"Rome Unmasked;" "Philosophical Letters on the Life and Writings of St. Paul," which he professed to be a translation from the English; "The Theory of Criminal Law;" the outline of a work on "Universal Pyrrhonism," with essays on Metaphysics and on Legislation. In all these, so far as laws and institutions were concerned, he had studied those of England, and he then proceeded-as Frenchmen have been so fond of doing for the last hundred years— to declare the ruin of England at hand. Notwithstanding this, when the French government suppressed the Courrier of Boulogne, he came over to England, where he set up a Lyceum in Newman-street, Oxford-street, which was to spread over the world enlightenment on all matters that concerned the government and social progress of the human race. He issued thence the Journal of the Lyceum, in which he attempted to teach to his own countrymen the free institutions of that England which was so soon to perish. By means of this Lyceum pretence he managed to swindle a M. Desforges, a money-lender, out of thirteen thousand livres, and was in close connection with Morande, alternately a French libeller of the government and a French spy, and with the marquis de Pelleport, the author of Le Diable dans un Bénitier, "The Devil in the Holy Water Vessel." Being obliged to quit London to avoid arrest for the money so fraudulently obtained, he returned to France, and was seized by lettre de cachet and lodged in the Bastille. Yet he is accused at the same time of having been, whilst in London, in the pay of Vergennes, and, notwithstanding, writing against the French government. The Courrier de l'Europe, on which he had been engaged, it appears, was published really in London by a Mr. Swinton, and sent over to Boulogne for circulation. At this Swinton's house he became first acquainted with Morande. "He was one of those mercenary scribes," says Lamartine, "who write for those who pay best. He had written on all subjects, for every minister, especially for Turgot-criminal law, political economy, diplomacy, literature, philosophy, even libels. Seeking the support of celebrated and influential men, he had circulated round all from Voltaire and Franklin down to Marat." On being liberated from the Bastille in 1785 he went again to England, and thence to America, and wrote a work on the United States. On the breaking out of the revolution he returned to France, and started, first, the Patriote Français, and we have had occasion to notice his truculent articles, and his equally fiery speeches in the jacobin club. He had formerly lauded and supported Bailly and La Fayette; he was now equally active for the republic in the assembly, and in the salons of Roland, Condorcet, and Bidermann the banker. Robespierre was excessively angry with him, declaring that, with his "republic," he was throwing division amongst the patriots, and playing into the hands of their enemies by announcing that there was a party in France pledged to destroy the monarchy and the constitution. Marat, in his Ami du Peuple, and Manuel, in Père Duchesne, were equally violent against him, and so were much better men. He had won, in truth, a most unenviable name. "Brissot's old allies," says Lamartine, "returned from London, especially Morande, under cover of the troublous times, and revealed to the Parisians in the Argus, and in placards, the secret

intrigues and disgraceful literary career of their former associate. They quoted actual letters in which Brissot had lied unblushingly as to his name, the condition of his family, and his father's fortune, in order to acquire Swinton's confidence, to gain credit, and make dupes in England. The proofs were damning. The sum extorted from Desforges, under pretence of an institution in London, and expended on himself, was a mere trifle compared with the whole iniquity. Brissot, on quitting England, had left in the hands of Desforges twenty-four letters, which but too plainly established his participation in the infamous trade of libels carried on by his allies. It was proved to demonstration that Brissot had connived at the sending into France, and at the propagation of odious pamphlets by Morande. He was, besides, accused of having extracted from the funds of the district of the Filles-Saint Thomas, of which he was president, a sum for his own purse, long forgotten. Thus appeared upon the scene for the first time, amid the hootings of both parties, this man, who attempted in vain to escape from the general contempt accumulated on his name." It required all the enthusiasm and the necessities of party to render such a man the guest and coadjutor of a madame Roland. From the time of his sojourn in America Brissot assumed the habit of a quaker, and was the first to abandon the wearing of hair-powder. He was the first victim of Robespierre.

