DEFENDED BY MANUEL.

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pamphlets by Morande. The journals hostile to his election seized on these scandalous facts, and held them up to public obloquy. He was, besides, accused of having extracted from the funds of the district of the Filles-SaintThomas, of which he was president, a sum for his own purse, long forgotten. His defence was labored and obscure; yet it was held by the club of the Rue de la Michodière sufficient proof of his innocence and integrity. Some journals, solely occupied with the political bearing of his life, took up his defence, and made loud complaints against his calumny. Manuel, his friend, who edited a vile journal, wrote thus, to console him:-"These ordures of calumny, spread abroad at the moment of scrutiny, always end by leaving a dirty stain on those who scatter them. But it is allowing a triumph to the enemies of the people, to repulse thus a man who fearlessly attacks them. They give me votes, in spite of my drivellings, and my love of the bottle. Leave Père Duchesne'* alone, and let us nominate Brissot; he is a better man than I am.'

was

Marat, in his Ami du Peuple, wrote thus ambiguously of Brissot Brissot," says the Friend of the People, never, in my eyes, a thorough-going patriot. Either from ambition or baseness, he has up to this time betrayed the duties of a good citizen. Why has he been so tardy in leaving a system of hypocrisy ? Poor Brissot, thou art the victim of a court valet, of a base hypocrite!-why lend thy paw to La Fayette? Why, thou must expect to experience the fate of all men of indecision. Thou hast displeased everybody; thou canst never make thy way. If thou hast one atom of proper feeling left, hasten, and scratch out thy name from the list of candidates for the approaching general election."

Thus appeared on the scene for the first time, in the midst of the hootings of both parties, this man, who attempted in vain to escape from the general contempt accumulated on his name from the faults of his youth, in order to enter on the gravity of his political career-a mingled character, half intrigue, half virtue. Brissot, destined to serve as the centre of a rallying point to the party of the Gironde, had, by anti

"Père Duchesne" was one of the most virulent, gross and blood thirsty productions of the Revolution. It was edited by Manuel and Hébert. Its success and profit were so great, that it had many imitators. It was rather a pamphlet than a newspaper, the price fifty sous a month. -H. T. R.

144

THE GIRONDIST LEADERS.

cipation in his character, all there was in after days, of destiny in his party, of intrigue and patriotism, of faction and martyrdom. The other marked candidates in Paris, were, Pastoret, a man of the South, prudent and skilful as a Southron, steering ably betwixt parties, giving sufficient guarantee to the Revolution to be accepted by it, enough devotion to the court to retain its secret confidence; borne hither and thither by the alternating favors of the two opinions, like a man who seeks fortune for his talent in the Revolution, but never looking for it beyond the limits of the just and honorable. Lacepede, Cerutti, Héraut de Séchelles, and Gouvion, La Fayette's aide-de-camp. The elections of the department occupied but little attention. The National Assembly had exhausted the country of its characters and its talents; the ostracism it had exercised had imposed on France but secondary ability. There was but little enthusiasm for untried men: the public eyes were only fixed on the names about to disappear. A country cannot contain a twofold renown: that of France was departing with the members of the dissolved Assembly-another France was

about to rise.

BOOK IV.

I.

Ar this juncture the germ of a new opinion began to display itself in the south, and Bordeaux felt its full influence. The department of the Gironde had given birth to a new political party in the twelve citizens who formed its deputies. This department, far removed from the centre, was at no distant period to seize on the empire alike of opinion and of eloquence. The names (obscure and unknown up to this period,) of Ducos, Guadet, Lafond-Ladebat, Grangeneuve, Gensonné, Vergniaud, were about to rise into notice and renown with the storms and the disasters of their country; they were the men who were destined to give that impulse to the Revolution that had hitherto remained in doubt and indecision, before which it still trembled with apprehension, and which was to precipitate it into a republic. Why was

THE REVOLUTIONARY PRESS.

145

this impulse fated to have birth in the department of the ` Gironde and not in Paris? Nought but conjectures can be offered on this subject; and yet perhaps the republican spirit was more likely to manifest itself at Bordeaux than at Paris, where the presence and influence of a court had for ages past enervated the independence of character, and enfeebled the austerity of principle that form the basis of patriotism and liberty. The states of Languedoc, and the habits that necessarily result from the administration of a province governed by itself, could not fail to predispose the inclination of the Gironde in favor of an elective and federative government. Bordeaux was a parliamentary country; the parliaments had everywhere encouraged the spirit of resistance, and had often created a factious feeling against the king. Bordeaux was a commercial city, and commerce, which requires liberty through interest, at last desires it through a love of freedom. Bordeaux was the great commercial link between America and France, and their constant intercourse with America had communicated to the Gironde their love for free institutions. Moreover Bordeaux was more exposed to the enlightening influence of the sun of philosophy than the centre of France. Philosophy had germed there ere it arose in Paris, for Bordeaux was the birthplace of Montaigne and Montesquieu, those two great republicans of the French school. The one had deeply investigated the religious dogmata, the other the political institutions; and the president Dupaty had long after awakened there enthusiasm for the new system of philosophy. Bordeaux, in addition, was a country where the traditions of liberty and the Roman Forum had been perpetuated in the bar. A certain leaven of antiquity animated each heart, and lent vigor to every tongue, and the town was still more republican by eloquence than by opinion, though there was something of Latin emphasis in their patriotism. It was in the birthplace of Montaigne and Montesquieu that the republic was to take its origin.

