, reputed as suspected of rebellion and specially surveillés.

"They may in consequence thereof be sent from their domicile, and another be assigned to them.

"If they refuse to change their domicile when called upon to do so, they shall be imprisoned.

"The churches employed for the paid worship of the state, cannot be devoted to any other service. Citizens may hire other churches or chapels, and exercise their worship therein. But this permission is forbidden to nonjuring priests suspected of revolt."

XI.

This decree, which created more fanaticism than it repressed, and which accorded freedom of worship not as a right but as a favour, saddened the heart of the faithful; and the revolt in La Vendée, and persecution every where, followed. Suspended as a fearful weapon over the conscience of the king, it was sent for his assent.

The Girondists were delighted at thus keeping the wretched monarch between their law and his own faith—schismatic if he recognised the decree, and a traitor to the nation if he refused it. Conquerors in this victory, they advanced towards another.

After having forced the king to strike at the religion of his conscience, they wished to force him to deal a blow at the nobility and his own brothers. They renewed the question of the emigrants. The king and his ministers had anticipated them. Immediately after the acceptance of the constitution, Louis XVI. had formally renounced all conspiracy, interior or exterior, in order to recover his power. The omnipotence of opinion had convinced him of the vanity of all the plans submitted to him for crushing it. The momentary tranquillity of spirits after so many shocks, the reception he had met with in the Assembly, the Champ-de-Mars, in the theatre,—the freedom and honours restored to him in his palace, had persuaded him that, if the constitution had some fanatics, royalty had no implacable enemies in his kingdom. He believed the constitution easy of execution in many of its provisions, and impracticable in others. The government which they imposed on him seemed to him as a philosophical experiment which they desired to make with their king. He only forgot one thing, and that is, the experiments of a people are catastrophes. A king who accepts the terms of a government which are impossible, accepts his own overthrow by anticipation. A well-considered and voluntary abdication is more regal than that daily abdication which is undergone in the degradation of power. A king saves, if not his life, at least his dignity. It is more suitable to majesty royal to descend by its own will, than to be cast down headlong. From the moment when the king is king no longer, the throne becomes the last place in the kingdom.

Be this as it may, the king frankly declared to his ministers his intention of legally executing the constitution, and of associating himself unreservedly and without guile to the will and destiny of the nation. The queen, by one of those sudden and inexplicable changes in the heart of woman, threw herself, with the trust of despair, into the party of the constitution. "Courage," she said to M. Bertrand de Molleville, minister and confidant of the king: "Courage! I hope, with patience, firmness, and perseverance, that all is not lost."

The minister of marine, Bertrand de Molleville, wrote, by the king's orders, to the commandants of the ports a letter, signed by the king:—"I am informed," he said, in this circular, "that emigrations in the navy are fast increasing. How is it that the officers of a service always so dear to me, and which has invariably given me proofs of its attachment, are so mistaken at what is due to their country, to me, and to themselves! This extreme step would have seemed to me less surprising some time since, when anarchy was at its height, and when its termination was unseen; but now, when the nation desires to return to order and submission to the laws, is it possible that generous and faithful sailors can think of separating from their king? Tell them to remain where their country calls them. The precise execution of the constitution is to-day the surest means of appreciating its advantages, and of ascertaining what is wanting to make it perfect. It is your king who desires you to remain at your posts as he remains at his. You would have considered it a crime to resist his orders, you will not refuse his prayers."

He wrote to general officers, and to commandants of the land forces:—"In accepting the constitution, I have promised to maintain it within, and defend it against enemies without; this solemn act should banish all uncertainty. The law and the king are henceforth identified. The enemy of the law becomes that of the king. I cannot consider those sincerely devoted to my person who abandon their country at the moment when it has the greatest need of their services. Those only are attached to me who follow my example and unite with me for the public weal, and remain inseparable from the destiny of the empire!"

Finally, he ordered M. de Lessart, the minister for foreign affairs, to publish the following proclamation, addressed to the French emigrants:—"The king," thus it ran, "informed that a great number of French emigrants are withdrawing to foreign lands, cannot see without much grief such an emigration. Although the law permits to all citizens a free power to quit the kingdom, the king is anxious to enlighten them as to their duties, and the distress they are preparing for themselves. If they think, by such means, to give me a proof of their affection, let them be undeceived; my real friends are those who unite with me in order to put the laws in execution, and re-establish order and peace in the kingdom. When I accepted the constitution, I was desirous of putting an end to civil discord—I believed that all Frenchmen would second my intentions. However, it is at this moment that emigration is increasing: some depart because of the disturbances which have threatened their lives and property. Ought we not to pardon the circumstances? Have not I too my sorrows? And when I forget mine, can any one remember his perils? How can order be again established if those interested in it abandon it by abandoning themselves? Return, then, to the bosom of your country: come and give to the laws the support of good citizens. Think of the grief your obstinacy will give to the king's heart; they would be the most painful he could experience."

The Assembly was not blinded by these manifestations; it saw beneath a secret design of escaping from the severest measures; it was desirous of compelling the king to carry them out, and, let us add, the nation and the public safety also required it.

XII.

