assez indifférens, pour consentir à être le jouet éternel de l'intrigue, pour renverser successivement les diverses parties de notre ouvrage au gré de quelques ambitieux.' Then raising his voice,-Je demande que chacun de vous jure qu'il ne consentira jamais à composer avec le pouvoir exécutif sur aucun article de la constitution sous peine d'être déclaré traître à la nation.' The effect of this speech was electrical, as may well be imagined. The Lameth party had long been on the decline, and this proved their destruction."

views in devising this law against re-eligibility. The intentions of so artful and unsocial a man upon this and other points we can never know; but whatever he intended, the effect of the law as it turned out was exceedingly favorable to his power. It cannot be denied that Robespierre, throughout the Constituent Assembly, was consistent in his zeal for the new doctrine of the sovereignty of the people. He never lost an opportunity of battling for what he conceived to be the popular rights, It appears from such debates as that and sometimes to an extent hardly comwhich took place on bringing up the Report patible with the existence of the interests on Popular Societies on the 29th of Sep; he professed to suppport. tember, 1791, when Robespierre defended debate on courts-martial (April 28th, 1790) the clubs in all their extent, as strictly in he even went so far as to demand that they accordance with the new constitution, that should be composed of an equal number his denunciations were received with cheers of officers and soldiers. The next step

Thus in the

by a small party in the Chamber and by would have been to have every military the tribunes or stranger's galleries, and movement discussed beforehand in an aswith groans or derision by the rest of the Chamber. Towards the close of his speech composed of deputies representing the speechsembly, if not of the whole army, at least the following note of the reporter gives an whole army, with the commander-in-chief idea of the very active part taken at that time by the public in the deliberations of of Robespierre's longer speeches concludes as chairman. Almost every third paragraph the Assembly:"Les applaudissemens with a flourish about humanity, the cause d'une partie du côté gauche et des tribunes of humanity, and so forth. There may be, publiques font perdre les derniers mots pro- indeed, both humanity and courage in noncés par l'orateur." and weak at a time when, if they cried, standing forward as Turgot did for the poor there was none to hear, and if they perished, there was none to help. But when Robespierre proclaimed himself their champion, the so-called weak had waxed exceeding

Perhaps the greatest triumph of Robespierre in the Constituent Assembly was the speech he made on his motion of the 16th of May, 1791, "that the members of the present Assembly shall be incapable of being elected members of the next succeeding legislature." It is not supposed that strong, and had found out a way to help themselves that looked very promising. Robespierre's speech carried this motion Professions of attachment to such poor and (what speech ever had such an effect?): oppressed people are at least suspicious. in fact the reporters say it would have been He who has seen boys seek to curry favor carried by acclamation, if M. Thouret had with a savage dog at large, by hounding not obtained permission, not without some him on others, has seen a fair specimen of reluctance on the part of the Assembly, the liberty and equality and universal phito submit the result of the Committee's de- lanthropy of such "friends of humanity" liberations on the subject. But we are in- as Robespierre. Not that he was by nature formed that Robespierre's speech was received with loud and repeated cheers, and produced a marked impression on both sides of the Assembly. The journals of the day, while praising the talent he displayed, did not forget to admire the unvarying consistency and sincerity of the speaker.

It is idle to speculate on Robespierre's

Choix de Rapports, tom. v., p. 112.

† See the observations copied from the Journal de Paris' (which was at that time in great repute) by the editors of the 'Choix de Rapports, tom. v., p. 266., note (2).

