The tendency of the vulgar is to embody resistance. The surviving Girondist d.puties, every thing. Some individual is selected, and who had concealed themselves from the ven often selected very injudiciously, as the repre- geance of their enemies in caverns and garrets, sentative of every great movement of the pub- were re-admitted to their seats in the Convenlic mind, of every great revolution in human tion. No day passed without some signal affairs; and on this individual are concentrated reparation of injustice; no street in Paris was all the love and all the hatred, all the admira- without some trace of the recent change. In tion and all the contempt, which he ought right- the theatre, the bust of Marat was pulled down fully to share with a whole party, a whole sect, from its pedestal and broken in pieces, amidst a whole nation, a whole generation. Perhaps the applause of the audience. His carcass no human being has suffered so much from was ejected from the Pantheon. The celebrated this propensity of the multitude as Robespierre. picture of his death, which had hung in the He is regarded not merely as what he was, an hall of the Convention, was removed. The envious, malevolent zealot; but as the incar- savage inscriptions with which the walls of the nation of Terror, as Jacobinism personified. city had been covered disappeared; and in The truth is, that it was not by him that the place of death and terror, humanity, the watchsystem of terror was carried to the last extreme. word of the new rulers, was everywhere to be The most horrible days in the history of the seen. In the mean time, the gay spirit of Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, were those France, recently subdued by oppression, and which immediately preceded the ninth of Ther- now elated by the joy of a great deliverance, midor. Robespierre had then ceased to attend wantoned in a thousand forms. Art, taste, the meetings of the sovereign committee; and luxury, revived. Female beauty regained its the direction of affairs was really in the hands empire-an empire strengthened by the rememof Billaud, of Collot, and of Barère. brance of all the tender and all the sublime virtues which women, delicately bred and reputed frivolous, had displayed during the evil days. Refined manners, chivalrous sentiments, followed in the train of love. The dawn of the Arctic summer day after the Arctic winter night, the great unsealing of the waters, the awakening of animal and vegetable life, the sudden softening of the air, the sudden blooming of the flowers, the sudden bursting of whole forests into verdure, is but a feeble type of that happiest and most genial of revolutions, the revolution of the ninth of Thermidor.

It had never occurred to those three tyrants, that in overthrowing Robespierre, they were overthrowing that system of terror to which they were more attached than he had ever been. Their object was to go on slaying even more mercilessly than before. But they had misunderstood the nature of the great crisis which had at last arrived. The yoke of the committee was broken for ever. The Convention had regained its liberty, had tried its strength, had vanquished and punished its enemies. A great reaction had commenced. Twenty-four hours after Robespierre had ceased But, in the midst of the revival of all kind to live, it was moved and carried, amidst loud and generous sentiments, there was one por bursts of applause, that the sittings of the Re- tion of the community against which mercy volutionary Tribunal should be suspended. Bil- itself seemed to cry out for vengeance. The laud was not at that moment present. He en-chiefs of the late government and their tools tered the hall soon after, learned with indignation what had passed, and moved that the vote should be rescinded. But loud cries of "No, no!" rose from those benches which had lately paid mute obedience to his commands. Barère came forward on the same day, and adjured the Convention not to relax the system of terror. "Beware, above all things," he cried, "of that fatal moderation which talks of peace and of clemency. Let aristocracy know that here she will find ouly enemies sternly bent on vengeance, and judges who have no pity." But the day of the Carmagnoles was over: the restraint of fear had been relaxed; and the hatred with which the nation regarded the Jacobin dominion broke forth with ungovernable violence. Not more strongly did the tide of public opinion run against the old monarchy and aristocracy, at the time of the taking of the Bastile, than it now ran against the tyranny of the Mountain. From every dungeon the prison⚫ers came forth, as they had gone in, by hundreds. The decree which forbade the soldiers of the Republic to give quarter to the English, was repealed by an unanimous vote, amidst loud acclamations; nor, passed as it was, disobeyed as it was, and rescinded as it was, can it be with justice considered as a blemish on the Came of the French nation. The Jacobin Club was refractory. It was suppressed without

