Chapter XXIII (2)

It is said that the leaders of the scene had some difficulty in inducing the bishop to comply with the task assigned him, which, after all, he executed, not without present tears and subsequent remorse. But he did play the part prescribed. He was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the convention, that the religion which he had taught so many years, was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then laid on the table his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the president of the convention. Several apostate priests followed the example of this prelate.

The gold and silver plate of the churches was seized upon and desecrated, processions entered the convention, travestied in priestly garments, and singing the most profane hymns; while many of the chalices and sacred vessels were applied by Chaumette and Hebert to the celebration of their own impious orgies. The world for the first time, heard an assembly of men, born and educated in civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man's soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of a Deity. For a short time the same mad profanity continued to be acted upon.

One of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivalled for absurdity, combined with impiety. The doors of the convention were thrown open to a band of musicians; preceded by whom, the members of the municipal body entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future worship, a veiled female, whom they termed the Goddess of Reason. Being brought within the bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed on the right hand of the president; when she was generally recognized as a dancing-girl of the opera, with whose charms most of the persons present were acquainted from her appearance on the stage, while the experience of individuals was farther extended. To this person, as the fittest representative of that reason whom they worshipped the national convention of France rendered public homage.

This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fashion; and the installation of the Goddess of reason was renewed and imitated throughout the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to show themselves equal to all the heights of the revolution. The churches were, in most districts of France, closed against priests and worshippers--the bells were broken and cast into cannon--the whole ecclesiastical establishment destroyed--and the republican inscription over the cemeteries, declaring death to be perpetual sleep, announced to those who lived under that dominion, that they were to hope no redress even in the next world.

Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of marriage, the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society, to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might engage in, and cast loose at pleasure, when their taste was changed, or their appetite gratified. If fiends had set themselves to work, to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the degradation of marriage into a state of mere occasional co-habitation, or licensed concubinage. Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as the sacrament of adultery.

_Fall of Danton, Robespierre, Marat and other Jacobins._

These monsters fell victims by the same means they had used for the destruction of others. Marat was poignarded in 1793, by Charlotte Corday, a young female, who had cherished in a feeling between lunacy and heroism, the ambition of ridding the world of a tyrant. Danton was guillotined in 1794. Robespierre followed soon after. His fall is thus described by Scott in his life of Napoleon.

At length his fate urged him on to the encounter. Robespierre descended to the convention, where he had of late but rarely appeared, like the far nobler dictator of Rome; and in his case also, a band of senators was ready to poignard the tyrant on the spot, had they not been afraid of the popularity he was supposed to enjoy, and which they feared might render them instant victims to the revenge of the Jacobins. The speech which Robespierre addressed to the convention was as menacing as the first distant rustle of the hurricane, and dark and lurid as the eclipse which announces its approach. Anxious murmurs had been heard among the populace who filled the tribunes, or crowded the entrances of the hall of the convention, indicating that a second 31st of May (being the day on which the Jacobins proscribed the Girondists) was about to witness a similar operation.

The first theme of the gloomy orator was the display of his own virtues and his services as a patriot, distinguishing as enemies to their country all whose opinions were contrary to his own. He then reviewed successively the various departments of the government, and loaded them in turn with censure and contempt. He declaimed against the supineness of the committees of public safety and public security, as if the guillotine had never been in exercise; and he accused the committee of finance of having _counter-revolutionized_ the revenues of the republic. He enlarged with no less bitterness on withdrawing the artillery-men (always violent Jacobins) from Paris, and on the mode of management adopted in the conquered countries of Belgium. It seemed as if he wished to collect within the same lists all the functionaries of the state, and in the same breath to utter defiance to them all.

The usual honorary motion was made to print the discourse; but then the storm of opposition broke forth, and many speakers vociferously demanded, that before so far adopting the grave inculpations which it contained, the discourse should be referred to the two committees. Robespierre in his turn, exclaimed, that this was subjecting his speech to the partial criticism and revision of the very parties whom he had accused. Exculpations and defences were heard on all sides against the charges which had been thus sweepingly brought forward; and there were many deputies who complained in no obscure terms of individual tyranny, and of a conspiracy on foot to outlaw and murder such part of the convention as might be disposed to offer resistance. Robespierre was but feebly supported, save by Saint Just, Couthon, and by his own brother. After a stormy debate, in which the convention were alternately swayed by their fear and their hatred of Robespierre, the discourse was finally referred to the committees, instead of being printed; and the haughty and sullen dictator saw in the open slight, thus put on his measures and opinions, the sure mark of his approaching fall.

