Botibon,retail shopkeeper,
Harier,butcher,
Moreau,musician,
Becam,taylor,
Cariou,taylor,
Keroch,barber,
Rose,barber,
Roland,merchant’s clerk,
Morivan,hog-butcher,
Le Moine,gardener,
Montaigne, brazier,
L’Hot,printer’s devil.

They were to a man the creatures of the creatures, ten gradations deep, of the committee of public safety. In such hands were the liberties and lives of Frenchmen deposited! Even on the day I write, the institution is not totally abolished, but is momently expected to be so. It is still retained in towns which contain forty thousand inhabitants, or more, but is seldom allowed to exercise its powers.

The number of persons guillotined in Quimper was only four, two priests and two women. The guillotine was kept in the cathedral, but performed its office on the parade. It was customary to send to Brest those who were denounced, which was more convenient than to try them on the spot, where witnesses might have established their innocence: of this class there were many victims. I was told, when at Brest, that 172 persons of both sexes had been executed there. The operation is said to have been performed on 32 of the number in somewhat less than nineteen minutes.

It is impossible to pronounce the word guillotine, without associating with it its grand mover Robespierre, that modern Procrustes, who sought to contract or extend to the standard of his own opinion, a mighty people; before whom neither elevation of virtue or talents could erect a shield, or insignificancy of birth and situation creep beneath a shelter. Without aiming to become his defender, I must, however, be permitted to observe, that many of the relations, which, on authority seemingly good, I every day hear and read of his towering ambition and capricious cruelty, are too extravagant to be credited, and, if true, too degrading to our nature to be repeated. In the general horror and indignation excited by his remembrance, I am sensible (especially among this declamatory people) that truth will often be sacrificed to passion. There is, besides, a second reason, that increases the distrust with which I listen:—to screen themselves from odium, all the subordinate tyrants fix upon him, and attribute to his orders, the innumerable butcheries and acts of oppression which they have perpetrated.—They who were once his closest imitators, are now loudest in their outcries against his memory; which, in many instances, is loaded with the crimes of his contemporaries. I had not been taken twenty-four hours when Captain Le Franq, either from credulity, or a wish to impress me with an early belief of his not being attached to a sinking party, told me, among similar tales, that Robespierre had, in the townhall of Paris, caused himself to be proclaimed, “Maximilian the First, Emperor of the French.” Upon finding that a man, whose relative rank and situation in life entitled him to respectable sources of information, could thus, either from ignorance, prejudice, or a less laudable motive, be guilty of so gross a misrepresentation, it became doubly incumbent upon me to restrain my belief.

However outrageous the execrations of the French now are on hearing his name, they do not surpass the adulation with which they once approached the idol of his power. I wish I could send to you the Gazette Nationale of the 30th of Pluviose, which belongs to a collection of news-papers that I have access to, and contains a report of the 16th of Nivose, made to the convention by Courtois, in the name of the committee appointed to examine the papers of Robespierre. Never before was flattery so gross and servile used as some of these productions, which were addresses to him from different districts, communes, and popular societies. The statue inscribed to the “immortal man,” and the poetic incense afterwards offered at his shrine by Boileau, fade before it. He is called in them the glorious, incorruptible Robespierre, who covers, as with a shield, the republic by his virtues and talents; who joins to the self-denial of a Spartan, or a Roman of early date, the eloquence of an Athenian. Even his tenderness and humanity of disposition are praised. One man congratulates himself on a personal resemblance of him; and another, at the distance of 600 miles, is hastening to Paris, to feast his eyes with a sight of him. He is compared, not by an individual but by a body of people, to the Messiah, “annoncé par l’Etre Supreme, pour reformer toute chose;” and afterwards he is said to manifest himself “comme Dieu, par des merveilles.” On some occasion a Te Deum was performed for him, the burthen of the ditty being, “Vive Robespierre! Vive la Republique!”—I feel ashamed to transcribe any more of these impious and contemptible absurdities. I beg of you, however, to remark, when Courtois’s report shall fall into your hands, that amidst the papers which have been scrutinized of this extraordinary personage, though incontrovertible evidence of his restless and sanguinary disposition appears, yet nothing bearing the marks of an arranged plan for mounting a throne, or erecting himself into a dictator, was found. Some trifling hints are once or twice thrown out, which the reporter does not fail to magnify; but Robespierre, if he ever really entertained such a project, was too circumspect to commit it to writing; and knew too well the loose nature of man to entrust his secret, until it were matured in his own mind, and could tempt to confederacy by its probability of accomplishment. I never reflect on the sudden and total apostacy of the French from this man and Marat, without indulging a hope that the versatile levity of sentiment, and unceasing desire of change, which characterize the nation, will at length point, in a spirit of repentant loyalty, founded on an unconquerable determination to be free, to the descendants of their kings. And this hope I am always willing to sustain, by calling to mind our restoration of Charles the Second; but at the same time I confess, that (at least for the present) my observations pronounce it to be rather a conclusion which I desire, than a consummation which I expect.