the contrary, that he was unusually tender particularly cruel-it has been said, on and humane, more than ordinarily averse to the destruction of life; and that he even resigned an office, when an advocate at Arras, on account of his scruples against inflicting the punishment of death. Robespierre himself informs us, that he attempted in vain to obtain the abolition of that punishment in the Constituent Assembly. Lord Brougham relates that "as a boy and a youth he was remarkable for vanity, jealousy, dissimulation and trick, with an invincible obstinacy on all subjects, a selfish

ness hardly natural, a disposition incapable mane, and finally not much more successof forgiving any injury, but a close con- ful, than Robespierre. Courtois trafficked cealment of his resentment till the occasion for a long time in these papers; he gave arose for gratifying it, and till he dared to up a great quantity of letters to their wrishow it in safety." Some parts of this de- ters. It is said that, during his exile under scription appear to us correct, but it is a the restoration, he entered into a negotiamistake to suppose that vanity was a cha- tion to purchase his return to France at racteristic of Robespierre. One charac- the price of an important correspondence teristic of a vain man is not to know when which he still possessed; but the bargain to be silent, whereas it has been remarked was not completed. "The loss of the of Robespierre that he was almost the only papers of Robespierre," observe the editors Frenchman of his time who possessed that of the 'Histoire Parlementaire,' "is a valuable quality. Not vanity, but cold, great and irreparable loss to history; how deep, illimitable pride were characteristics many concealed crimes, how many compliof Robespierre. Vanity is gay and grecated intrigues, how much base adulation garious, Robespierre was gloomy and sol- lavished on the Jacobin chief by men of itary vanity is ostentatious and undoubt-every shade who conspired to overthrow ing,-Robespierre was unostentatious and him, would have been brought to light by suspicious vanity is communicative and the exact and complete publication of those infirm of purpose,-Robespierre was inex- papers!"* orable as death and inscrutable as the grave. Mirabeau was a vain man, Lafayette was a vain man, Brissot was a vain man; but we might as well call vanity a leading characteristic of Milton's Satan as of Maximilien Robespierre.

Upon the whole it is clear that, though Robespierre's efforts did not raise him to any thing like the influence which Mirabeau acquired in the Constituent Assembly, they obtained for him considerable notoriety, and, with that portion of the nation which Lord Brougham seems to rely too much entertained extreme opinions like his own, on the report of Courtois, though in his a very great degree of reputation. In a observations on a letter there printed, as letter to him, dated Blérancourt, près having been found among the Triumvir's Noyon, le 19 Août 1790,' which seems to papers, and apparently fabricated by his have been the commencement of their acenemies for the purpose of damaging his quaintance, Saint-Just says:-" Je ne vous character, his Lordship shows that he is connais pas, mais vous êtes un grand homaware of the necessity of caution in re- me. Vous n'êtes point seulement le député ceiving the evidence of that report. Indeed d'une province, vous êtes celui de l'humait is not surprising that the character of nité et de la République." Robespierre should be involved in so much Yet notwithstanding the partial success mystery, or so much misrepresented, when of his efforts in the Constituent Assembly, it is considered that the report was written had Robespierre died then, prematurely, by those who overthrew him-men who his story would have been a fragment not only destroyed all the papers that might known to few." But, short though his give a favorable view of him, but forged course was, he lived till he became a others expressly to blacken him. This prodigy. In the Jacobin Club Robespierre renders suspect (to use a favorite word of found compensation for his comparative his own, to which he gave a fearful mean- obscurity in the Constituent Assembly. ing) the whole collection of papers pub- Here the great battle was fought between lished after his death by the government him and the Girondists, which ended in under the title of 'Papiers de Robespierre,' the destruction of the latter; and in the and it greatly weakens any conclusion un- management of this struggle, Robespierre favorable to him that might have been displayed powers of generalshio equal to grounded on some of them. If they had those of Napoleon against the Austrian been published in their integrity, they generals. would have thrown a light not only on the Some of the leaders of the Girondists, springs of his own conduct, but on those and among them Brissot, who may be conof the conduct of others, which will most sidered as their head, did not belong to probably now never be obtained Among the district of the Gironde. Brissot was them was the correspondence of Napoleon, the son of a pastry-cook at Chartres, who which Courtois gave up to that adventurer, -one far less honest, not a whit more hu

*Hist. Parl. tom. xxxiii., p. 168, note.

left him at his death two hundred pounds. * In the course of his life he held various political opinions, which by the year 1791 had settled into a shade of patriotism strong enough to secure his election as one of the deputies of the department of Paris in the Legislative Assembly. The shade was not deep enough, however, to please Robespierre; and the praise which Brissot bestowed in his journal, the 'Patriote Français,' upon himself and his friends, "les patriotes par excellence," was sure to displease a man who was in his own own eyes, and in those of not a few others, "le vrai patriote," the patriot of patriots.