He carried his complaints to the Jacobin Club, to repose, as he expressed it, his patriotic sorrows in their virtuous bosoms, where alone he hoped to find succour and sympathy. To this partial audience he renewed, in a tone of yet greater audacity, the complaints with which he had loaded every branch of the government, and the representative body itself. He reminded those around him of various heroic eras, when their presence and their pikes had decided the votes of the trembling deputies. He reminded them of their pristine actions of revolutionary vigour--asked them if they had forgot the road to the convention, and concluded by pathetically assuring them, that if they forsook him, "he stood resigned to his fate; and they should behold with what courage he would drink the fatal hemlock." The artist David, caught him by the hand as he closed, exclaiming, in rapture at his elocution, "I will drink it with thee."

The distinguished painter has been reproached, as having, on the subsequent day, declined the pledge which he seemed so eagerly to embrace. But there were many of his original opinion, at the time he expressed it so boldly; and had Robespierre possessed either military talents, or even decided courage, there was nothing to have prevented him from placing himself that very night at the head of a desperate insurrection of the Jacobins and their followers.

Payan, the successor of Hebert, actually proposed that the Jacobins should instantly march against the two committees, which Robespierre charged with being the focus of the anti-revolutionary machinations, surprise their handful of guards, and stifle the evil with which the state was menaced, even in the very cradle. This plan was deemed too hazardous to be adopted, although it was one of those sudden and master strokes of policy which Machiavel would have recommended. The fire of the Jacobins spent itself in tumult, and threatening, and in expelling from the bosom of their society Collot d'Herbois, Tallien, and about thirty other deputies of the mountain party, whom they considered as specially leagued to effect the downfall of Robespierre, and whom they drove from their society with execration and even blows.

Collot d'Herbois, thus outraged, went straight from the meeting of the Jacobins to the place where the committee of public safety was still sitting, in consultation on the report which they had to make to the convention the next day upon the speech of Robespierre. Saint Just, one of their number, though warmly attached to the dictator, had been intrusted by the committee with the delicate task of drawing up that report. It was a step towards reconciliation; but the entrance of Collot d'Herbois, frantic with the insults he had received, broke off all hope of accommodation betwixt the friends of Danton and those of Robespierre. D'Herbois exhausted himself in threats against Saint Just, Couthon, and their master, Robespierre, and they parted on terms of mortal and avowed enmity. Every exertion now was used by the associated conspirators against the power of Robespierre, to collect and combine against him the whole forces of the convention, to alarm the deputies of the plain with fears for themselves, and to awaken the rage of the mountaineers, against whose throat the dictator now waved the sword, which their short sighted policy had placed in his hands. Lists of proscribed deputies were handed around, said to have been copied from the tablets of the dictator; genuine or false, they obtained universal credit and currency; and these whose names stood on the fatal scrolls, engaged themselves for protection in the league against their enemy. The opinion that his fall could not be delayed now became general.

This sentiment was so commonly entertained in Paris on the 9th Thermidor, or 27th July, that a herd of about eighty victims, who were in the act of being dragged to the guillotine, were nearly saved by means of it. The people, in a generous burst of compassion, began to gather in crowds, and interrupted the melancholy procession, as if the power which presided over these hideous exhibitions had already been deprived of energy. But the hour was not come. The vile Henriot, commandant of the national guards, came up with fresh forces also on the day destined to be the last of his own life, proved the means of carrying to execution this crowd of unhappy and doubtless innocent persons.

On this eventful day, Robespierre arrived in the convention, and beheld the mountain in close array and completely manned, while, as in the case of Catiline, the bench on which he himself was accustomed to sit, seemed purposely deserted. Saint Just, Couthon, Le Bas (his brother-in-law,) and the younger Robespierre, were the only deputies of name who stood prepared to support him. But could he make an effectual struggle, he might depend upon the aid of the servile Barrere, a sort of Belial in the convention, the meanest, yet not the least able, amongst those fallen spirits, who, with great adroitness and ingenuity, as well as wit and eloquence, caught opportunities as they arose, and was eminently dexterous in being always strong upon the strongest, and safe upon the safest side. There was a tolerably numerous party ready, in times so dangerous, to attach themselves to Barrere, as a leader who professed to guide them to safety if not to honour; and it was the existence of this vacillating and uncertain body, whose ultimate motions could never be calculated upon, which rendered it impossible to presage with assurance the event of any debate in the convention during this dangerous period.