Louvet, one of the most distinguished of the Girondists, was an advocate by profession, but had distinguished himself as a novelist, and especially by "Faublas," one of the most obscene and disgusting of French fictions; but, on that account, extremely popular in France. He was living in quiet, and pursuing his authorship at about twenty leagues from Paris, when the news of the revolution carried him, like thousands of other young aspirants, to Paris. Louvet became a member of the jacobin club, threw the blame of the march to Versailles on the duke of Orleans, and continued to write romances calculated to spread the new ideas; advocating freedom of divorce, and heaping odium on the aristocrats and the emigrants. He continued to charge the duke of Orleans with selfish aims, and to denounce Robespierre and Marat; yet he contrived to escape their bloody decimation, and became a member of the council of Five Hundred.

Gorsas, who had been a schoolmaster at Versailles, and edited the Courier des Départemens, was one of the most exciting and influential of the Girondists. Guadet was another; a lawyer by profession, and possessed of considerable eloquence. He was closely connected with Gensonné and Vergniaud, being from the same department. These two gentlemen were advocates of Bordeaux; they were both eloquent, but Vergniaud was deemed the most eloquent man of this second assembly. Isnard, the son of a perfumer at Grasse, a literary man formed on the old Grecian and Roman model, was a thorough republican, and of an ardent and impetuous character. He was styled the Danton of the Gironde, as Vergniaud was the Mirabeau. Ducos was another young and enthusiastic Girondist, as Garats, a literary man, was the cool and calculating one of the party, and thus escaped to become a senator and count under Napoleon Buonaparte. Such were the chief cha

A.D. 1791.]

racters of the Girondist or pure republican party, which now rose into prominent notice. Yet, at first, there was little distinction between the Girondists and the jacobins. The Girondists, in fact, claimed to be the true and pure jacobins. They were all alike ultra-revolutionists, but the jacobins were contented to retain the monarch so long as they could use him as a tool; the Girondists, having formed their conceptions on the classical times, scorned to admit any use or ornament in a monarch; they deemed monarchy unsuited to the dignity of man. In fact, the left side of the first assembly had become the right of this, so far as political views were concerned; the moderate men had disappeared, men of ultra ideas had taken their places. The greater portion of this assembly consisted of young, inexperienced persons. Almost all the white heads had disappeared, and with them the proud bearing of the noblesse, the austere gravity of the old deputies of the tiers-état, and the dignity of the clergy and magistrates. The French had shown how ill calculated they were for self-government by clearing the house of all that had been already learned of legislation by experience, and filling it with raw enthusiasm. "The great idea of France," says Lamartine," abdicated, if we may use the expression, with the constitutional assembly; and the government fell from its high position into the hands of the inexperience or the impulses of a new people. From the 29th of September to the 1st of October there seemed to be a new reign; the legislative assembly found themselves on that day face to face with the king, who, deprived of authority, ruled over a people destitute of moderation. They felt, on their first sitting, the oscillation of a power without a counterpoise, that seeks to balance itself by its own wisdom; and, changing from insult to repentance, wounds itself with the weapon that has been placed in its grasp."

On the 1st of October, when the assembly met, Armand Gaston Camus, one of the Paris deputies, and a thorough jacobin, presented the book of the constitution to the members, and, all standing uncovered, swore to maintain it, and live free or die. Cerutti, an Italian, and ex-Jesuit, pronounced a high encomium on the late assembly-most of the members of which were present as spectators-and, after declaring that no Roman senate, or British parliament, or American congress had done so much, moved that a place of honour should be appointed in the house, where the members of the late assembly could attend and observe the proceedings. This was not acceded to; but a great number of such members took the liberty of seating themselves in the body of the house, where they communicated with their successors, and advised them what to say or do, so that the Moniteur, the official gazette, declared that they had constituted themselves into a second chamber; "so difficult," it observed, was it, having been something, to consent to become nothing." It declared that they formed a permanent committee-were still governing the country through their

successors.

A deputation of sixty members was appointed to announce to the king the definitive formation of the new National Legislative Assembly. Duchastel was at their head. They waited on the king on the evening of the 4th of October, about six o'clock. The king informed them that he would

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receive them at one o'clock the next day. The deputation demanded admission immediately, and the king consented to give them audience at nine o'clock that evening. This was one of those needless irritations of the court by which it seemed to be driven by a fatality. It was desirable that the king and the new assembly should meet in mutual goodhumour, but this was at once at an end. The king received them stiffly, and they showed a like stiffness. Louis asked Duchastel what were the names of his colleagues, and he replied, that he did not know. They were then retiring, when Louis called them back and said that he could not attend the house till Friday.