At

the agents of the executive were not to be numbered among the internal enemies, it followed that even the military preparations would throw additional power into hands unfit to be trusted. But supposing war to be unavoidable, he held it to be the best policy for the French not to make, but to receive the attack. These ideas he developed in several speeches at the Jacobin Club, and his views were supported by Danton, Billaud-Varennes and others. first the discussion was amicable. On the 16th of December 1791, Danton commenced with this compliment to Brissot :"Vous avez ordonné l'impression de l'exSoon after he had ceased to be a legis-cellent discours de M. Brissot, de cet athlète lator, upon the dissolution of the Con- vigoureux de la liberté, de cet homme de qui stituent Assembly, Robespierre was ap- nous attendons de si grands services et qui pointed to the office of Public Accuser. ne trompera pas nos espérances." In 1792 But he soon discovered that he could serve the cause of his country and of mankind at large (as he was fond of expressing it) better by his writings and his speeches at the Jacobin Club than in such an official character as this; and, notwithstanding the pecuniary convenience of the office to a man altogether without private fortune, he resigned it for other occupations.

The question upon which the parties of Robespierre and Brissot first came to an open rupture was that of war. Brissot maintained that a nation which had ac

quired liberty after so long a slavery needed war to consolidate it, to purify it from the vices of despotism, and to expel from its bosom the men who might corrupt it. "For two years," said he in his speech at the Jacobins, the 16th of December, 1791, "France has tried all pacific means of bringing back the rebels into her bosom; all the attempts have been unsuccessful they persist in their revolt; the foreign princes persist in supporting them; can we hesitate to attack them? If you wish to destroy at one blow our aristocratic enemies, destroy the army of Coblentz in which they put their trust." On the other hand, Robespierre argued that this was a war, not of one nation or of one king against another, but of all the enemies of the French constitution against the French Revolution; that these enemies were internal and external; and that, it being by no means clear that the French court and

This is asserted in his Memoirs, published at Paris (the first two vols. in 1830); and whether that publication be regarded as an authority or not, the statement is most probably rather above than below the truth.

the discussion was renewed. On the 2nd of January, Robespierre, after saying that Brissot had always avoided the main point of the question, to raise his own system beside it on a foundation absolutely ruinous, and that he should be as desirous as M. Brissot for a war to extend the dominion of liberty, if he were master of the destinies of France, and could direct its forces and resources according to his will, continued thus:

"But it is on our peculiar situation that the whole question turns. You have constantly turned away your attention from it, but I have proved that the proposal of war was the result of a plot long formed by the internal enemies of our liberty..... You yourselves admit that the war pleased the emigrants, that it pleased the ministry, the court intriguers."

He then refutes Brissot's argument against want of confidence in the king and his ministers, and thus continues :

"It belongs to me to explain myself freely on the subject of the ministers, 1st, Because I am not afraid of being suspected of speculating upon their change, either for myself or my friends; 2nd, Because I do not desire to see them replaced by others,-convinced that those who aspire to their places would be no better. It is not the ministers that I attack,it is their principles and their acts."

He proceeds to answer a charge of Brissot's that he had vilified the people by casting doubts on their courage and their love of liberty.