Saint Just arose, in the name of the committee of public safety, to make, after his own manner, not theirs, a report on the discourse of Robespierre on the previous evening. He had begun a harangue in the tone of his patron, declaring that, were the tribune which he occupied the Tarpeian rock itself, he would not the less, placed as he stood there, discharge the duties of a patriot. "I am about," he said, "to lift the veil."--"I tear it asunder," said Tallien, interrupting him. "The public interest is sacrificed by individuals, who come hither exclusively in their own name, and conduct themselves as superior to the whole convention." He forced Saint Just from the tribune, and a violent debate ensued.

Billaud Varennes called the attention of the assembly to the sitting of the Jacobin club on the preceding evening. He declared the military force of Paris was placed under the command of Henriot, a traitor and a parricide, who was ready to march the soldiers whom he commanded, against the convention. He denounced Robespierre himself as a second Catiline, artful as well as ambitious, whose system it had been to nurse jealousies and inflame dissentions in the convention, so as to disunite parties, and even individuals from each other, attack them in detail, and thus destroy those antagonists separately, upon whose combined and united strength he dared not have looked.

The convention echoed with applause every violent expression of the orator, and when Robespierre sprung to the tribune, his voice was drowned by a general shout of "down with the tyrant!" Tallien moved the denunciation of Robespierre, with the arrest of Henriot, his staff-officers, and of others connected with the meditated violence on the convention. He had undertaken to lead the attack upon the tyrant he said, and to poignard him in the convention itself, if the members did not show courage enough to enforce the law against him. With these words he brandished an unsheathed poignard, as if about to make his purpose good. Robespierre still struggled hard to obtain audience, but the tribune was adjudged to Barrere; and the part taken against the fallen dictator by that versatile and self-interested statesman, was the most absolute sign that his overthrow was irrecoverable. Torrents of invective were now uttered from every quarter of the hall, against him whose single word was wont to hush it into silence.

This scene was dreadful; yet not without its use to those who may be disposed to look at it as an extraordinary crisis, in which human passions were brought so singularly into collision. While the vaults of the hall echoed with exclamations from those who had hitherto been the accomplices, the flatterers, the followers, at least the timid and overawed assentors to the dethroned demagogue--he himself, breathless, foaming, exhausted, like the hunter of classical antiquity when on the point of being overpowered and torn to pieces by his own hounds, tried in vain to raise those screech-owl notes, by which the convention had formerly been terrified and put to silence. He appealed for a hearing from the president of the assembly, to the various parties of which it was composed. Rejected by the mountaineers, his former associates, who now headed the clamour against him, he applied to the Girondists, few and feeble as they were, and to the more numerous but equally helpless deputies of the plain, with whom they sheltered. The former shook him from them with disgust, the last with horror. It was in vain he reminded individuals that he had spared their lives, while at his mercy. This might have been applied to every member in the house; to every man in France; for who was it during two years that had lived on other terms than under Robespierre's permission? and deeply must he internally have regretted the clemency, as he might term it, which had left so many with ungashed throats to bay at him. But his agitated and repeated appeals were repulsed by some with indignation, by others with sullen, or embarrassed and timid silence.

A British historian might say, that even Robespierre ought to have been heard in his defence; and that such calmness would have done honour to the convention, and dignified their final sentence of condemnation. As it was, they no doubt treated the guilty individual according to his deserts: but they fell short of that regularity and manly staidness of conduct which was due to themselves and to the law, and which would have given to the punishment of the demagogue the effect and weight of a solemn and deliberate sentence, in place of its seeming the result of the hasty and precipitate seizure of a temporary advantage.

Haste was, however, necessary, and must have appeared more so at such a crisis, than perhaps it really was. Much must be pardoned to the terrors of the moment, the horrid character of the culprit, and the necessity of hurrying to a decisive conclusion. We have been told that his last audible words, contending against the exclamations of hundreds, and the bell which the president was ringing incessantly, had uttered in the highest tones which despair could give to a voice naturally shrill and discordant, dwelt long on the memory, and haunted the dreams of many who heard him:--"President of assassins," he screamed, "for the last time I demand privilege of speech!" After this exertion, his breath became short and faint; and while he still uttered broken murmurs and hoarse ejaculations, the members of the mountain called out, that the blood of Danton choked his voice.