were now never named but as the men of blood, the drinkers of blood, the cannibals. In some parts of France, where the creatures of the Mountain had acted with peculiar barbarity, the populace took the law into its own hands, and meted out justice to the Jacobins with the true Jacobin measure; but at Paris the punishments were inflicted with order and decency; and were few when compared with the num ber, and lenient when compared with the enor mity, of the crimes. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor, two of the vilest of mankind, Fouquier Tinville, whom Barère had placed at the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Lebon, whom Barère had defended in the Convention, were placed under arrest. A third miscreant soon shared their fate, Carrier, the tyrant of Nantes. The trials of these men brought to light horrors surpassing any thing that Sueton.us and Lampridius have related of the worst Cæsars. But it was impossible to punish subordinate agents who, bad as they were, had only acted in ac cordance with the spirit of the government which they served, and, at the same time, to grant impunity to the heads of the wicked administration. A cry was raised, both within and without the Convention, for justice on Collot, Billaud, and Barère.

Collot and Billaud, with all thei" vices, appear to have been men of resolute natures.

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They made no submission; but opposed to the | and have drawn up a proclamation announcing hatred of mankind, at first a fierce resistance, their guilt and their punishment to all France, and afterwards a dogged and sullen endurance. were by no means disposed to acquiesce in his Barère, on the other hand, as soon as he began claims. He was reminded that, only forty-eight to understand the real nature of the revolution hours before the decisive conflict, he had, in the of Thermidor, attempted to abandon the Moun-tribune, been profuse of adulation to Robestain, and to obtain admission among his old pierre. His answer to this reproach is worthy friends of the moderate party. He declared of himself. It was necessary," he said, "to everywhere that he had never been in favour dissemble. It was necessary to flatter Robesof severe measures; that he was a Girondist; pierre's vanity, and, by panegyric, to impel him that he had always condemned and lamented to the attack. This was the motive which inthe manner in which the Brissotine deputies duced me to load him with those praises cf had been treated. He now preached mercy which you complain. Who ever blamed Brufrom that tribune from which he had recently tus for dissembling with Tarquin ?" preached extermination. "The time," he said, The accused triumvirs had only one chance "has come at which our clemency may be in- of escaping punishment. There was severe dulged without danger. We may now safely distress at that moment among the working consider temporary imprisonment as an ade- people of the capital. This distress the Jacoquate punishment for political misdemeanors." bins attributed to the reaction of Thermider, It was only a fortnight since, from the same to the lenity with which the aristocrats were place, he had declaimed against the moderation now treated, and to the measures which had which dared even to talk of clemency; it was been adopted against the chiefs of the late only a fortnight since he had ceased to send administration. Nothing is too absurd to be men and women to the guillotine of Paris, at believed by a populace which has not breakthe rate of three hundred a week. He now fasted, and which does not know how it is to wished to make his peace with the moderate dine. The rabble of the Faubourg St. Anparty at the expense of the Terrorists, as he toine rose, menaced the deputies, and dehad, a year before, made his peace with the manded with loud cries the liberation of the Terrorists at the expense of the moderate party. persecuted patriots. But the Convention was But he was disappointed. He had left himself no longer such as it had been, when similar no retreat. His face, his voice, his rants, his means were employed too successfully against jokes, had become hateful to the Convention. the Girondists. Its spirit was roused. When he spoke, he was interrupted by mur-strength had been proved. Military means murs. Bitter reflections were daily cast on his were at its command. The tumult was supcowardice and perfidy. On one occasion Car-pressed, and it was decreed that same evening not rose to give an account of a victory, and so far forgot the gravity of his character as to indulge in the sort of oratory which Barère had affected on similar occasions. He was interrupted by cries of "No more Carmagnoles!" "No more of Barère's puns!"

Its

that Collot, Billaud, and Barère should instantly be removed to a distant place of confinement.

spised.