By posterity then must Robespierre be judged. No scrutiny will reach his virtues, however it may exalt his genius. Vigour of mind he undoubtedly possessed, and he joined to it (except in moments of inebriation, to which he was sometimes addicted) profound dissimulation; but there exist unquestionable proofs, that he was a poltroon, which single flaw in his composition rendered his downfall certain. A combination of other causes might have prolonged his elevation, but could not have preserved it to the end of his existence. On how many occasions did Cromwell’s personal intrepidity, and firmness of nerve, uphold him and his authority!

We owe candour more to a review of the worst than of the best of characters; and no man was ever more entitled to an indulgence of it than Robespierre.

The papers of the other members of the committee, of which Robespierre is believed to have directed all the springs, are also laid open, and are equally curious and shocking as his. There are among them orders, ready signed and sealed, for bringing to trial, and executing, those whose names might be inserted in the blank spaces. Juries, a venerable institution derived from us, have hitherto had very little claim to the gratitude of the French. In a report made to the convention by Saladin, in the name of the committee of 21, on the 13th of last Ventose (3d March) it is stated, that the managers of the committee of public safety, Barrere, Collot, Billaud, &c. held every evening conferences with the public accuser and the president of the revolutionary tribunal, who rendered to them an account of their proceedings, and received their instructions for the work of the next day.—On the following account you may also rely. A judge and jury were sent to Paris, from a place 200 miles distant from it, to give an account of their principles, for having condemned two men to ten years imprisonment, who, in the opinion of a representative who was present in the court, ought to have suffered death. The crime of the prisoners was, having said, that “they wished to see the tree of liberty of their commune cut down.”—The sentence was ordered to be quashed; they were tried again; and guillotined.

An extract of a letter, signed Darthè, found, after his execution, in the cabinet of Le Bas, is as follows. “Le comité de salut public a dit à Le Bon, qu’il esperait que nous irions tous les jours de mieux en mieux. Robespierre voudrait que chacun de nous pût former un seul tribunal, et empoigner chacun une ville de la frontiere.” After this gentle wish (allowing it to have been uttered) which breathes more closely that of Caligula than any other that modern biography affords, you will, perhaps, think I have been too lenient to the memory of Robespierre. Remember, I only wish to apportion his share of guilt. The convention, by banishing the triumvirate, “until they can be tried at a period of more tranquillity,” not only demonstrate a fear of the Jacobin party, but a secret apprehension lest many of themselves should be implicated in the transactions which such an enquiry would unfold. Hence the violent opposition to a publication of their papers by many of the moderate party, as well as that of their opponents. How indeed, in consistency, could those men, from whom they derived their powers, now turn their accusers?

To conclude an odious and debasing subject. The “noyades, fuzilades, and republican marriages” of Carrier at Nantes; joined to the exploits of Collot d’Herbois at Lyons, who chained together, at one time, four hundred people, in the great square of the city, and fired upon them with grape-shot, until they were exterminated; with many others equally diabolical, which shall not pollute my page, almost tempt one to believe, that a majority of the nation were at one time accomplices in its crimes and miseries. They have, indeed, at length awakened from their delirium, and sigh at the dreadful retrospect.