The tumult was closed by a decree of arrest against Robespierre, his brother, Couthon, and Saint Just; Le Bas was included on his own motion, and indeed could scarce have escaped the fate of his brother-in-law, though his conduct then, and subsequently, showed more energy than that of the others. Couthon hugging in his bosom the spaniel upon which he was wont to exhaust the overflowing of his affected sensibility, appealed to his decrepitude, and asked whether, maimed of proportion and activity as he was, _he_ could be suspected of nourishing plans of violence or ambition. "Wretch," said Legendre, "thou hast the strength of Hercules for the perpetration of crime." Dumas, president of the revolutionary tribunal, with Henriot, commandant of the national guards, and other satellites of Robespierre, were included in the doom of arrest.

The convention had declared their sitting permanent, and had taken all precautions for appealing for protection to the large mass of citizens, who, wearied out by the reign of terror, were desirous to close it at all hazards. They quickly had deputations from several of the neighbouring sections, declaring their adherence to the national representatives, in whose defence they were arming, and (many undoubtedly prepared beforehand) were marching in all haste to the protection of the convention. But they heard also the less pleasing tidings, that Henriot, having effected the dispersion of those citizens who had obstructed, as elsewhere mentioned, the execution of the eighty condemned persons, and consummated that final act of murder, was approaching the Tuilleries, where they had held their sitting, with a numerous staff, and such of the Jacobinical forces as could hastily be collected.

Happily for the convention, this commandant of the national guards, on whose presence of mind and courage the fate of France perhaps for the moment depended, was as stupid and cowardly as he was brutally ferocious. He suffered himself without resistance, to be arrested by a few gens d'armes, the immediate guards of the convention, headed by two of its members, who behaved in the emergency with equal prudence and spirit.

But fortune, or the demon whom he had served, afforded Robespierre another chance for safety, perhaps even for empire; for moments which a man of self-possession might have employed for escape, one of desperate courage might have used for victory, which, considering the divided and extremely unsettled state of the capital, was likely to be gained by the boldest competitor.

The arrested deputies had been carried from one prison to another, all the jailers refusing to receive under their official charge Robespierre, and those who had aided him in supplying their dark habitations with such a tide of successive inhabitants. At length the prisoners were secured in the office of the committee of public safety. But by this time all was in alarm amongst the commune of Paris, where Fleuriot the mayor, and Payan the successor of Hebert, convoked the civic body, despatched municipal officers to raise the city and the Fauxbourgs in their name, and caused the tocsin to be rung. Payan speedily assembled a force sufficient to liberate Henriot, Robespierre, and the other arrested deputies, and to carry them to the Hotel de Ville, where about two thousand men were congregated, consisting chiefly of artillerymen, and of insurgents from the suburb of Saint Antoine, who already expressed their resolution of marching against the convention. But the selfish and cowardly character of Robespierre was unfit for such a crisis. He appeared altogether confounded and overwhelmed with what had passed and was passing around him; and not one of all the victims of the reign of terror felt its disabling influence so completely as he, the despot who had so long directed its sway. He had not, even though the means must have been in his power, the presence of mind to disperse money in considerable sums, which of itself would not have failed to insure the support of the revolutionary rabble.

Meantime the convention continued to maintain the bold and commanding front which they had so suddenly and critically assumed. Upon learning the escape of the arrested deputies, and hearing of the insurrection at the Hotel de Ville, they instantly passed a decree outlawing Robespierre and his associates, inflicting a similar doom upon the mayor of Paris, the procureur, and other members of the commune, and charging twelve of their members, the boldest that could be selected, to proceed with the armed force to the execution of the sentence. The drums of the national guards now beat to arms in all the sections under authority of the convention, while the tocsin continued to summon assistance with its iron voice to Robespierre and the civic magistrates. Every thing appeared to threaten a violent catastrophe, until it was seen clearly that the public voice, and especially amongst the national guards, was declaring itself generally against the terrorists.

The Hotel de Ville was surrounded by about fifteen hundred men, and cannon turned upon the doors. The force of the assailants was weakest in point of number, but their leaders were men of spirit, and night concealed their inferiority of force.