Mirabeau had treated the question of the emigration of the Constituent Assembly rather as a philosopher than a statesman. He had disputed with the legislator the right of making laws against emigration: he was mistaken. Whenever a theory is in contradiction to the welfare of society it is because that theory is false, for society is the supreme truth.

Unquestionably in ordinary times, man is not imprisoned by nature, and ought not to be by the law, within the frontiers of his native land; and, with this view, the laws against emigration should only be exceptional laws. But, because exceptional, are these laws therefore unjust? Evidently not. The public danger has its peculiar laws, as necessary and as just as laws made in a time of security. A state of war is not a state of peace. You shut your frontiers to strangers in war time; you may close them to your citizens. A city is legally put in a state of siege during a sedition. We can put the nation in a state of siege in case of external danger co-existent with internal conspiracy. By what absurd abuse of liberty can a state be constrained to tolerate on a foreign soil gatherings of citizens armed against itself, which it would not tolerate in its own land? And if these gatherings should be culpable without, why should the state be interdicted from shutting up those roads which lead emigrants to these gatherings? A nation defends itself from its foreign enemies by arms, from its internal foes by its laws. To act otherwise would be to consecrate without the country the inviolability of conspiracies which were punished within: it would be to proclaim the legality of civil war, provided it was mixed up with foreign war, and that sedition was covered by treason. Such maxims ruin a whole people's nationality, in order to protect abuse of liberty by certain citizens. The Constituent Assembly was so wrong as to sanction such. Had it proclaimed from the beginning the laws repressive of emigration in troubled times, during revolutions, or on the eve of war, it would have proclaimed a national truth, and prevented one of the great dangers and principal causes of the excesses of the Revolution. The question now was no longer to be treated with reason, but by vindictive feelings. The imprudence of the Constituent Assembly had left this dangerous weapon in the hands of parties who were about to turn it against the king.

XIII.

Brissot, the inspirer of the Gironde, the dogmatic statesman of a party which needed ideas and a leader, ascended the tribune in the midst of anticipated plaudits, which betokened his importance in the new Assembly. His voice was for war, as the most efficacious of laws.

"If," said he, "it be really desired to check the tide of emigration, we must more particularly punish the more elevated offenders, who establish in foreign lands a centre of counter-revolution. We should distinguish three classes of emigrants; the brothers of the king, unworthy of belonging to him,—the public functionaries, deserting their posts and deluding citizens,—and finally, the simple citizens, who follow example from imitation, weakness, or fear. You owe hate and banishment to the first, pity and indulgence to the others. How can the citizens fear you, when the impunity of their chiefs insures their own? Have you then two scales of weights and measures? What can the emigrants think, when they see a prince, after having squandered 40,000,000 (of francs) in ten years, still receive from the National Assembly more millions, in order to provide for his extravagance and pay his debts?

"Divide the interests of the rebellious by alarming the prime criminals. Patriots are still amused by paltry palliatives against emigration; the partisans of the court have thus trifled with the credulity of the people, and you have seen even Mirabeau deriding those laws, and telling you they would never be put into execution, because a king would not himself become the accuser of his own family. Three years without success, a wandering and unhappy life, their intrigues frustrated, their conspiracies overthrown, all these defeats have not cured the emigrants; their hearts were corrupted from the cradle. Would you check this revolt? then strike the blow on the other side of the Rhine: it is not in France. It was by such decided steps that the English prevented James II. from impeding the establishment of their liberty. They did not amuse themselves with framing petty laws against emigration, but demanded that foreign princes should drive the English princes from their dominions. (Applause.) The necessity of this measure was seen here from the first. Ministers will talk to you of considerations of state, family reasons; these considerations, these weaknesses cover a crime against liberty. The king of a free people has no family. Again, I counsel you attack the leaders only; let it no longer be said, 'These malcontents are then very strong; these 25,000,000 of men must then be very weak thus to consider them.'

"It is to foreign powers especially that you should address your demands and your menaces. It is time to show to Europe what you are, and to demand of it an account of the outrages you have received from it. I say it is necessary to compel those powers to reply to us, one of two things; either they will render homage to our constitution, or they will declare against it. In the first place, you have not to balance, it is necessary that you should assail the powers that dare to threaten you. In the last century when Portugal and Spain lent an asylum to James II., England attacked both. Have no fears—the image of liberty, like the head of Medusa, will affright the armies of our enemies; they fear to be abandoned by their soldiers, and that is why they prefer the line of expectation, and an armed mediation. The English constitution and an aristocratic liberty will be the basis of the reforms they will propose to you, but you will be unworthy of all liberty if you accept yours at the hands of your enemies. The English people love your Revolution; the emperor fears the force of your arms: as to this empress of Russia, whose aversion to the French constitution is well known, and who in some degree resembles Elizabeth, she cannot hope for success more brilliant than had Elizabeth against Holland. It is with difficulty that slaves are subjugated fifteen hundred leagues off; they cannot enslave free men at this distance. I will not condescend to speak of other princes; they are not worthy of being included in the number of your serious enemies. I believe then that France ought to elevate its hopes and its attitude. Unquestionably you have declared to Europe that you will not attempt any more conquests, but you have a right to say to it, 'Choose between certain rebels and a nation.'"

XIV.

