shock it was to produce with perfect discretion; retained it, let it loose, as the court or the patriots prevailed; defeated the perfidies of the one, and saved the other from mistakes; and placed in the midst of the excesses of both, proscribed by the court and calumniated by the selfish, but loved by the people, who were not as yet depraved, he conducted the Revolution to its term; and neither can the bad men, who have destroyed the Revolution, deprive him of the glory of it, nor can good men impute to him the calamities by which it has been followed. And such,' concludes Barbaroux, "such was the state of Paris when the Marseillois arrived (at the close of July)."

Such are the views and reasonings of Barbaroux, such the case of the Girondists. We may now turn to Bertrand de Moleville, and judge of the state of Paris by referring to the representations made from an opposite quarter.

"The king," says he, "having sanctioned the decree, which declared the country in danger, it was proclaimed in the capital with all the form and ceremony suited to make a great impression." An amphitheatre, it appears, from his account, was then constructed, and an officer was appointed to receive the names of those who were disposed to march to the frontiers. "These patriotic enrolments," he says, "continued a week, and in this manner went off thousands-fifteen thousand, as it was computed. But (he adds) that some of these miserable citizen-soldiers presented themselves at the bar of the Assembly, demanding, they said, in the name of the country, which they were going to save, the deposition of the executive power, or at least that it should be made subordinate to the legislative body." A frightful specimen this, it may be observed, to show how unpopular was the king, how popular the Revolution. "The Assembly applauded their zeal," continues Bertrand de Moleville, " and had given the same reception to a band of Federates, who, professing to represent the eighty-three departments, had come to make the same demand: Determine (said they) to suspend the executive power; there is not a moment to be lost; have a care of drawing upon yourselves a terrible responsibility.'

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"The deposition of the king," says Bertrand de Moleville, was certainly the wish of all the Jacobin clubs, and consequently of all the furious demagogues. Their manœuvres," he says, "which I watched with all possible vigilance, became daily more alarming. I was informed that a clandestine meeting had

been held at Charenton, and that the projected insurrection was ultimately fixed for the 9th or 10th of August.

Such is the representation of Bertrand de Moleville.

I must now call your attention, for a moment, to a very curious circumstance that occurred, and which, like the particulars I have just mentioned, is very strongly illustrative of the critical situation of the king, and of all the parties concerned, during this month of July. It is a letter which appears to have been written by the chiefs of the Girondist party to the king, to explain to him their opinions on the measures to be adopted for his own safety, and the welfare of his country. There is something of obscurity with regard to the first origin of this letter, and the precise views of the Girondists are not very clear; but I see not why we may not suppose them to have been what the letter describes them to have been. "The chiefs," says Bertrand de Moleville," of the Gironde faction, who had planned the insurrection, did not at that time intend to overset the monarchy; their design was to dethrone the king, make the crown pass to his son, and establish a council of regency, to be composed of their own creatures." And in a corresponding part of his Memoirs, he mentions that Vergniaud, Gaudet, and Gensonné commissioned one Rose, a painter, to deliver to Thierry, the king's valet de chambre, a letter to the king, which he calls an imprudent and insolent letter, and to which the king replied," that no answer could be returned." But it is a letter which my hearers will, perhaps, think well deserved every consideration that could be given to it. The very existence of such a letter on the state of the country from such men, at the time, I must again intimate, is a very remarkable circumstance; it is alluded to by the historian Thiers, in his second volume, and is given in the notes. "The Girondists," says Thiers, "though they had started in so hardy a manner the question of the deposition, still hesitated when they came to the eve of an insurrection; and though the court was now almost disarmed, and all power in the hands of the people, still the approach of the Prussians, and the dread of a long-established authority (however now disarmed), inclined them to think, that it was better to come to terms with the court, than to expose themselves to the chances of an attack on the palace. Even if this attack were successful, the Prussians might afterwards arrive and exercise a terrible vengeance. They did not, indeed, under the influence of these and other considerations, begin a negociation with the court, but they listened to a painter of the name of Rose, who,

terrified at the situation of public affairs, engaged them to give, in a letter, their opinion of what could now be done for the safety of the king, and the preservation of liberty." Thiers then proceeds to a brief abstract of the contents of the letter. But mark several of the expressions of this letter.

"It ought not to be dissembled," says one of the first paragraphs, "that it is the conduct of the executive power that is the immediate cause of all the evils with which France is afflicted, and of the dangers with which the throne is surrounded. They deceive the king who would lead him to suppose that it is the effervescence of the clubs, the manoeuvres of particular agitators and powerful factions, that have occasioned and continue those disorderly movements, of which every day increases the violence, and of which no one can calculate the consequences. Thus to suppose, is to find the cause of the evil in what are really only the symptoms. The only way to re-establish the public tranquillity, is for the king to surround himself with the confidence of his people. This can only be done by declaring, in the most solemn manner, that he will receive no augmentation of his power that shall not be freely and regularly offered him by the French nation without the assistance or interference of any foreign powers; and what would be perhaps sufficient at once to reestablish confidence, would be for the king to make the coalesced powers acknowledge the independence of the French nation, cease from all further hostilities, and withdraw the troops that menace our frontiers. It is impossible that a very great part of the nation should not be persuaded that the king has it in his power to put an end to this coalition; and while that coalition continues, and places the public liberty in a state of peril, it is in vain to flatter the king that confidence can revive. To consider distrust as a crime, when the danger is real, is but to augment it. While there is an action against liberty, a correspondent reaction is inevitable. Why does not the king choose his ministers among those who are clearly in favour of the Revolution?