The deputies commissioned for the purpose read the decree of the assembly to those whom they found assembled in front of the city hall, and they shrunk from the attempt of defending it, some joining the assailants, others laying down their arms and dispersing. Meantime the deserted group of terrorists within conducted themselves like scorpions, which, when surrounded by a circle of fire, are said to turn their stings on each other, and on themselves. Mutual and ferocious upbraiding took place among these miserable men. "Wretch, were these the means you promised to furnish?" said Payan to Henriot, whom he found intoxicated and incapable of resolution or exertion; and seizing on him as he spoke, he precipitated the revolutionary general from a window. Henriot survived the fall only to drag himself into a drain, in which he was afterwards discovered and brought out to execution. The younger Robespierre threw himself from the window, but had not the good fortune to perish on the spot. It seemed as if even the melancholy fate of suicide, the last refuge of guilt and despair, was denied to men who had so long refused every species of mercy to their fellow-creatures. Le Bas alone had calmness enough to despatch himself with a pistol shot. Saint Just, after imploring his comrades to kill him, attempted his own life with an irresolute hand, and failed. Couthon lay beneath the table brandishing a knife, with which he repeatedly wounded his bosom, without daring to add force enough to reach his heart. Their chief, Robespierre, in an unsuccessful attempt to shoot himself, had only inflicted a horrible fracture on his under-jaw.

In this situation they were found like wolves in their lair, foul with blood, mutilated, despairing, and yet not able to die. Robespierre lay on a table in an anti-room, his head supported by a deal box, and his hideous countenance half hidden by a bloody and dirty cloth bound round the shattered chin.

The captives were carried in triumph to the convention, who, without admitting them to the bar, ordered them, as outlaws, for instant execution. As the fatal cars passed to the guillotine, those who filled them, but especially Robespierre, were overwhelmed with execrations from the friends and relatives of victims whom he had sent on the same melancholy road. The nature of his previous wound, from which the cloth had never been removed till the executioner tore it off, added to the torture of the sufferer. The shattered jaw dropped, and the wretch yelled aloud to the horror of the spectators. A masque taken from that dreadful head was long exhibited in different nations of Europe, and appalled the spectator by its ugliness, and the mixture of fiendish expression with that of bodily agony.

Thus fell Maximilian Robespierre, after having been the first person in the French republic for nearly two years, during which time he governed it upon the principles of Nero or Caligula. His elevation to the situation which he held, involved more contradictions than perhaps attach to any similar event in history. A low-born and low-minded tyrant was permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful despotism a people, whose anxiety for liberty had shortly before rendered them unable to endure the rule of a humane and lawful sovereign. A dastardly coward arose to the command of one of the bravest nations in the world; and it was under the auspices of a man who dared scarce fire a pistol, that the greatest generals in France began their careers of conquest. He had neither eloquence nor imagination; but substituted in their stead a miserable, affected, bombastic style, which, until other circumstances gave him consequence, drew on him general ridicule. Yet against so poor an orator, all the eloquence of the philosophical Girondists, all the terrible powers of his associate Danton, employed in a popular assembly, could not enable them to make an effectual resistance. It may seem trifling to mention, that in a nation where a good deal of prepossession is excited by amiable manners and beauty of external appearance, the person who ascended to the highest power was not only ill-looking, but singularly mean in person, awkward and constrained in his address, ignorant how to set about pleasing even when he most desired to give pleasure, and as tiresome nearly as he was odious and heartless.

To compensate all these deficiencies, Robespierre had but an insatiable ambition, founded on a vanity which made him think himself capable of filling the highest situation; and therefore gave him daring, when to dare is frequently to achieve. He mixed a false and overstrained, but rather fluent species of bombastic composition, with the grossest flattery to the lowest classes of the people; in consideration of which, they could not but receive as genuine the praises which he always bestowed on himself. His prudent resolution to be satisfied with possessing the essence of power, without seeming to desire its rank and trappings, formed another art of cajoling the multitude. His watchful envy, his long-protracted but sure revenge, his craft, which to vulgar minds supplies the place of wisdom, were his only means of competing with his distinguished antagonists. And it seems to have been a merited punishment of the extravagances and abuses of the French revolution, that it engaged the country in a state of anarchy which permitted a wretch such as we have described, to be for a long period master of her destiny. Blood was his element, like that of the other terrorists and he never fastened with so much pleasure on a new victim; as when he was at the same time an ancient associate. In an epitaph, of which the following couplet may serve as a translation, his life was represented as incompatible with the existence of the human race:--

"Here lies Robespierre--let no tear be shed:
Reader, if he had lived, thou hadst been dead."