This discourse, although in several parts very contradictory, proved that Brissot had the intention of playing three parts in one, and of captivating at once the three parties in the Assembly. In his philosophical principles he affected the tone of a moderator, and repeated the axioms of Mirabeau against the laws relative to expatriation; in his attack on the princes he included the king, and held him up to the people as an object of suspicion; and lastly, in his denunciation of the diplomacy of the ministers, he urged them to a war à l'outrance, and displayed in this measure the energy of a patriot and the foresight of a statesman; for in case war should be the result, he did not conceal from himself the jealousy of the nation against the court, and he knew that the first act of open war would be to declare the king a traitor to his country.

This speech placed Brissot at the head of the conspirators of the Assembly; he brought to the young and untried party of the Gironde his reputation as a public writer, and a man who had had ten years' experience of the factions; the audacity of his policy flattered their impatience, and the austerity of his language made them believe in the depth of his designs. Condorcet, the friend of Brissot, and, like him, devoured by insatiable and unscrupulous ambition, mounting the tribune, merely commented on the preceding discourse, and concluded, like Brissot, by summoning the powers to pronounce for or against the constitution, and demanded the renewal of the corps diplomatique.

This discourse was visibly concerted, and it was evident that a party, already formed, took possession of the tribune, and was about to arrogate to itself the dominion of the Assembly. Brissot was its conspirator, Condorcet its philosopher, Vergniaud its orator. Vergniaud mounted the tribune, with all the prestige of his marvellous eloquence, the fame of which had long preceded him. The eager looks of the Assembly, the silence that prevailed, announced in him one of the great actors of the revolutionary drama, who only appear on the stage to win themselves popularity, to intoxicate themselves with applause, and—to die.

XV.

Vergniaud, born at Limoges, and an advocate at the bar of Bordeaux, was now in his thirty-third year, for the revolutionary movement had seized on and borne him along with its currents when very young. His dignified, calm, and unaffected features announced the conviction of his power. Facility, that agreeable concomitant of genius, had rendered alike pliable his talents, his character, and even the position he assumed. A certain nonchalance announced that he easily laid aside these faculties from the conviction of his ability to recover all his forces at the moment when he should require them. His brow was contemplative, his look composed, his mouth serious and somewhat sad; the deep inspiration of antiquity was mingled in his physiognomy with the smiles and the carelessness of youth. At the foot of the tribune he was loved with familiarity; as he ascended it each man was surprised to find that he inspired him with admiration and respect; but at the first words that fell from the speaker's lips they felt the immense distance between the man and the orator. He was an instrument of enthusiasm, whose value and whose place was in his inspiration. This inspiration, heightened by the deep musical tones of his voice, and an extraordinary power of language, had drunk in deep draughts at the purest sources of antiquity; his sentences had all the images and harmony of poesy, and if he had not been the orator of a democracy he would have been its philosopher and its poet. His genius, devoted to the people, yet forbade him to descend to the language of the people, even to flatter them. All his passions were noble as his words, and he adored the Revolution as a sublime philosophy destined to ennoble the nation without immolating on its altars other victims than prejudices and tyranny. He had doctrines, and no hatreds; the thirst of glory, and not of ambition,—nay, power itself, was in his eyes, too real, too vulgar a thing for him to aim at, and he disdained it for himself, and alone sought it for his ideas. Glory and posthumous fame were his objects alone; he mounted the tribune to behold them, and he beheld them later from the scaffold; and he plunged into the future, young, handsome, immortal in the annals of France, with all his enthusiasm, and some few stains, already effaced in his generous blood. Such was the man whom nature had given to the Girondists as their chief. He disdained the office, although he possessed all the qualities and the views, of a statesman; too careless to be the leader of a party, too great to be second to any one. Such was Vergniaud,—more illustrious than useful to his friends; he would not lead, but immortalised, them.

We will describe this great man more in detail at the period when his talent places him in a more conspicuous situation. "Are there circumstances," said he "in which the natural rights of man can permit a nation to adopt any measure against emigrations?" Vergniaud spoke against those pretended natural rights, and recognised, above all individual rights, the right of society, which comprises and dominates over all, just as the whole predominates over a portion: he compared political liberty to the right of a citizen to do what he pleases, provided he do nothing injurious to his country; but there he stops. Man can, no doubt, materially use this right to abdicate the country in which he was born and to which he belongs, as the limb belongs to the body, but this abdication is treason; for it severs the union between the nation and himself, and the nation no longer owes him or his property any protection. After having on this principle destroyed the puerile distinction between the functionary and the mere emigrant, he proved that society falls into decay if she refuse herself the right of retaining those who forsake her in her hour of danger and difficulty. When she gave him all the universe for his country, she refused him that which gave him birth. But what will be the consequence if this emigrant, ceasing to play merely the part of a cowardly fugitive, becomes a foe, and, assembling with his fellow-traitors, surrounds the nation with a band of conspirators? What, shall attack be permitted to the emigrés, and good citizens forbidden to defend themselves?

XVI.