"It is true," he says, "that I cannot flatter the people in order to destroy it, that I am unskilled in the art of leading it to the precipice by paths strewn with flowers; but, on

the other hand, it was I who could displease | for the ministry and their faction the means all those who are not of the people by defend of extending from day to day their usurpations ing, almost alone, the rights of the poorest over the national authority and over liberty,and most unfortunate citizens against the ma- this is the chief interest of the court and the jority of legislators; it was I who constantly ministry." opposed the declaration of rights with all those distinctions calculated upon the proportion of taxes, which left a distance between citizens; it was I who consented to appear exaggerated, obstinate, even proud, in order to be just."

The following passage of this speech is particularly remarkable, as containing, eight months before that event, the doctrines which were afterwards put forth to excuse the September massacres.

"Let the people, awakened, encouraged by the energy of their representatives, resume that attitude which for a moment made all their oppressors tremble; let us subdue our enemies within; war to conspirators and despotism, and then let us march against Leopold; let us march against all the tyrants of the earth."

taire,'

"The intentions of the court being evidently suspect, what course was it necessary to take On the 2nd of January Robespierre had in regard to the proposition of war? To ap- said pointedly to Brissot that he did not plaud, to adore, to preach confidence, and give speculate on a change of ministry, either millions? No, it was necessary to examine it scrupulously, to penetrate its designs, to foresee for himself or his friends. By the 24th of their consequences, and to take the measures March the Girondist ministry was apmost proper to counteract them. Such is the pointed! Although Brissot had no osspirit in which I have entered into this dis- tensible place in this, his influence on the cussion. To assemble a great force under composition of the cabinet of March, 1792, arms, to canton and encamp the soldiers, in say the editors of the 'Histoire Parlemenorder to lead them more easily to the idolatry of a supreme chief of the army, by occupying bientôt la voir disposer de toutes les places ,"est si peu douteuse, que nous allons them solely with military ideas; to give a great importance and a great authority to the et distribuer toutes les faveurs. Il faudra, generals judged the most fit to excite the en- comme titre de récommandation à un thusiasm of armed citizens and to serve the emploi quelconque, avoir écrit ou parlé court; to augment the executive power, which contre Robespierre. Les charges lucratives becomes particularly prominent when it ap- seront partagées entre ceux qui auront pears to be charged with superintending the pour la guerre d'attadefence of the state; to turn the people from péroré aux Jacobins the care of their domestie affairs to occupy que." (Tom. xiii. p. 412.) Some of the them with the external security; to ensure the newspaper organs of the new ministry also triumph of the cause of royalty, of moderan- expressed themselves in terms of the most tism, of Machiavelism, the chiefs of which outrageous insolence of Robespierre and are military practitioners ;* thus to prepare his friends, comparing them to a handful of petty tyrants who would be really formidable if they had the courage, as they had the impure morals and the thirst for blood, of Claudius* and Catiline.

.*

rhetorical art in this transference of a word

* "Praticiens militaires." There is great usually applied to one profession in which it has fallen into bad repute, to another to which the speaker desires to transfer that bad quality. This was the commencement of the feud, There is a curious letter of Napoleon Buonaparte, which ultimately became so deadly, beon the subject of this very war, written to M. Naudin, commissaire des guerres, on the 27th of tween the Girondists and Robespierre, and July, 1792, from Valence, where his regiment so far we do not see that any blame atappears to have been then stationed, and published taches to Robespierre. His views in refor the first time by the editors of the Histoire gard to a war of attack were we think Parlementaire,' (tom. xvii. p. 56), in which he right. Undoubtedly Louis and his ministers makes the transference of a word with the same effect on the noblesse de la robe as that here in- were not to be trusted. The conclusions tended by Robespierre for the noblesse de l'épée, he calls the lawyer, "le brigand à parchemins." In this letter Napoleon says he has always been of opinion that there will be no war, and he gives his reasons. The letter is signed "Buonaparte." Perhaps this, as well as other instances of questionable orthography (such as "ils la meprise"),

is accounted for by the postscript: "Le sang méridional qui coule dans mes veines va avec la rapidité du Rhone, pardonnez donc si vous prenez de la peine à lire mon griffonage.'