The next day the order of the Convention was executed. The account which Barère has given of his journey is the most interesting and the most trustworthy part of these memoirs. At length, five months after the revolution of There is no witness so infamous that a court Thermidor, the Convention resolved that a of justice will not take his word against himcommittee of twenty-one members should be self; and even Barère may be believed when appointed to examine into the conduct of Bil-he tells us how much he was hated and delaud, Collot, and Barère. In some weeks the report was made. From that report we learn that a paper had been discovered, signed by Barere, and containing a proposition for adding the last improvement to the system of terror. France was to be divided into circuits; itinerant revolutionary tribunals, composed of trusty Jacobins, were to move from department to department; and the guillotine was to travel in their train.

Barère, in his defence, insisted that no speech or motion which he had made in the Convention could, without a violation of the freedom of debate, be treated as a crime. He was asked how he could resort to such a mode of defence, after putting to death so many deputies on account of opinions expressed in the Convention. He had nothing to say, but that it was much to be regretted that the sound principle had ever been violated.

He arrogated to himself a large share of the merit of the revolution of Thermidor. The men who had risked their lives to effect that revolation, and who knew that, if they had failed, Barère would, in all probability, have moved the decree for beheading them without a trial,

The carriage in which he was to travel passed, surrounded by armed men, along the street of S. Honore. A crowd soon gathered round it, and increased every moment. On the long flight of steps before the church of St. Roch stood rows of eager spectators. It was with difficulty that the coach could make its way through those who hung upon it, hooting, cursing, and striving to burst the doors. Barère thought his life in danger, and was conducted at his own request to a public office, where he hoped that he might find shelter till the crowd should disperse. In the mean time, another discussion on his fate took place in the Convention. It was proposed to deal with him as he had dealt with better men, to put him out of the pale of the law, and to deliver him at once without any trial to the headsman. But the humanity which, since the ninth Thermidor, had generally directed the public counsels, restrained the deputies from taking this course It was now night; and the streets gradually became quiet. The clock struck twelve; and Barère, under a strong guard, again set forth on his journey. He was conducted over the

river to the place where the Orleans road ever. These events strengthened the aversion branches off from the southern boulevard. Two travelling carriages stood there. In one of them was Billaud, attended by two officers; in the other, two more officers were waiting to receive Barère. Collot was already on the road. At Orleans, a city which had suffered cruelly from the Jacobin tyranny, the three deputies were surrounded by a mob bent on tearing them to pieces. All the national guards of the neighbourhood were assembled; and this force was not greater than the emergency required; for the multitude pursued the carriages far on the road to Blois.

At Amboise the prisoners learned that Tours was ready to receive them. The stately bridge was occupied by a throng of people, who swore that the men under whose rule the Loire had been choked with corpses, should have full personal experience of the nature of a noyade. In consequence of this news, the officers who had charge of the criminals made such arrangements that the carriages reached Tours at two in the morning, and drove straight to the posthouse. Fresh horses were instantly ordered, and the travellers started again at full gallop. They had in truth not a moment to lose; for the alarm had been given: lights were seen in motion; and the yells of a great multitude, disappointed of its revenge, mingled with the sound of the departing wheels.

At Poitiers there was another narrow escape. As the prisoners quitted the post-house, they saw the whole population pouring in fury down the steep declivity on which the city is built. They passed near Niort, but could not venture to enter it. The inhabitants came forth with threatening aspect, and vehemently cried to the postilions to stop; but the postilions urged the horses to full speed, and soon left the town behind. Through such dangers the men of blood were brought in safety to Rochelle.

with which the system of Terror and the authors of that system were regarded. One member of the Convention had moved, that the three prisoners of Oléron should be put to death; another, that they should be brought back to Paris, and tried by a council of war. These propositions were rejected. But something was conceded to the party which called for severity. A vessel which had been fitted out with great expedition at Rochefort touched at Oléron, and it was announced to Collot and Billaud that they must instantly go on board. They were forthwith conveyed to Guiana, where Collot soon drank himself to death with brandy. Billaud lived many years, shunning his fellow creatures and shunned by them; and diverted his lonely hours by teaching parrots to talk. Why a distinction was made between Barère and his companions in guilt, neither he nor any other writer, as far as we know, has explained. It does not appear that the distinction was meant to be at all in his favour; for orders soon arrived from Paris, that he should be brought to trial for his crimes before the criminal court of the department of the Upper Charente. He was accordingly brought back to the Continent, and confined during some months at Saintes, in an old convent which had lately been turned into the jail.

