lation than for action; and from a want of experience he did not give proper weight to the difficulties that stood in the way of the plans to which his affections were attached, and with which his imagination was enamoured. Had he adhered to his early design, which he himself informs us was to inoculer aux François les principes de la constitution Angloise," he would have applied his talents and industry in support of the constitution 1789; but he imagined that the flight of the king and the disposition of the people rendered the immediate establishment of a republic in France practicable. He therefore joined his efforts with those of others, to convince the nation that the best measure they could adopt would be the abolition of royalty; for that, in preserving it, they should risk a thousand dangers in case they would reestablish Lewis XVI.-And in one of his publications he reasoned in this manner. If Lewis XVI is replaced on the throne, the nation will fall into anarchy; for nobody will obey him, car il a perdu la confiance de la nation. If you place another on the throne, and confine him as a prisoner, this will be thought cruel; you will be considered as barbarians; if you allow him to be at liberty, he will fly the kingdom, will be followed by many, and thẹ same scenes will commence in France that filled England with blood during the dispute between the white rose and the red-a war about two individuals, in which the people had no interest, waged in a cause the most absurd; for what can be more absurd than for one-half of a nation to slaughter the other, to decide whether one man or another should be placed in an office which no man should be allowed to occupy?' Brissot concludes his reasoning with these words. N'ayez plus de roi, et les mécontens ne peuvent s'attacher à aucun nom; et ils deviennent odieux à toute la terre, en voulant donner un tyran à une nation qui n'en veut pas.'

All the efforts of the republicans were fruitless. The people in general had no idea that so extensive a nation * Reponse de Jacques-Pierre Brissot, &c. &c.

as France could be governed without a king. All their notions of government were engrafted on monarchy.

Robespierre himself was not a republican. At this very period, while he harangued in the assembly against the king's inviolability, and was eager for bringing him to trial, he spoke in the Jacobin society against a republic; and he was the personal enemy of the most distinguished republicans. Others who like him declared at once against the king, and a republic, were supposed to have been gained by the duke of Orleans' agents, with a view to his being declared regent during the minority of Lewis XVII; but no suspicion of this kind adhered to Robespierre. With little taste for pleasures or magnificence, he despised money: power was his object, and po pularity the only means by which he expected to obtain it. No man's external appearance was ever less calculated for assisting his desire of popularity. The person of Robespierre was puny, his visage pale, his features disagreeable, and he had the menacing eye and rapid gait of a madman. During a considerable period of the constituent assembly, he had been little distinguished. It was not until after the death of Mirabeau, and about the period of which we are now treating, that he found himself a man of any considerable importance, and that his views of ambition began to extend. The restoration of Lewis XVI gave him no hopes of being placed in any situation of authority. He knew that the king disliked him, that the queen despised him, and that he was hated by the whole court. He therefore ardently wished the deposi tion of the king, and joined with the partizans of the duke of Orleans and the republicans in promoting that measure but he did not wish to see the duke of Orleans regent; because he knew that those who had been long attached to that prince, some of them men of eminent talents, would be preferred to him, and that he could expect under his regency only a subordinate situation. Nor did he wish for the establishment of a republic, unless he could have had hopes of governing it; and he saw Con