These proceedings excited great sensation in the assembly. Exception was taken to the word "sire," with which Duchastel had addressed the king. Sire was declared to be only a contraction of seigneur, which meant a sovereign, and a member demanded that it be abolished. Another protested against the assembly being called on to sit or stand, just as it pleased the chief magistrate. Couthon, a little lawyer from Clermont, destined to be one of Robespierre's sanguinary triumvirate, denounced the fine gilded fauteuil set for the king, and demanded that it should be removed and a chair placed for him precisely like that of the president, and side by side with it. His maiden speech was rapturously applauded, and Chabot protested against their standing when the king sate, or being uncovered when he was covered, or allowing the king to say that he would come at this or that time to the assembly, at his own pleasure. Coulon observed that this decree would induce confusion; some would remain covered, others would uncover to flatter the king. "So much the better," cried some one, "then we shall know the flatterers." It was therefore decreed that the assembly should be on a perfect equality with the king as to sitting or standing, being covered or uncovered, and that the gilded fauteuil should be removed. The report of these decrees spread consternation through the palace. It was clear that all harmony was destroyed in the very commencement, and the king summoning a ministerial council, said that he was not obliged to expose himself to the insults of the assembly, and would order ministers to preside at the opening of the legislative body.

This announcement struck the assembly with consternation on its part. When it met on the 6th, Vosgien asserted that they were giving advantage to the enemies of the public welfare, and injuring their own respect by refusing that due to the king. Vergniaud declared that the titles of sire and majesty recalled feudality, and ought not to be retained, and yet he conceded that the assembly, as a mark of respect to the chief magistrate, should rise and uncover when he did so. Hérault de Séchelles demanded the repeal of the decrees of the previous day; and Champion, the deputy of the Jura, asserted that they were insulting the first assembly by refusing titles which it had thought proper to retain; that the founders of liberty were not slaves; that it was the people who had created royalty; that in honouring it they were honouring the people, whence it sprung. After a keen debate, the decrees were annulled; but the royalists were so imprudent as to triumph in the repeal as a proof of the assembly's weakness, and the returning power of the king. Some of the officers of the national guards menaced Gou

pilleau, Couthon, Basire, Chabot, and others, as they left the hall. "Beware!" said they; "we will not suffer the revolution to advance another step! We know you; we will watch you; you shall be hewed to pieces by us, if you dare to disturb the constitution." The people, who dreaded another struggle on the approach of a severe winter, looked on, and permitted the menace. But the jacobin members flew that evening to their club, and raised loud outcries. They declared that all this had come about through the deputies of the late assembly having, contrary to all order, mingled amongst the new ones, and instigated them to their ruin. Goupilleau affirmed that he was not allowed to speak, and that Dermigni, an officer of the national guard, had threatened him with death. Goupilleau was the sworn ally of Robespierre and Danton, and Dermigni was summoned to the bar of the club, where he appeared in a great fright, and protested his intense attachment to liberty, and declared that, if he thought any injury would come to the constitution, he would go instantly and bury himself under a stone! The king, appeased by the repeal of the obnoxious decrees, the next day presented himself at the assembly, and was received with unanimous applauses. There were cries of, "Vive le Roi!" and even "Vive sa Majesté !" The king addressed them bare-headed and standing, and this soothed the pride of the assembly. He dwelt upon the state of the finances, of the army, and the foreign relations of France. He said, that in order that their labours might produce good, it was necessary that there should exist between the king and the legislative body a constant harmony and unalterable confidence; that enemies would seek to disturb their repose, but that the love of their country should ally them, and render them inseparable; that property and opinion in every man ought to be respected, so that no one should have an excuse for living away from the country; that he himself would use every exertion to produce these effects. Though the king, and the queen, too, had just really been writing to Leopold of Austria to assure him that, unless something was done by foreign powers to put a stop to the revolution, there would soon be not a crowned head in Europe, much less in France, yet the speech of Louis was delivered with so much seeming sincerity, that there were loud applauses, and M. Partout, the president, a moderate constitutionalist, replied that the royal speech was like a new oath to the constitution; that the revolution, so far from weakening his power, had rendered him the greatest monarch in the world. Louis retired amid acclamations, and the court and royalists entertained new hopes from the circumstance. But these impressions were destined to be speedily erased. The assembly was anxious to dispel the semblance of a momentary weakness which had thus possessed it. It already blushed at its moderation for a day, and was anxious to cast fresh jealousies betwixt the throne and the nation. There were three subjects on which it was necessary that the assembly should enter—the clergy, the emigration, and the impending war, and on each of these the court was secretly at variance with it. The very same day on which the king visited the assembly, the first topic was introduced by Couthon, who demanded rigorous measures against the un-sworn, or, as they were styled, unconstitutional priests. The constituent assembly never committed a greater legislative blunder than