While he lingered here, the reaction which had followed the great crisis of Thermidor met with a temporary check. The friends of the house of Bourbon, presuming on the indul gence with which they had been treated after the fall of Robespierre, not only ventured to avow their opinions with little disguise, but at length took arms against the Convention, and were not put down till much blood had been shed in the streets of Paris. The vigilance of the public authorities was therefore now directed chiefly against the royalists, and the rigour with which the Jacobins had lately been treated was somewhat relaxed. The Convention, indeed, again resolved that Barère should be sent to Guiana. But this decree was not carried into effect. The prisoner, probably with the connivance of some powerful persons, made his escape from Saintes and fled to Bordeaux, where he remained in concealment during some years. There seems to have been a kind of understanding between him and the suf-government, that, as long as he hid himself, he should not be found, but that, if he obtruded himself on the public eye, he must take the consequences of his rashness.

Oléron was the place of their destination, a dreary island beaten by the raging waves of the Bay of Biscay. The prisoners were confined in the castle; each had a single chamber, at the door of which a guard was placed; and each was allowed the ration of a single soldier. They were not allowed to communicate either with the garrison or with the population of the island: and soon after their arrival they were denied the indulgence of walking on the ramparts. The only place where they were fered to take exercise was the esplanade where the troops were drilled.

They had not been long in this situation when news came that the Jacobins of Paris had made a last attempt to regain ascendency in the state, that the hall of the Convention had been forced by a furious crowd, that one of the deputies had been murdered and his head fixed on a pike, that the life of the President had been for a time in imminent danger, and that some members of the legislature had not been ashamed to join the rioters. But troops had arrived in time to prevent a massacre. The insurgents had been put to flight; the inhabitants of the disaffected quarters of the capital had been disarmed; the guilty deputies had suffered the just punishment of their treason; and the power of the Mountain was broken for

While the constitution of 1795, with its Executive Directory, its Council of Elders, and its Council of Five Hundred, was in operation, he continued to live under the ban of the law. It was in vain that he solicited, even at moments when the politics of the Mountain seemed to be again in the ascendant, a remission of the sentence pronounced by the Couvention. Even his fellow regicides, even the authors of the slaughter of Vendémiaire and of the arrests of Fructidor, were ashamed of him.

About eighteen months after his escape from prison, his name was again brought before the world. In his own province he still retaine

some of his early popularity. He had, indeed, never been in that province since the downfall of the monarchy. The mountaineers of Gascony were far removed from the seat of government, and were but imperfectly informed of what passed there. They knew that their countryman had played an important part, and that he had on some occasions promoted their local interests; and they stood by him in his adversity and in his disgrace, with a constancy which presents a singular contrast to his own abject fickleness. All France was amazed to learn, that the department of the Upper Pyrenees had chosen the proscribed tyrant a member of the Council of Five Hundred. The council which, like our House of Commons, was the judge of the election of its own members, refused to admit him. When his name was read from the roll, a cry of indignation rose from the benches. "Which of you," exclaimed one of the members, "would sit by the side of such a monster ?"-" Not I, not I!" answered a crowd of voices. One deputy declared that he would vacate his seat if the hall were polluted by the presence of such a wretch. The election was declared null, on the ground that the person elected was a criminal skulking from justice; and many severe reflections were thrown on the lenity which suffered him to be still at large.

He tried to make his peace with the Directory by writing a bulky libel on England, entitled, The Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He printed three thousand copies, and, in order to defray the expense of publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousand francs. The book came out; but nobody bought it, in consequence, if Barère is to be believed, of the villainy of Mr. Pitt, who bribed the Directory to order the reviewers not to notice so formidable an attack on the maritime greatness of perfidious Albion.

himself at the head of a coalition of discon tented parties, covered his designs with the authority of the Elders, drove the Five Hundred out of their hall at the point of the bayonet, and became absolute monarch of France under the name of First Consul.