"But," continued he, "is France in this situation that she ought to fear from these men, who are about to excite all the ancient hatreds of the foreign courts against us? No; we shall soon see these proud mendicants, who are now receiving the roubles of Catherine and the millions of Holland, expiate in shame and misery the crimes their pride has entailed on them. Moreover these kings hesitate to attack us; they know that, to the spirit of philosophy that has infused into us the breath of liberty, there are no Pyrenees; they dread that the foot of their soldiers should touch a soil that blazes with this holy flame; they tremble, lest on the day of battle the patriots of every country should recognise each other, and two armies ready to combat be converted into a band of brethren, united against their tyrants. But should it be necessary to appeal to arms, we well remember that a thousand Greeks, combating for liberty, trampled on a million of Persians.

"We are told 'the emigrés have no evil designs against their country; it is only a temporary absence: where are the legal proofs of what you assert? when you produce them it be time enough to punish the guilty.' Oh you who use such language, why were you not in the Roman senate when Cicero denounced Catiline? You would have asked him for the legal proof. I can picture his astonishment to myself: whilst he sought for proofs Rome would have been sacked, and you and Catiline have reigned over a heap of ruins. Legal proofs! And have you calculated the blood they will cost you to obtain? Now let us forestall our enemies, by adopting rigorous measures; let us rid the nation of this swarm of insects, greedy of its blood,—by whom it is pursued and tormented. But what should these measures be? In the first place seize on the property of the absentees. This is but a petty measure you will say. What matter its importance or its insignificancy, so that it be just. As for the officers who have deserted, the Code pénal prescribes their fate—death and infamy. The French princes are even more culpable; and the summons to return to their country, which it is proposed to address to them, is neither sufficient for your honour nor your safety. Their attempts are openly made; either they must tremble before you, or you must tremble before them; you must choose. Men talk of the profound grief this will cause the king: Brutus immolated his guilty offspring at the shrine of his country, but the heart of Louis XVI. shall not be put to so severe a trial. If these princes, alike bad brothers and citizens, refuse to obey, let him turn to the hearts of the French nation, and they will amply repay his losses." (Loud applause.)

Pastoret, who spoke after Vergniaud, quoted the saying of Montesquieu, "There is a time when it is necessary to cast a veil over the statue of Liberty, as we conceal the statues of the Gods." To be ever on the watch, and to fear nothing, should be the maxim of every free people. He concluded by proposing repressive, but moderate and gradual measures, against the absentees.

XVII.

Isnard declared that the measures proposed until then were satisfactory to prudence, but not to justice, and the vengeance which an outraged nation owed to itself; and he thus continued:—

"If I am allowed to speak the truth, I shall say, that if we do not punish all these heads of the rebellion, it is not that we do not know, at the bottom of our hearts, that they are guilty, but because they are princes; and, although we have destroyed the nobility and distinctions of blood, these vain phantoms still affect our minds. Ah! it is time that this great level of equality, which has passed over France, should at length take its full effect. Then only will they believe in our equality. You should fear by this evidence of impunity that you may urge the people to excesses. The anger of the people is but too often the sequel to the silence of the laws. The law should enter the palaces of the great, as well as in the hovel of the poor, and as inexorable as death, when it falls upon the guilty, should make no distinction between ranks and titles. They try to lull you to sleep. I tell you that the nation should watch incessantly. Despotism and aristocracy do not sleep; and if nations doze but for a moment, they awake in fetters. If the fire of heaven was in the power of men, it should be darted at those who attempt the liberties of the people: thus, the people never pardon conspirators against their liberties. When the Gauls scaled the walls of the capital, Manlius awoke, hastened to the breach, and saved the republic. That same Manlius, subsequently accused of conspiring against public liberty, was cited before the tribunes. He presented bracelets, javelins, twelve civic crowns, thirty spoils torn from conquered enemies, and his breast scarred with cicatrices; he reminded them that he had saved Rome, and yet the sole reply was to cast him headlong from the same rock whence he had precipitated the Gauls. These, sirs, were a free people.

"And we, since the day we acquired our liberty, have not ceased to pardon our patricians their conspiracies, have not ceased to recompense their crimes by sending them chariots of gold: as for me, if I voted such gifts, I should die of remorse. The people contemplate and judge us, and on their sentence depends the destiny of our labours. Cowards, we lose the public confidence; firm, our enemies would be disconcerted. Do not then sully the sanctity of the oath, by making it pause in deference before mouths thirsting for our blood. Our enemies will swear with one hand, whilst with the other they will sharpen their swords against us."

Each violent sentence in this harangue excited in the Assembly and the tribunes those displays of public feeling which found expression in loud applause. It was felt that, for the future, the only line of policy would be in the anger of the nation; that the time for philosophy in the tribune was passed, and that the Assembly would not be slow in throwing aside principles in order to take up arms.

The Girondists, who did not wish that Isnard should have gone so far, felt that it was necessary to follow him whithersoever popularity should lead him. In vain did Condorcet defend his proposition for a delay of the decree. The Assembly, in a report brought up by Ducastel, adopted the decree of its legislative committee. The principal clauses were, that the French, assembled on the other side of the frontiers, should be, from that moment, declared actuated by conspiracy towards France; that they should be declared actual conspirators, if they did not return before the 1st of January, 1792, and as such punished with death; that the French princes, brothers of the king, should be punishable with death, like other emigrants, if they did not obey the summons thus sent to them; that, for the present, their revenues should be sequestrated; and, finally, that those military and naval officers who abandoned their posts without leave, or their resignation being accepted, should be considered as deserters, and punished with death.