II.

The period of the elections was the signal for a still more obstinate attack from the public press. The papers were insufficient: men sold pamphlets in the streets, and the "Journaux affiches' were invented, which were placarded against the walls of Paris, and around which groups of peo7

VOL. T.

146

HIGH STATE OF EXCITEMENT.

ple were constantly collected. Wandering orators, inspired or hired by the different parties, took their stand there and commented aloud on these impassioned productions:Loustalot, in the Revolutions de Paris, founded by Prudhomme, and continued alternately by Chaumette and Fabre d'Eglantine; Marat, in the Publiciste and the Ami du Peuple; Brissot, in the Patriote Française; Gorsas, in the Courrier de Versailles; Condorcet, in the Chronique de Paris; Cérutti, in the Feuille Villageoise; Camille Desmoulins, in the Discours de la Lanterne, and the Revolution's de Brabant; Fréron, in the Orateur du Peuple; Hébert and Manuel, in the Père Duchesne; Carra, in the Annales Patriotiques; Fleydel, in the Observateur; Laclos, in the Journal des Jacobins; Fauchet, in the Bouche de Fer; Royon, in the Ami du Roi; Champcenetz-Rivarol, in the Actes des Apôtres ; Suleau and André Chénier, in several royaliste or modérée papers,-excited and disputed dominion over the minds of the people. It was the ancient tribune transported to the dwelling of each citizen, and adapting its language to the comprehension of all men, even the most illiterate. Anger, suspicion, hatred, envy, fanaticism, credulity, invective, thirst of blood, sudden panics, madness and reflection, treason and fidelity, eloquence and folly, had each their organ in this concert of every passion and feeling in which 7 the city revelled each night. All toil was at an end; the only labor in their eyes was to watch the throne, to frustrate the real or fancied plots of the aristocracy, and to save their country. The hoarse bawling of the venders of the public journals, the patriotic chants of the Jacobins as they quitted their clubs, the tumultuous assemblies, the convocations to the patriotic ceremonies, fallacious fears as to the failure of provisions-kept the population of the city and faubourgs in a perpetual state of excitement, which suffered no one to remain inactive; indifference would have been considered treason; and it was necessary to feign enthusiasm in order to be in accordance with public opinion. Each fresh event quickened this feverish excitement, which the press constantly instilled into the veins of the people. Its language already bordered on delirium, and borrowed from the population even their proverbs, their love of trifles, their obscenity, their brutality, and even their oaths, with which the articles were interlarded, as though to impress more forcibly its hatred on the ear of its foes. Danton, Hébert, and Marat were the first to adopt this tone, these gestures, and these

REMOVAL OF VOLTAIRE'S REMAINS TO THE PANTHEON. 147

exclamations of the populace, as though to flatter them by imitating their vices. Robespierre never condescended to this, and never sought to obtain ascendency over the people by pandering to their brutality, but by appealing to their reason; and the fanatical tone of his speeches possessed at least that decency that attends great ideas-he ruled by respect, and scorned to captivate them by familiarity. The more he gained the confidence of the lower classes, the more did he affect the philosophical tone and austere demeanor of the statesman. It was plainly perceptible in his most. radical propositions, that however he might wish to renew social order he would not corrupt its elements, and that in his eyes to emancipate the people was not to degrade them.

III.

It was at this period that the Assembly ordered the removal of Voltaire's remains to the Pantheon; philosophy thus avenged itself on the anathemas that had been thundered forth, even against the ashes of the great innovator. The body of Voltaire, on his death, in Paris, A.D. 1778, had been furtively removed by his nephew at night, and interred in the church of the abbey of Sellières in Champagne; and when the nation sold this abbey, the cities of Troyes and Romilly mutually contended for the honor of possessing the bones of the greatest man of the age. The city of Paris, where he had breathed his last, now claimed its privilege as the capital of France, and addressed a petition to the National Assembly, praying that Voltaire's body might be brought back to Paris and interred in the Pantheon, that cathedral of philosophy. The Assembly eagerly hailed the idea of this homage, that traced liberty back to its original source. The people owe their freedom to him," said Regnault de Saint Jean d'Angély; "for by enlightening them, he gave them power; nations are enthralled by ignorance alone, and when the torch of reason displays to them the ignominy of bearing these chains, they blush to wear them, and snap them asunder."

On the 11th of July, the departmental and municipal authorities went in state to the barrier of Charenton, to receive the mortal remains of Voltaire, which were placed on the ancient site of the Bastille, like a conqueror on his trophies; his coffin was exposed to public gaze, and a pedestal was formed for it of stones torn from the foundations of this an