Barère assures us that these events almost broke his heart; that he could not bear to see France again subject to a master; and that, if the representatives had been worthy of that honourable name, they would have arrested the ambitious general who insulted them. These feelings, however, did not prevent him from soliciting the protection of the new government, and from sending to the First Consul a handsome copy of the Essay on the Liberty of the Seas.

The policy of Bonaparte was to cover al the past with a general oblivion. He belonged half to the Revolution and half to the reaction. He was an upstart, and a sovereign; and had, therefore, something in common with the Jaco bin, and something in common with the royalist. All, whether Jacobins or royalists, who were disposed to support his government, were readily received-all, whether Jacobins or royalists, who showed hostility to his govern ment, were put down and punished. Men who had borne a part in the worst crimes of the Reign of Terror, and men who had fought in the army of Condé, were to be found close together, both in his antechambers and in his dungeons. He decorated Fouché and Maury with the same cross. He sent Aréna and Georges Cadoudal to the same scaffold. From a government acting on such principles Barère easily obtained the indulgence which the Directory had constantly refused to grant. The sentence passed by the Convention was remitted, and he was allowed to reside at Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in the most honourable form; and he remained, during some time, under the special supervision of the police. He hastened, however, to pay his court at the Luxembourg palace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was honoured with a few dry and careless words by the mas ter of France.

Barère had been about three years at Bordeaux when he received intelligence that the mob of the town designed him the honour of a visit on the ninth of Thermidor, and would probably administer to him what he Here begins a new chapter of Barère's hishad, in his defence of his friend Lebon, de- tory. What passed between him and the con scribed as substantia! justice under forms a sular government cannot, of course, be so little harsh. It was necessary for him to dis- accurately known to us as the speeches and guise himself in clothes such as were worn by reports which he made in the Convention. It the carpenters of the dock. In this garb, with is, however, not difficult, from notorious facts, a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he and from the admissions scattered over these made his escape into the vineyards which sur- lying Memoirs, to form a tolerably accurate round the city, lurked during some days in a notion of what took place. Bonaparte wautpeasant's hut, and, when the dreaded anniver-ed to buy Barère: Barère wanted to sell himsary was over, stole back into the city. A few months later he was again in danger. He now thought that he should be nowhere so safe as in the neighbourhood of Paris. He quitted Bordeaux, hastened undetected through those towns where four years Before his life had been in extreme danger, passed through the capital in the morning twilight, when none were in the streets except shopboys taking down the shutters, and arrived safe at the pleasant village of St. Ouen on the Seine. Here he remained in seclusion during some months. In the mean time Bonaparte returned from Egypt, placed VOL. V-82

self to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; and there was an immense interval between what was offered and what was demanded.

Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance on his own genius, were not only great, but extravagant, looked with scorn on the most effeminate and dependent of human minds. He was quite capable of perpetrating crimes under the influ ence either of ambition or of revenge; but he had no touch of that accursed monomania, that craving for blood and tears, which raged