XVIII.

These two decrees struck terror to the heart of the king, and consternation to his council. The constitution gave him the right of suspending them by the royal veto; but to suspend the effects of the national indignation against the armed enemies of the Revolution, was to invoke it on his own head. The Girondists artfully fomented these elements of discord between the Assembly and the king. They impatiently awaited until the refusal to sanction the decrees should urge irritation to its height, and force the king to fly or place himself in their hands.

The most monarchical spirit of the Constituent Assembly still reigned in the Directory of the department of Paris. Desmeuniers, Baumetz, Talleyrand-Perigord, Larochefoucauld, were the principal members. They drew up an address to the king, entreating him to refuse his sanction to the decree against the nonjuring priests. This address, in which the Legislative Assembly was treated with much disdain, breathes the true spirit of government as regards religious matters. It is comprised in the axiom which is or ought to be the code of all consciences, "Since no religion is a law, let no religion be a crime!"

A young writer whose name, already celebrated, was to be hereafter consecrated by martyrdom, André Chénier, considering the question in the highest strain of philosophy, published on the same subject a letter worthy of posterity. It is the property of genius not to allow its views to be obscured by the prejudices of the moment. Its gaze is too lofty for vulgar errors to deprive it of the ever-during light of truth. It has by anticipation in its decisions the impartiality of the future.

"All those," says André Chénier, "who have preserved the liberty of their reason, and in whom patriotism is not a violent desire for rule, see with much pain that the dissensions of the priests have of necessity occupied the first sittings of the Assembly. It is true that the public mind is enlightened on this point, on which even the Constituent Assembly itself is deceived. It has pretended to form a civil code of religion, that is to say, it had the idea of creating one priesthood after having destroyed another. Of what consequence is it that one religion differs from another? Is it for the National Assembly to reunite the divided sects, and weigh all their differences? Are politicians theologians? We shall only be delivered from the influence of these men when the National Assembly shall have maintained for each the perfect liberty of following or inventing whatsoever religion may please it; when every one shall pay for the worship he prefers to adopt, and pays for no other; and when the impartiality of tribunals, in such cases, shall punish alike the persecutors or the seditious of all forms of worship: and the members of the National Assembly say also, that all the French people are not yet sufficiently ripe for this doctrine. We must reply to them,—this may be, but it is for you to ripen us by your words, your acts, your laws! Priests do not trouble states when states do not disturb them. Let us remember that eighteen centuries have seen all the Christian sects, torn and bleeding from theological absurdities and sacerdotal hatreds, always terminate by arming themselves with popular power."

This letter passed over the heads of the parties who disputed the conscience of the people; but the petition of the Directory of Paris, which demanded the veto of the king against the decrees of the Assembly, produced violent opposition petitions. For the first time, Legendre, a butcher of Paris, appeared at the bar of the Assembly, where he vociferated in oratorical strain the imprecations of the people against the enemies of the nation and crowned traitors. Legendre decked his trivial ideas in high-sounding language. From this junction of vulgar ideas with the ambitious expressions of the tribune sprung that strange language in which the fragments of thought are mingled with the tinsel of words, and thus the popular eloquence of the period resembles the ill-combined display at an extravagant parvenu. The populace was proud at robbing the aristocracy of its language, even to turn it against them; but whilst it filched, it soiled it. "Representatives," said Legendre, "bid the eagle of victory and fame to soar over your heads and ours; say to the ministers, We love the people,—let your punishment begin: the tyrants must die!"

XIX.

Camille Desmoulins, the Aristophanes of the Revolution, then borrowed the sonorous voice of the Abbé Fauchet, in order to make himself heard. Camille Desmoulins was the Voltaire of the streets; he struck on the chord of passion by his sarcasms. "Representatives," said he, "the applauses of the people are its civil list: the inviolability of the king is a thing most infinitely just, for he ought, by nature, to be always in opposition to the general will and our interest. One does not voluntarily fall from so great a height. Let us take example from God, whose commandments are never impossible; let us not require from the ci-devant sovereign an impossible love of the national sovereignty; is it not very natural that he should give his veto to the best decrees? But let the magistrates of the people—let the Directory of Paris—let the same men, who, four months since, in the Champ-de-Mars, fired upon the citizens who were signing a petition against one decree, inundate the empire with a petition, which is evidently but the first page of a vast register of counter-revolution, a subscription to civil war, sent by them for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all the slaves, all the robbers of the eighty-three departments, at the head of which are the exemplary names of the members of the Directory of Paris—fathers of their country! There is in this such a complication of ingratitude and fraud, prevarication and perverseness, philosophical hypocrisy and perfidious moderation, that on the instant we rally round the decrees and around yourselves. Continue faithful, mandatories, and if they obstinately persist in not permitting you to save the nation, well, then, we will save it ourselves! For at last the power of the royal veto will have a term, and the taking of the Bastille is not prevented by a veto.