"Whatever," says the letter, in conclusion, "whatever has a tendency to banish suspicion and to reanimate confidence, neither can nor ought to be neglected. The constitution is saved if the king resolves with courage and persists with firmness."

To these very weighty observations the king returned four common-place remarks, which showed he would do neither the one nor the other.

I cannot but consider this letter as favourable to the Giron

dists; in all fair construction, it surely meant well; and one is disposed to welcome anything that appears favourable to the character of a man of such talents as Vergniaud.

We will now turn to other particulars, still illustrative of the critical situation of the king, and indeed of all parties.

The letter from the Girondists was sent to the king about the close of the month of July. Whatever might be its intention, it had failed; and on the 26th, Gaudet, one of the writers of it, read an address to the king, as reporter from the extraordinary commission. Paragraphs of the following nature appear in it :— "By what fatality, sire, is it, that our enemies are men who pretend only to serve you? The constitution has charged you to watch over the external interests of the nation; yet the ally for whom we have lavished our blood and treasure is become our enemy, and it is in your name that he has raised against us a league of kings, hostile to that liberty which you have sworn to maintain, and protectors of an authority which you have often solemnly renounced. You complain, sire, of the distrust of the people, but what have you done to remove it? Your palace is filled with the families of the rebels at Coblentz. It would be in vain to look near you for a man who has been useful to the cause of liberty, or who has not betrayed it. But all divisions are about to cease. When an empire is threatened by foreign armies, and attempts are made to change its laws by force, there exists but one necessity, one duty, that of repelling the enemy. All difference of party or opinion must be suspended, and there remain but two classes of men, citizens and traitors.

"You may yet save your country, and your crown with it. Dare at length to determine upon it. Let the names of your ministers, let the sight of men who are about you inspire public confidence. The nation," the address concluded, "is no doubt able to defend itself and to preserve its liberty, but requests you once more, sire, to unite with it to defend the constitution and the throne."

Expressions of this kind, to be found in different parts of the address, were of a very menacing nature; and it behoved the king and the court immediately to come to some decision, either to try once more the experiment of a flight, or entirely to adopt the Revolution, and persuade the allied powers to withdraw.

In the existing state of Paris, there seems to have been no chance for the lives of the royal family, but one or other of these alternatives; on any other supposition they must apparently perish, and this, whether the allied powers succeeded or not.

This alternative became more and more pressing, for the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick now appeared; and " was not," says Bertrand de Moleville, was not that manifesto the plan of which had been proposed by Mallet du Pan and agreed to, but one drawn up by Dulimon, as dictated by the ministers of the emperor and king of Prussia; and the Duke of Brunswick, who signed it as commander-in-chief, had not even been consulted about it. The publication of it," he continues, "produced an effect the very reverse of what had been expected. All parties, some violent Royalists excepted, were provoked at the boastings of the Duke of Brunswick, or laughed at them. The factious did not fail to attribute to the suggestions of the king all the menaces respecting the safety of himself and his family, and thence concluded that his majesty was in correspondence with the enemies of the nation."

Such is the notice taken of this declaration by Bertrand de Moleville. He seems to have been more struck by the impru dence and folly of it, than by the spirit of injustice and inhumanity which distinguishes it. You will, of course, read it very attentively. You will find in it the following passages :—

"That the national guards are called upon to preserve provisionally tranquillity . . . until the arrival of the troops. That, on the contrary, such national guards as shall fight against the troops of the two allied powers, and who shall be taken with arms in their hands, shall be treated as enemies, and punished as rebels to their king, and as disturbers of the public peace."

Again. "That the inhabitants of towns, boroughs, and villages, who shall dare to defend themselves against the troops of their imperial and royal majesties, and to fire upon them, either in open country, or through half-open doors or windows of their houses, shall be punished instantly according to the rigorous rules of war, or their houses shall be demolished and burnt."

Again. "The city of Paris and all its inhabitants without distinction shall be called upon to submit instantly and without delay to the king, to set that prince at full liberty, and to ensure to him and to all royal persons that inviolability and respect which are due by the laws of nature and of nations to sovereigns; their imperial and royal majesties making personally responsible for all events, on pain of losing their heads, pursuant to military trials, without hope of pardon, all the members of the National Assembly, of the department of the district, of the municipality, and of the national guards of Paris, justices of