when it imposed the civil oath on the clergy; that act at once divided the clergy into two factions-those who were willing to take it, and those who would not, and were, therefore, ordered to be expelled from their cures. Dividing the clergy, it divided the people, who, according to their opinions, supported one ecclesiastical section or the other. The assembly, when it confiscated the church property, and made the clergy the pensioners of the state, should, as became a people professing itself free, have left freedom of conscience, and allowed the people to choose their own pastors. If they went further than this, and desired to break the power and tyranny of Rome, they should have left religion to maintain itself; but, paying such as consented to take this shibboleth of an oath, and rejecting the rest, it created an ecclesiastical civil war in the country, and a war which threatened, not only the peace, but the stability of the civil government. In the words of the historian of the Gironde, "The revolution, until then exclusively political, became schism in the eyes of a portion of the clergy and the faithful. Amongst the bishops and the priests, some took the civil oath, which was the guarantee of their existence; others refused, or, having taken it, retracted. This gave rise to trouble in many minds-agitation in consciences, division in the temples. The great majority of parishes had two ministers, the one a constitutional priest, salaried and protected by government; the other refractory, refusing the oath, deprived of his income, driven from the church, and raising opposition altars in private chapels or in open fields. These two ministers of the same worship excommunicated each other, the one in the name of the constitution, and the other in the name of the pope and the church. The popula tion was also divided, according to the greater or less revolutionary spirit prevailing in the province. In cities and the more enlightened districts the constitutional worship was exercised almost without dispute; in the open country, and the less civilised departments, the priest who had not taken the oath became a consecrated tribune, who, at the foot of the altar, or on the elevation of the pulpit, agitated the people and inspired it, by instilling horror against a constitutional and schismatic priesthood, with hatred of the government which protected it."

But it went further than this. In La Vendée, DeuxSèvres, and other remote and agricultural districts, the priests, strong in the devotion of their confiding people, resisted the law, and remained in possession of the churches in defiance of the assembly. The king, a sincere catholic, secretly sympathised with the non-juring clergy. The Girondists wished to compel him to declare himself, as this would be another step towards a republic, and therefore pressed the question. The circumstances of the country were serious enough to warrant the discussion. In Brittany the people adhered to their non-juring priests, and fled from contact with the sworn ones. On Sundays, bodies of many thousands, where they had been expelled from the churches, followed their pastors to remote localities for public worship. In other places they did stout battle for them in the churches themselves; in Caen blood had flowed before the very altars on such occasions.

The assembly had sent out a commission, consisting of Gallois and Gensonné, the latter a zealous Girondist, and on

A.D. 1791.1

the 9th of October these gentlemen presented their report. It drew a startling picture of the state of things in La Vendée and Deux-Sèvres, to which they had been sent. They declared that the epoch of taking the ecclesiastical oath was the first epoch of the disturbances in La Vendée; till then the people there had enjoyed the greatest tranquillity. Remote from the common centre of all action and resistance; disposed by their natural character to the love of peace, to the sentiment of order, to respect for the laws, they reaped the benefits of the revolution, without experiencing its storms. In the difficulty of communications, the simplicity of a purely agricultural life, the lessons of childhood, and the religious emblems destined incessantly to engage the attention, had opened the soul to a multitude of superstitious impressions, which, in the present state of things, no kind of instruction can either destroy or moderate. Nothing, the report said, had been neglected by the unsworn priests to influence the people through these means. Many of these priests were sincere in the doctrines they taught; many were zealous merely through faction. The bishop of Luçon had addressed a circular letter to the clergy of his diocese, enjoining them by all means to avoid all intercourse with the sworn priests; to refuse to say mass in the churches which such had usurped, although the decree of the assembly permitted this; to regard all churches in which these intruders had entered as polluted; to refuse to be married by them, as all the children of such marriages would be, in the eyes of God and of the church, illegitimate. Where the civil power refused a separate place of burial, or where the relatives objected to any cemetery but that at the old church, those attending funerals were enjoined to set down their dead at the church door and leave it, so as not to sanction the officiation of the intruding priest; to keep a separate register of baptisms, marriages, and deaths; and for the ejected pastor still to consider himself as the only true pastor.