"For a long while we have been in possession of the civism of our Directory, when we saw it in an incendiary proclamation, not only again open the evangelical pulpits to the priests, but the seditious tribunes to conspirators in surplices! Their address is a manifesto tending to degrade the constitutional powers: it is a collective petition—it is an incentive to civil war, and the overthrow of the constitution. Assuredly we are no admirers of the representative government, of which we think with J. J. Rousseau; and if we like certain articles but little, still less do we like civil war. So many grounds of accusation! The crime of these men is settled. Strike, then! If the head sleeps, shall the arm act? Raise not that arm again; do not rouse the national club only to crush insects. A Varnier or De Lâtre! Did Cato and Cicero accuse Cethegus or Catiline? It is the leaders we should assail. Strike at the head."

This strain of irony and boldness, less applauded by the clapping of hands than by shouts of laughter, delighted the tribunes. They voted the sending of the procès verbal of the meeting into every department. It was legislatively elevating a pamphlet to the dignity of a public act, and to distribute ready-made insult to the citizens, that they might have a supply to vent against public authority. The king trembled before the pamphleteer; he felt from this first treatment of his baffled prerogative that the constitution would crumble in his hands each time that he dared to make use of it.

The next day the constitutional party in greater force at the meeting recalled the sending of this pamphlet to the departments. Brissot was angry in his journal, the Patriote Français. It was there and at the Jacobins more than in the tribune, that he gave instructions to his party, and allowed the idea of a republic to escape him. Brissot had not the properties of an orator: his dogged spirit, sectarian and arbitrary, was fitter for conspiracy than action: the ardour of his mind was excessive, but concentrated. He shed neither those lights nor those flames which kindle enthusiasm—that explosion of ideas. It was the lamp of the Gironde party; it was neither its beacon nor its torch.

XX.

The Jacobins, weakened for a time by the great number of their members elected to the Legislative Assembly, remained for a brief space without a fixed course to pursue, like an army disbanded after victory. The club of the Feuillants, composed of the remains of the constitutional party in the Constituted Assembly, strove to resume the ascendency over the mind of the people. Barnave, Lameth, and Duport were the leaders of this party. Fearful of the people, and convinced that an Assembly without any thing to counterbalance it would inevitably absorb the poor remnant of the monarchy, this party wished to have two chambers and an equally poised constitution. Barnave, whose repentance had led him to join this party, remained at Paris, and had secret interviews with Louis XVI.; but his counsels, like those of Mirabeau in his latter days, were but vain regrets, for the Revolution was beyond their power to control, and no longer obeyed them. They yet, however, maintained some influence over the constituted bodies of Paris, and the resolutions of the king, who could not bring himself to believe that these men, who yesterday were so powerful against it, were to-day destitute of influence; and they formed his last hope against the new enemies he saw in the Girondists.

The national guard, the directory of the department of Paris! the mayor of Paris himself, Bailly, and all that party in the nation who wished to maintain order, still supported them—theirs was the party of repentance and terror. M. de La Fayette, Madame de Stäel, and M. de Narbonne, had a secret understanding with the Feuillants, and a part of the press was on their side. These papers sought to render M. de Narbonne popular, and to obtain for him the post of minister of war. The Girondist papers already excited the anger of the people against this party. Brissot sowed the seeds of calumny and suspicion: he denounced them to the hatred of the nation. "Number them—name them," said he; "their names denounce them; they are the relics of the dethroned aristocracy, who would fain resuscitate a constitutional nobility, establish a second legislative chamber and a senate of nobles, and who implore, in order to gain their ends, the armed intervention of the powers. They have sold themselves to the Château de Tuileries, and sell there a great portion of the members of the Assembly; they have amongst them neither men of genius nor men of resolution; their talent is but treason, their genius but intrigue."

It was thus that the Girondists and the Jacobins, though at this moment beaten, prepared those enmities against the Feuillants that, at no remote period, were destined to disperse the club. Whilst the Girondists followed this course, the royalists continually urged the people to excesses through the medium of their papers, in order, as they said, to find a remedy for the evil in the evil itself. Thus they encouraged the Jacobins against the Feuillants, and heaped ridicule and insult on those leaders of the constitutional party who sought to save a remnant of the monarchy; for that which they detested most was the success of the revolution. Their doctrine of absolute power was less humiliatingly contradicted in their eyes by the overthrow of the empire and throne, than in the constitutional monarchy that preserved at once the king and liberty. Since the aristocracy lost the possession of the supreme power, its sole ambition—its only aim—was to see it fall into the hands of those most unworthy to hold it. Incapable of again rising by its own force, it sought to find in disorder the means of so doing; and from the first day of the Revolution to the last, this party had no other instinct, and it was thus that it ruined itself whilst it ruined the monarchy. It carried the hatred of the Revolution even to posterity; and though they did not take an active part in the crimes of the Revolution, yet their best wishes were with it. Every fresh excess of the people gave a new ray of hope to its enemies: such is the policy of despair, blind and criminal as herself.

XXI.