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in some of the Jacobin chiefs. To proscribe | When depravity is placed so high as his, the the Terrorists would have been wholly incon- | hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe. sistent with his policy; but of all the classes His place was with great tyrants, with Critias of men whom his comprehensive system in- and Sylla, with Eccelino and Borgia; not with cluded, he liked them the least; and Barère hireling scribblers and police runners. was the worst of them. This wretch had been "Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; branded with infamy, first by the Convention, But shall the dignity of vice be lost ?" and then by the Council of Five Hundred. So sang Pope; and so felt Barère. When it The inhabitants of four or five great cities had was proposed to him to publish a journal in attempted to tear him limb from limb. Nor defence of the consular government, rage and were his vices redeemed by eminent talents for shame inspired him for the first and last time administration or legislation. It would be un- with something like courage. He had filled as wise to place in any honourable or important large a space in the eyes of mankind as Mr. post a man so wicked, so odious, and so little Pitt or General Washington; and he was coolly qualified to discharge high political duties. At invited to descend at once to the level of Mr. the same time, there was a way in which it Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, with agonies seemed likely that he might be of use to the of envy, that a wide distinction was made begovernment. The First Consul, as he after-tween himself and the other statesmen of the wards acknowledged, greatly overrated Ba-Revolution who were summoned to the aid of rère's powers as a writer. The effect which the government. Those statesmen were rethe reports of the committee of public safety had produced by the camp-fires of the republican armies had been great. Napoleon himself, when a young soldier, had been delighted by those compositions, which had much in common with the rhapsodies of his favourite poet, Macpherson. The taste, indeed, of the great warrior and statesman was never very pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and his proclamations, are sometimes, it is true, masterpieces in their kind; but we too often detect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and of the Carmagnoles. It is not strange, therefore, that he should have been desirous to secure the aid of Barère's pen. Nor was this the only kind of assistance which the old member of the committee of public safety might render to the consular government. He was likely to find admission into the gloomy dens in which those Jacobins whose constancy was to be overcome by no reverse, or whose crimes admitted of no expiation, hid themselves from the curses of mankind. No enterprise was too bold or too atrocious for minds crazed by fanaticism, and familiar with misery and death. The government was anxious to have information of what passed in their secret councils; and no man was better qualified to furnish such information than Barère.

quired, indeed, to make large sacrifices of principle; but they were not called on to sacrifice what, in the opinion of the vulgar, constitutes personal dignity. They were made tribunes and legislators, ambassadors and counsellors of state, ministers, senators, and consuls. They might reasonably expect to rise with the rising fortunes of their master; and, in truth, many of them were destined to wear the badge of his Legion of Honour and of his order of the Iron Crown; to be arch-chancellors and archtreasurers, counts, dukes, and princes. Barère, only six years before, had been far more powerful, far more widely renowned, than any of them; and now, while they were thought worthy to represent the majesty of France at foreign courts, while they received crowds of suitors in gilded ante-chambers, he was to pass his life in measuring paragraphs, and scolding correctors of the press. It was too much. Those lips which had never before been able to fashion themselves to a No, now murmured expostulation and refusal. "I could not"these are his own words-"abase myself to such a point as to serve the First Consul merely in the capacity of a journalist, while so many insignificant, low, and servile people, such as the Treilhards, the Ræderers, the Lebruns, the Marets, and others whom it is superfluous to name, held the first place in this government of upstarts."

For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barère as a writer and as a spy. But Barère-was it possible that he This outbreak of spirit was of short duration. would submit to such a degradation? Bad as Napoleon was inexorable. It is said indeed he was, he had played a great part. He had that he was. for a moment, half inclined to adbelonged to that class of criminals who fill the mit Barère into the Council of State; but the world with the renown of their crimes; he had members of that body remonstrated in the been one of a cabinet which had ruled France strongest terms, and declared that such a nomiwith absolute power, and made war on all Eu-nation would be a disgrace to them all. This rope with signal success. Nav, he had been, plan was therefore relinquished. Thenceforth though no the most powerful, yet, with the Barère's only chance of obtaining the patronsingle exception of Robespierre, the most con-age of the government was to subdue his pride, spicuous member of that cabinet. His name to forget that there had been a time when, with had been a household word at Moscow and at three words, he might have had the heads of Philadelphia, at Edinburgh and at Cadiz. The the three consuls, and to betake himself, humblood of the Queen of France, the blood of bly and industriously, to the task of composthe greatest orators and philosophers of France, ing lampoons on England and panegyrics on was on his hands. He had spoken; and it Bonaparte. had been decreed, that the plough should pass over the great city of Lyons. He had spoken again, and it had been decreed, that the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground.

It has often been asserted, we know not on what grounds, that Barère was employed by the government, not only as a writer, but as a censor of the writings of other men. This ima