The fall of Robespierre ended the "_Reign of Terror_." Most of the leaders who had acted a conspicuous part in these horrid scenes, met a doom similar to that of their leaders. It is impossible to convey to the reader any adequate conception of the atrocities committed in France during this gloomy period, in the name of liberty. Men, women, and children were involved in the massacres which took place at the instigation of the Jacobin chiefs. Hundreds of both sexes were thrown into the Loire, and this was called republican marriage and republican baptism. And it should never be forgotten, that it was not till France as a nation, had denied the existence of a Deity, and the validity of his institutions, that she was visited by such terrible calamities. Let it be "burnt in on the memory" of every generation, that such is the legitimate tendency of infidel opinions. They first destroy the conscience--blunt the moral sense--harden the heart, and wither up all the social and kindly affections, and then their votaries are ripe for any deed of wickedness within the possibility of accomplishment by human agency.

Says an eloquent writer--"When the Sabbath was abolished in France, the Mighty God whose being they had denied, and whose worship they abolished, stood aloof and gave them up,--and a scene of proscription, and assassination, and desolation, ensued, unparalleled in the annals of the civilized world. In the city of Paris, there were in 1803, eight hundred and seven suicides and murders. Among the criminals executed, there were seven fathers who had poisoned their children, ten husbands who had murdered their wives, six wives who had poisoned their husbands, and fifteen children who had destroyed their parents."

It may be profitable here to record the end of several other Jacobin leaders who had been conspicuous during these scenes of atrocity and bloodshed. Public opinion demanded that some of the most obnoxious members should be condemned. After hesitating for some time, at length the convention, pressed by shame on the one side and fear on the other, saw the necessity of some active measure, and appointed a commission to consider and report upon the conduct of the four most obnoxious Jacobin chiefs, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varennes, Vadier, and Barrere. The report was of course unfavourable; yet upon the case being considered, the convention were satisfied to condemn them to transportation to Cayenne. Some resistance was offered to this sentence, so mild in proportion to what those who underwent it had been in the habit of inflicting; but it was borne down, and the sentence was carried into execution. Collot d'Herbois, the demolisher and depopulator of Lyons, is said to have died in the common hospital, in consequence of drinking off at once a whole bottle of ardent spirits. Billaud Varennes spent his time in teaching the innocent parrots of Guiana the frightful jargon of the revolutionary committee; and finally perished in misery.

These men both belonged to that class of atheists, who, looking up towards heaven, loudly and literally defied the Deity to make his existence known by launching his thunderbolts. Miracles are not wrought on the challenge of a blasphemer more than on the demand of a sceptic; but both these unhappy men had probably before their death reason to confess, that in abandoning the wicked to their own free will, a greater penalty results even in this life, than if Providence had been pleased to inflict the immediate doom which they had impiously defied.

Encouraged by the success of this decisive measure, the government proceeded against some of the terrorists whom they had hitherto spared, but whose fate was now determined, in order to strike dismay into their party. Six Jacobins, accounted among the most ferocious of the class, were arrested and delivered up to be tried by a military commission. They were all deputies of the mountain gang. Certain of their doom, they adopted a desperate resolution. Among the whole party, they possessed but one knife, but they resolved it should serve them all for the purpose of suicide. The instant their sentence was pronounced, one stabbed himself with this weapon; another snatched the knife from his companion's dying hand, plunged it in his own bosom, and handed it to the third, who imitated the dreadful example. Such was the consternation of the attendants, that no one arrested the fatal progress of the weapon--all fell either dead or desperately wounded--the last were despatched by the guillotine.

After this decisive victory, and last dreadful catastrophe, Jacobinism, considered as a pure and unmixed party, can scarce be said to have again raised its head in France, although its leaven has gone to qualify and characterize, in some degree, more than one of the different parties which have succeeded them. As a political sect, the Jacobins can be compared to none that ever existed, for none but themselves ever thought of an organized, regular, and continued system of murdering and plundering the rich, that they might debauch the poor by the distribution of their spoils. They bear, however, some resemblance to the frantic followers of John of Leyden and Knipperdoling, who occupied Munster in the seventeenth century, and committed, in the name of religion, the same frantic horrors which the French Jacobins did in that of freedom. In both cases, the courses adopted by these parties were most foreign to, and inconsistent with, the alleged motives of their conduct. The Anabaptists practised every species of vice and cruelty, by the dictates, they said, of inspiration--the Jacobins imprisoned three hundred thousand of their countrymen in the name of liberty, and put to death more than half the number, under the sanction of fraternity.