It is so in the French-we suppose they mean Clodius.

which Robespierre drew from the particular position of affairs in France at that moment were such as any man of ordinary sagacity would have adopted. But the Girondists were not content with being wrong, they insisted on those who were right coming over to their opinion, and were exceedingly angry with Robespierre for declining to do so. It was not, as Madame Roland intimates in her letter to Robespierre of August the 25th, 1792, (found among his papers,) solely because Robespierre insisted on considering every one who differed from him on the war question as an enemy to the nation, that he quarrelled finally with the Girondists, but because the Girondists treated him with hostility and insult for differing from them. Collot d'Herbois sided with the Girondists regarding the war of attack, but that did not prevent Robespierre from afterwards acting with him.

*

the despotism of mind over mind, or of mind over matter.

On the 25th of April Brissot and Guadet made long speeches in the Jacobins in favor of themselves and against Robespierre. Guadet exhibited a sigual example of that total want of all practical sagacity for which his party was remarkable, by denouncing Robespierre as a man who for the love of his country's liberty ought to impose upon himself the pain of ostracism, ought to exile himself from France, and serve the people by removing himself from their idolatry. Robespierre, in a short reply, said :—

"Doubtless there are in this Society, as throughout France, empirical orators, who under the mask of patriotism conceal their desire of office,—who, in the absence of virtue, have eternally in their mouths the words, people, liberty and philosophy. As to the ostra

cism to which M. Guadet invites me to submit myself, it would be the height of vanity in me to impose it on myself, for it is the punishment of great men, and it belongs to M. Brissot to be classed among them."

The quarrel thus fully begun, there was no want of materials to feed it into a flame. On the 26th of March an address, presented by Robespierre and attacked by Guadet, produced a violent shock between the 'spiritualists and materialists' of the Club. As the time of the sitting was nearly Robespierre in defending his opinions expired, and as, he said, his justification against Gaudet said: "Alone with my soul, how could I be equal to struggles which are above human strength, if I had not elevated my soul to God? This divine sentiment has been a full compensation to me for all the advantages offered to those who would betray the people." So might have spoken any fanatic.

would require more time than remained, he asked the president to permit him to enter upon it at the next sitting. Accordingly, on the 28th, Robespierre in a long speech, which is a masterpiece of rhetorical art, defended himself against the spoken attacks of Brissot and Guadet in the Club, and the printed attacks in their newspapers.

The Girondists were now determined to Brissot in his speech had asked what he make a regular attack upon Robespierre, (Robespierre) had done to entitle him to even in his stronghold, the Jacobin Club. speak as he did of such philosophers as On the 2nd of April Robespierre com- Condorcet and his friends. In answer to plained bitterly in the Club of the attacks this question, Robespierre first drew a made upon him by the Girondist journals: sketch of his services in Artois, where, as he concluded his speech with these words: he says, being a member of a very small "Si quelqu'un a des reproches à me faire, tribunal, he substantially opposed those je l'attends ici; c'est ici qu'il doit m'ac- edicts of Lamoignon to which superior cuser, et non dans des piquesniques, dans tribunals only opposed forms, and where he des sociétés particulières. Y a-t-il quel- alone determined the first electoral assemqu'un? qu'il se lève!" Whereupon M. blies to exercise their right of sovereignty. Real exclaimed: "Oui, moi !"—"Parlez!" Then passing to the question of what he said Robespierre with stern brevity. The had done in the National Assembly, he accusations which M. Real then brought were-what? why opiniâtreté;" for the charge of exercising a despotism in the Society (as the accuser affirmed that it was certainly involuntary on the part of Robespierre), amounted to nothing more than

See Hist. Parl.,' tom. xiii. p. 412.

admitted his inability there to carry measures favorable to liberty, but said he had not on that account exerted himself the less to make the voice of truth heard, preferring "honorable murmurs of disapprobation" to "shameful applause." He contrived to turn in his favor the very charge of obscurity in the Constituent Assembly,