An example of this at this moment occurred. La Fayette resigned the command of the national guard into the hands of the council general of the commune. At this meeting blazed the last faint spark of popular favour. After he quitted the chamber a deliberation was held as to what mark of gratitude and regard the city of Paris should offer him. The general addressed a farewell letter to the civic force, and affected to believe that the formation of the constitution was the era of the Revolution, and reduced him, like Washington, to the rank of a simple citizen of a free country. "The time of revolution," said he, in this letter, "has given place to a regular organisation, owing to the liberty and prosperity it assures us. I feel it is now my duty to my country to return unreservedly into her hands all the force and influence with which I was intrusted for her defence during the tempests that convulsed her—such is my only ambition. Beware how you believe," added he, in conclusion, "that every species of despotism, is extinct!" And he then proceeded to point out some of those perils and excesses into which liberty might fall at her first outset.

This letter was received by the national guard with an enthusiasm rather feigned than sincere. They wished to strike a last blow against the factious by adhering to the principles of their general, and voted to him a sword forged from the bolts of the Bastille, and a marble statue of Washington. La Fayette hastened to enjoy this premature triumph, and resigned the dictatorship at the moment when a dictatorship was most necessary to his country. On his retirement to his estates in Auvergne, he received the deputation of the national guard, who brought him the procès verbal of the debate. "You behold me once more amidst the scenes where I was born," said he; "I shall not again quit them, save to defend and confirm our new-formed liberty should it be menaced."

The different opinions of parties followed him in his retirement. "Now," said the Journal de la Revolution, "that the hero of two worlds has played out his part at Paris, we are curious to know if the ex-general has done more harm than good to the Revolution. In order to solve the problem, let us examine his acts. We shall first see that the founder of American liberty does not dare comply with the wishes of the people in Europe, until he had asked permission from the monarch. We shall see that he grew pale at the sight of the Parisian army on its road to Versailles—alike deceiving the people and the king; to the one he said, 'I deliver the king into your power,' to the other, 'I bring you my army.' We should have seen him return to Paris, dragging in his train those brave citizens who were alone guilty of having sought to destroy the keep of Vincennes as they had destroyed the Bastille, their hands bound behind their backs. We see him on he morrow of the journeé des poignards, touch the hands of those whom he had denounced to public indignation the yesterday. And now we behold him quit the cause of liberty, by a decree which he himself had secretly solicited, and disappear for a moment in Auvergne to re-appear on our frontiers. Yet he has done us some service, let us acknowledge it. We owe to him to have accustomed our national guards to go through the civic and religious ceremonies; to bear the fatigue of the morning drill in the Champs Elysées; to take patriotic oaths and to give suppers. Let us then bid him adieu! La Fayette, to consummate the greatest revolution that a nation ever attempted, we required a leader, whose mind was on an equality with so great an event. We accepted you; the pliability of your features, your studied orations, your premeditated axioms—all those productions of art that nature disavows, seemed suspicious to the more clear-sighted patriots. The boldest of them followed you, tore the mask from your visage, and cried—Citizens, this hero is but a courtier, this sage but an impostor. Now, thanks to you, the Revolution can no longer bite, you have cut the lion's claws; the people is more formidable to its conductors; they have reassumed the whip and spur, and you fly. Let civic crowns strew your paths, though we remain; but where shall we find a Brutus?"

XXII.

Bailly, mayor of Paris, withdrew at the same time, abandoned by that party of whom he had been the idol, and whose victim he began to be; but his philosophic mind rated more highly the good done to the people than its favour, and more ambitious of being useful than of governing it, he already testified that heroic contempt for the calumnies of his enemies he afterwards displayed for death.

His voice was, however, lost in the tumult of the approaching municipal elections; two men already disputed the dignity of mayor of Paris, for in proportion as the royal authority declined, and that of the constitution was absorbed in the troubles of the kingdom, the mayor of Paris would become the real dictator of the capital.

These two men were La Fayette and Pétion. La Fayette supported by the constitutionalists and the national guard, Pétion by the Girondists and the Jacobins. The royalist party, by pronouncing for or against one of them, would decide the election. The king had no longer the influence of the government, which he had suffered to escape from his grasp, but he still possessed the occult powers of corruption over the leaders of the different parties. A portion of the twenty-five millions of francs (1,000,000l.) was applied by M. de Laporte, the intendant de la liste civile, and by MM. Bertrand de Molleville and Montmorin, his ministers, in purchasing votes at the elections, motions at the clubs, applause or hisses in the Assembly. These subsidies, which had commenced with Mirabeau, now descended to the lowest dregs of the factions; they bribed the royalist press, and found their way into the hands of the orators and writers apparently most inveterate against the court; and many false manœuvres, to which the people were urged, arose from no other source. There was a ministry of corruption, over which perfidy presided. Many obtained from this source, under pretence of aiding the court, the power of moderating or betraying the people; then fearing lest their treachery should be discovered, they hid it by a second betrayal, and turned against the king his own motions. Danton was of this number. Sometimes, through motives of charity or peace, the king gave a monthly sum to be distributed amongst the national guard, and the quartiers in which insurrection was most to be apprehended. M. de La Fayette, and Pétion himself, often drew money from this source. Thus the king could, by employing those means, ensure the election, and by joining the constitutionalist party determine the choice of Paris in favour of M. de La Fayette. M. de La Fayette was one of the first originators of this revolution which humbled the throne; his name was associated with every humiliation of the court, with all the resentment of the queen, all the terrors of the king; he had been first their dread, then their protector, and, lastly, their guardian: could he be now their hope? Would not this post of mayor of Paris, this vast, civil, and popular dignity, after this long-armed dictatorship in the capital, be to La Fayette but a second stepping-stone that would raise him higher than the throne, and cast the king and constitution into the shade? This man, with his theoretically liberal ideas, was well-intentioned, and wished rather to dominate than to reign; but could any reliance be placed on these good intentions that had been so often overcome? Was it not full of these good intentions that he had usurped the command of the civic force—captured the Bastille with the insurgent Gardes Françaises—marched to Versailles at the head of the populace of Paris—suffered the château to be forced on the 6th of October—arrested the royal family at Varennes, and retained the king a prisoner in his own palace? Would he now resist should the people again command him? Would he abandon the rôle of the French Washington when he had half fulfilled it? The human heart is so constituted that we rather prefer to cast ourselves into the power of those who would destroy us than seek safety from those who humiliate us. La Fayette humiliated the king, and more especially the queen.