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Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired except where noted below.

Page vi, "Vallie's" changed to "valleys" (the valleys of Piedmont)

Page vii, "stupifies" changed to "stupefies (first stupefies the)

Page xi, "Hawkes" changed to "Haukes" (Ardeley, Haukes, and)

Page 18, "Icunum" changed to "Iconium" (Jerusalem, Iconium, Lystra)

Page 23, "northen" changed to "northern" (restless northern nations)

Page 26, "catechhmun" changed to "catechumen" (catechumen of Carthage)

Page 33, "i ine" changed to "in fine" (in fine, he was)

Page 39, "batoons" changed to "batons" (with batons, and)

Page 42, "martrydom" changed to "martyrdom" (conclusion of her martyrdom)

Page 51, "dioceas" changed to "diocese" (in the diocese)

Page 51, "remand" changed to "remanded" (They remanded him)

Page 60, "cardina" changed to "cardinal" (crowns of the cardinal)

Page 64, "no" changed to "not" (reached not to)

Page 73, "nflicted" changed to "inflicted" (inflicted twice without)

Page 73, "quiety" changed to "quietly" (peaceably and quietly)

Page 73, "hreatening" changed to "threatening" (threatening words to)

Page 75, "erwise" changed to "otherwise" (far otherwise than)

Page 77, "contributious" changed to "contributions" (last contributions to)

Page 77, word "a" was inferred and placed in text do to spacing and context (such a procedure)

Page 80, inconsistent quotation marks were retained as original intent could not be assertained.

Page 91, "iner" changed to "Gardiner" (Gardiner was drawn)

Page 91, "ne" changed to "near" (near the fire)

Page 125, "Vilaro" changed to "Villaro" (of Villaro and Bobbio)

Page 126, "apprended" changed to "apprehended" (Michialm, was apprehended)

Page 132, "dorpped" changed to "dropped" (till they dropped)

Page 134, "stil kep" changed to "still kept" (and still kept)

Page 136, "s" changed to "his" (completed his regiment)

Page 136, "retron" changed to "return" (and return thanks)

Page 137, "Vilaro" changed to "Villaro" (rocks of Villaro)

Page 137, word "to" inserted into text (put to death)

Page 138, "that" changed to "than" (than their suffering)

Page 158, "tr s" changed to "troops" (of his troops)

Page 158, "un ook" changed to "undertook" (princes undertook the)

Page 158, "wel" changed to "well" (were all well)

Page 159, "w s" changed to "was" (Zisca was solicited)

Page 175, "possesion" changed to "possession" (his possession.)

Page 179, "ban- s hour" changed to "banish our" (banish our preachers)

Page 180, "enj ned" changed to "enjoined" (strictly enjoined his)

Page 204, "see" changed to "she" (whom she forgave)

Page 206, "queen" changed to "Queen" (in Queen Mary's)

Page 207, "Northhampton" changed to "Northampton" (preached at Northampton)

Page 214, "halbered" changed to "halberd" (halberd struck him)

Page 222, "Osmand" changed to "Osmond" (Thomas Watts, Thomas Osmond)

Page 223, "Was" changed to "was" (he was brought)

Page 224, "sherif" changed to "sheriff" (of the sheriff)

Page 232, "passsed" changed to "passed" (he passed Bocardo)

Page 232, word "be" deleted from text. Original read "he be bent himself"

Page 235, the last four names in the article "Rev. T. Whittle, B. Green, T. Brown" do not match the names used in the article. As each was used only once, this was retained as author's intent could not be ascertained.

Page 237, "charg" changed to "charge" (closely the charge)

Page 239, "lest" changed to "lost" (forever lost his)

Page 248, "Asking" changed to "Askin" (Askin and one John Guin)

Page 251, "cemetry" changed to "cemetary" (their former cemetary)

Page 260, "hallejahs" changed to "hallelujahs" (invocations and hallelujahs)

Page 264, "he" changed to "the" (at the stake)

Page 268, "fo" changed to "for" (for these Dr.)