dorcet, Gensonet, Guadet, Vergniaud, Brissot, Kersaint, and others in his way, which determined him to oppose the republican system both by his speeches in the Jacobin club and in some pamphlets which he published. If the king had been deposed after his return from Varennes, it is supposed that Robespierre and others connected with him had expectations from the appointment of a regency in which the duke of Orleans would have had no share. But after the king was re-established, and had accepted the constitution; after the constituent assembly was dissolved, and the legislative assembly, of which Robespierre could not be a member, convened, he became more assiduous than ever in his attendance at the Jacobin club, and in using every possible means of increasing his popularity, as the sole foundation on which the power he so ardently desired could be built. With an arrogant mind which spurned the common people, nobody ever flattered and cajoled them so much; nobody ever adapted his language and behaviour so much to their passions and prejudices; nobody ever seemed so obsequious to their will, and so anxious for their welfare. He seldom ventured to give any new or untried impulse to the multitude. He watched until they had received it from circumstances, or from those who were less circumspect than himself; but when he clearly saw which way the torrent of their passions bore, he joined with ostentatious zeal, became the most violent of the violent, and took the direction of the storm from those who had raised it. After the 10th of August 1792, he, for the first time, became an avowed and furious republican. His influence in the Jacobin club was then unrivalled; and, by redoubling his assiduity and his artful management, it soon became equal even in the new common council of Paris to that of Danton, who was its creator, and the governing spirit by which the catastrophe of that day was accomplished.

t

Robespierre from that time became more daring and more atrocious. There is no doubt of his being the chief mover of the massacres in September: that he tried to

get Brissot and others of the Gironde party arrested and involved in them; for they were then the great objects of his jealousy, and had for some time the honour of sharing with the king and queen that abuse which daily flowed from the pen of Marat and other creatures of Robespierre... By his influence and their calumnies, not one of the Brissotine party was elected as member of the convention for; the department of Paris; nor indeed any one man without his approbation.

There is reason to believe that Louvet's accusation was just, that Robespierre was so intoxicated with his popularity as to have entertained hopes of being appointed dictator; and that Marat and Panis, by his connivance,, sounded Barbaroux of Marseilles and Rebecqui on the subject about the time when the convention first assembled. The popularity of Robespierre at that period, however, was pretty much confined to the department of Paris. The vast majority of the deputies came to the convention strongly prejudiced against him, and with a high opinion of the integrity of Roland, and of the talents and patriotism of that Gironde party for two or three months after the first meeting of the convention, any person who attended that assembly would have been persuaded that Robespierre and his most active adherents were so much the object of its detestation, that he had no chance of ever having influence in it. By his influence with the Jacobins, the mu nicipality, and the mob, and with the assistance of a minority of the deputies, he forced on the king's trial, and then. had the address to make the unwillingness which the Gironde party shewed to that measure, and even their popular proposal of an appeal to the people, matter of accusation against them, and the cause of their ruin. Having now devolved the command of the national guards of Paris on a creature of his own, he imperceptibly obtained an irresistible sway in the committee of public safety. Being supported by the municipality and the Jacobin: clubs; never once yielding to pecuniary corruption, or shocking the eyes of the populace with personal magnifi

cence; turning the talents and crimes of others to the purposes of his own ambition; cutting off his most confidential friends without remorse, when he became in the least jealous of them; having, by wonderful address, found means to have creatures of his own appointed commissioners to most of the departments; and the mob of Paris being always under the management of his agents, he at last obtained his object; the convention was the passive organ of his will, and Robespierre was the dictator of the French republic. But, after having drenched every department of France with blood, he became giddy by the exercise of power, forgot his original caution, and, by filling his very associates with terror, obliged them to be his executioners, that they might not become his victims.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A curious Account of Petion by Robespierre-M. Barnave-Tumultuous assembling in the Champ de Mars-Two Persons massacred by the Mob-M. La Fayette, at the head of the National Guards, attacks and disperses the Mob-DantonCamille Desmoulins-Marat-Charlotte Cordé-ReflectionsDissolution of the Constituent Assembly.

To give at once an idea of the character and conduct of Robespierre, it was necessary to allude to events that happened long after the period of which we were treating, and to which it is now necessary to revert.

When it was evident that a republican form of government was unpopular, that the periodical paper called Républicain, and all the efforts of the few republicans then at Paris, made little impression, Brissot published a new proposal, which was adopted by some members of the national assembly, and obtained the approbation of many more of the Jacobin club; namely, that since it seemed to be determined to re-establish royalty, the king ought to have a council, not of his own choosing, nor of the national assembly's appointment, but to be elected by the