A respectful independence was the habitual expression of La Fayette's countenance in presence of Marie Antoinette. There was perceptible in the general's attitude, it was to be seen in his words, distinguishable in his accent, beneath the cold and polished forms of the courtier, the inflexibility of the citizen. The queen preferred the factions. She thus plainly spoke to her confidents. "M. de La Fayette," she said, "will not be the mayor of Paris in order that he may the sooner become the maire du Palais. Pétion is a Jacobin, a republican; but he is a fool, incapable of ever becoming the leader of a party: he would be a nullity as maire, and, besides, the very interest he knows we should take in his nomination might bind him to the king."

Pétion was the son of a procureur at Chartres, and a townsman of Brissot; was brought up in the same way as he,—in the same studies, same philosophy, same hatreds. They were two men of the same mind. The Revolution, which had been the ideal of their youth, had called them on the scene the same day, but to play very different parts. Brissot, the scribe, political adventurer, journalist, was the man of theory; Pétion, the practical man. He had in his countenance, in his character, and his talents, that solemn mediocrity which is of the multitude, and charms it; at least he was a sincere man, a virtue which the people appreciate beyond all others in those who are concerned in public affairs. Called by his fellow citizens to the National Assembly, he acquired there a name rather from his efforts than his success. The fortunate compeer of Robespierre, and then his friend, they had formed by themselves that popular party, scarcely visible at the beginning, which professed pure democracy and the philosophy of J. J. Rousseau; whilst Cazalès, Mirabeau, and Maury, the nobility, clergy, and bourgeoisie, alone disputed the government. The despotism of a class appeared to Robespierre and Pétion as odious as the despotism of a king. The triumph of the tiers état was of little consequence, so long as the people, that is to say, all human kind in its widest acceptation, did not prevail. They had given themselves as a task, not victory to one class over another, but the victory and organisation of a divine and absolute principle—humanity. This was their weakness in the first days of the Revolution, and subsequently their strength. Pétion was beginning to gather in its harvest.

He had gradually, by his doctrines and his speeches, insinuated himself into the confidence of the people of Paris; he connected himself with literary men by the cultivation of his mind; with the Orleans party by his intimacy with Madame de Genlis, the favourite of the prince, and governess to his children. He was spoken of in one place as a sage, who sought to embody philosophy in the constitution; in another as a sagacious conspirator, who desired to sap the throne, or to place upon it the Duc D'Orleans, embodying the interests and dynasty of the people. This two-fold reputation was equally advantageous to him. Honest men believed him to be an honest man,—malcontents to be a malcontent: the court disdained to fear him; it saw in him only an innocent Utopian, and had for him that contemptuous indulgence which aristocrats have invariably for men of political creed; besides, Pétion ridded it of La Fayette. To change its foe was to give it breathing time.

These three elements of success gave Pétion an immense majority; he was nominated mayor of Paris by more than 6000 votes. La Fayette had but 3000. He might at this moment, from the depth of his retreat, have fairly measured by these figures the decline of his popularity. La Fayette represented the city, Pétion the nation. The armed bourgeoisie quitted public affairs with the one, and the people assumed them with the other. The Revolution marked with a proper name the fresh step she had made.

Pétion, scarcely elected, went in triumph to the Jacobins, and was thus carried in the arms of patriots into the tribune. Old Dusault, who occupied it at the moment, stammered out a few words, interrupted by his sobs, in honour of his pupil. "I look on M. Pétion," said he, "as my son; it is very bold no doubt." Pétion overcome, embraced the old man with ardour; the tribunes applauded and wept.

The other nominations were made in the same spirit. Manuel[11] was named procureur de la commune;—Danton, his deputy, which was his first step in popularity; he did not owe it, like Pétion, to the public esteem, but to his own intriguing. He was appointed in spite of his reputation. The people are apt to excuse the vices they find useful.

The nomination of Pétion to the office of maire of Paris gave the Girondists a constant point d'appui in the capital. Paris, as well as the Assembly, escaped from the king's hands. The work of the Constituent Assembly crumbled away in three months. The wheels gave way before they were set in motion. All presaged an approaching collision between the executive power and the power of the Assembly. Whence arose this sudden decomposition? It is now the moment for throwing a glance over this labour of the Constituent Assembly and its framers.

---