Page 268, word "I" inserted into text (I am unlearned)

Page 276, "Preston" changed to "Prest" (Mrs. Prest for some)

Page 278, "Duchman" changed to "Dutchman" (The Dutchman accused)

Page 285, "nowithstanding" changed to "notwithstanding" (notwithstanding his passion)

Page 292, "t" changed to "to" (every day, to)

Page 293, "beesech" changed to "beseech" (humbly beseech your)

Page 300, deleted repeated word "words". Original read "such words words fell"

Page 310, "Englisman" changed to "Englishman" (an Englishman, who)

Page 314, word "to" inserted into text (to his master)

Page 321, "Richlieu" changed to "Richelieu" (Cardinal Richelieu, the)

Page 321, duplicate word "in" deleted. Original read: "evening in in the city"

Page 325, "massacreing" changed to "massacring" (besides massacring at)

Page 326, "belley" changed to "belly" (up its belly)

Page 336, "addess" changed to "address" (address to the king)

Page 338, "religous" changed to "religious" (of religious duty)

Page 341, word "any" inserted into text (that any person)

Page 347, "Elb" changed to "Elba" (the Isle of Elba)

Page 357, "owever" changed to "however" (This, however, would)

Page 357, "no" changed to "not" (would not avail)

Page 370, word "of" inserted in text. (member of the Roman)

Page 376, "skekh" changed to "shekh" (The shekh declared)

Page 377, "wordly" changed to "wordly" (other worldly motives)

Page 386, word "but" presumed due to smudged text. (but when I)

Page 386, word "the" presumed due to smudged text. (merely the gospel)

Page 387, word "then" presumed due to smudged text. (and then there)

Page 391, "evi" changed to "evil" (you an evil)

Page 398, "o" changed to "to" (to which I was)

Page 399, Footnote: word "a" inserted into text (to a distance)

Page 406, the word "excellent" is presumed as the text was smudged. (a more excellent)

Page 408, repeated word "the" deleted. Original read: "or the the palace"

Page 410, "Assaad" changed to "Asaad" (history of Asaad)

Page 413, "words" changed to "word" (This word tells)

Page 416, "angy" changed to "angry" (more angry than ever)

Page 419, "enter d th" changed to "entered the" (entered the garden)

Page 425, word "I" inserted into text (period, I was)

Page 426, "are" changed to "or" (if you or any other)

Page 432, "word" changed to "words" (first words of)

Page 432, "worne" changed to "worn" (worn out with fatigue)

Page 437, "purose" changed to "purpose" (express purpose of)

Page 442, "Woongypee" changed to "Woongyee" (a Woongyee and Woondouk)

Page 445, "ion" changed to "accusation" (on an accusation)

Page 448, "beeen" changed to "been" (having been transmitted)

Page 453, "Misssionary" changed to "Missionary" (the Wesleyan Missionary)

Page 456, "tell" changed to "Tell" (Tell and Winkelreid)

Page 457, "enlighted" changed to "enlightened" (most enlightened cantons)

Page 480, "exeedingly" changed to "exceedingly" (continued exceedingly troublesome)

Page 481, word "in" inserted into text (in all christian)

Page 483, "subsisttence" changed to "subsistence" (his future subsistence)

Page 485, "cathdral" changed to "cathedral" (cathedral of Salisbury)

Page 486, "Canterbery" changed to "Canterbury" (archbishop of Canterbury)

Page 492, "unwieldly" changed to "unwieldy" (antiquated and unwieldy)

Page 496, "accummulated" changed to "accumulated" (individuals accumulated in)

Page 498, "t" changed to "It" (It required, as in)

Page 499, repeated word "Louis" was deleted. Original text reads: "will of Louis Louis XVI."

Page 501, "Vendee" changed to "Vendee" twice. (La Vendee)

Page 503, "terrour" changed to "terror" (terror was awakened)

Page 508, "poinarded" changed to "poignarded" (poignarded in 1793)

Page 508, "poinard" changed to "poignard" (poignard the tyrant)

Page 511, "l o" changed to "also" (also on the day destined)

Page 512, "assentators" changed to "assentors" (overawed assentors to the)

Varied capitalization of Christian, Jew, de Legal, and d'Herbois was retained. Inconsistent spacing in meanwhile/mean while was retained.

Different spellings of proper names such as Benifield and Benefield, Tlowtdan and Tlowtdau, Wittenberg and Wittenburg were retained. Varied hyphenation was retained throughout.