These injunctions had been zealously enforced by missionaries, who had been established, about sixty years before, at the village of St. Laurent, district of Montaign, who had traversed La Vendée, Chatillon, and Deux-Sévres, distributing medals, rosaries, and indulgences, and setting up calvaries of all forms by the roads. These missionaries had extended their labours all over the late provinces of Poitou, Anjou, Bretagne, and Aunis. They had been actively assisted by the grey nuns, called filles de sagesse (daughters of wisdom), also established in St. Laurent; that these missionaries, male and female, had written instructions with them, which had been found on their persons, commanding them to warn the country people against holding any communications whatever with the priests, whom they called intruders; to receive no sacrament at their hands; to consider that, if their children should be called illegitimate, they were not so before God; and that it was better that a marriage should be valid in the sight of God than of men.

They quoted an arrêt of the department of Maine and Loire, showing that the same state of things existed there. There, for the most part, the old non-juring priests remained; the newly-elected declined to encounter the enmity of the people. The grand-vicars and curés had bound themselves to maintain the secret coalition. Where

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removals had been effected, it had broken up families; wives left their husbands, parents their children, in these divisions. Municipalities dissolved themselves, that they might not be called on to enforce the removal of non-juring priests. The citizens had extensively renounced the service of the national guard from the same motives, and those acting could not be depended on for supporting this edict of the assembly. In many departments, judges and members of electoral bodies were odious to the people, as instruments for supporting this law. In other districts, where removals had been effected, you saw ten or twelve persons attending mass by the sworn priest, and whole villages going off from one to ten leagues to attend mass by a non-juring priest.

M. Dumouriez had to accompany the commissioners for a month to support their authority, for he was now a general, and could bring up military, if needed, for they could expect no assistance from the national guards or the gendarmerie. From La Vendée they proceeded to Chatillon. There they were universally petitioned to allow the old priests to remain, or, where they had been ejected, that they might have them back again. "We desire no other favour," they said, "than to have priests in whom we have confidence." They found, in all these departments, that the people had divided themselves into two parties on the subject: those who adhere to the unsworn priests styling themselves aristocrats, those who adhere to the sworn, patriots. Finally, they observed that, "examining the efficacy of this measure, we saw that, if faithful catholics have no confidence in the priests who have taken the oath, it is not the way to inspire them with more to remove from them in this manner the priests of their choice." Thus the opinion of the commission was adverse to the decree imposing the civil oath on the clergy.

The report being read, a powerful discussion took place upon it. It was opened by Fauchet, the new constitutional bishop of Calvados. The abbé Fauchet, as we have seen, was one of the heroes of the Bastille; he continued an ardent revolutionist, and was rewarded with one of the constitutional bishoprics by the first assembly. He now demanded a vigorous repression of the unsworn priests. "We are accused," he said, "of a desire to persecute. It is calumny. No persecution. Fanaticism is greedy of it; real religion repulses it; philosophy holds it in horror. Let us beware of imprisoning the non-jurors; of exiling, or even of displacing them. Let them think, say, write all they please against us; we will oppose our thoughts to their thoughts, our truths to their errors, our charity to their hatred. Time will do the rest. But, in awaiting its infallible triumph, we must find an efficacious and prompt mode of hindering them from prevailing over weak minds, and propagating ideas of a counter revolution. A counter revolution! This is not a religion, gentlemen! Fanaticism is not compatible with liberty. Look else at these ministers; they have swum in the blood of patriots. This is their own expression. Compared with these priests, atheists are angels. However, I repeat, let us tolerate, but do not let us pay them. not pay them to rend our country to pieces. It is to this measure only that we should confine ourselves. What service do they render? They invoke ruin on our laws, and they say they follow their consciences! Must wo

Let us