In the National Assembly he had no opportunity of displaying the full extent either of his talents or of his vices. He was indeed eclipsed by much abler men. He went, as was his habit, with the stream, spoke occasionally with some success, and edited a journal called the Point du Jour, in which the debates of the Assembly were reported. tellectual freedom and political servitude ex- | from bombast down to buffoonry, was not isted together so long as in France, during the wholly without force and vivacity. He had seventy or eighty years which preceded the also one quality which, in active life, often last convocation of the orders. Ancient abuses gives fourth-rate men an advantage over firstand new theories flourished in equal vigour rate men. Whatever he could do, he could do side by side. The people, having no constitu- without effort, at any moment, in any abuntional means of checking even the most flagi- dance, and on any side of any question. There tious misgovernment, were indemnified for op- was, indeed, a perfect harmony between his pression by being suffered to luxuriate in moral character and his intellectual character. anarchical speculation, and to deny or ridicule His temper was that of a slave; his abilities every principle on which the institutions of the were exactly those which qualified him to be a state reposed. Neither those who attribute the useful slave. Of thinking to purpose, he was downfall of the old French institutions to the utterly incapable; but he had wonderful readipublic grievances, nor those who attribute it to ness in arranging and expressing thoughts furthe doctrines of the philosophers, appear to us nished by others. to have taken into their view more than onehalf of the subject. Grievances as heavy have often been endured without producing a revolution; doctrines as bold have often been propounded without producing a revolution. The question, whether the French nation was alienated from its old polity by the follies and vices of the viziers and sultanas who pillaged and disgraced it, or by the writ- He at first ranked by no means among the ings of Voltaire and Rousseau, seems to us as violent reformers. He was not friendly to idle as the question whether it was fire or gun- that new division of the French territory powder that blew up the mills at Hounslow. which was among the most important changes Neither cause would have sufficed alone. Ty-introduced by the Revolution, and was esperanny may last through ages where discussion cially unwilling to see his native province disis suppressed. Discussion may safely be left membered. He was entrusted with the task free by rulers who act on popular principles. of framing reports on the woods and forests. But combine a press like that of London with Louis was exceedingly anxious about this a government like that of St. Petersburg, and matter; for his majesty was a keen sportsthe inevitable effect will be an explosion that man, and would much rather have gone withwill shake the world. So it was in France. out the veto, or the prerogative of making Despotism and license, mingling in unblessed peace and war, than without his hunting and union, engendered that mighty Revolution in shooting. Gentlemen of the royal household which the lineaments of both parents were were sent to Barère, in order to intercede for strangely blended. The long gestation was ac- the deer and pheasants. Nor was this intercomplished; and Europe saw, with mixed hope cession unsuccessful. The reports were so and terror, that agonizing travail and that por- drawn, that Barère was afterwards accused of tentous birth. having dishonestly sacrificed the interests of the public to the tastes of the court. To one of these reports he had the inconceivable folly and bad taste to prefix a punning motto from Virgil, fit only for such essays as he had been in the habit of composing for the Floral Games Among the crowd of legislators which at this conjuncture poured from all the provinces of France into Paris, Barère made no contemptible figure. The opinions which he for the moment professed were popular, yet not extreme. His character was fair; his personal advantages are said to have been considerable; and, from the portrait which is prefixed to these Memoirs, and which represents him as he appeared in the Convention, we should judge that his features must have been strikingly handsome, though we think that we can read in them cowardice and meanness very legibly written by the hand of God. His conversation was lively and easy;, his manners remarkably good for a country lawyer. Women of rank and wit said that he was the only man who, on his first arrival from a remote province, had that indescribable air which it was supposed that Paris alone could give. His eloquence, inleed, was by no means so much admired in the capital as it had been by the ingenious academicians of Montauban and Toulouse. His style was thought very bad; and very bad, if a foreigner may venture to judge, it continued to the last. It would, however, be unjust to deny that he had some talents for speaking and writing. His rhetoric, though deformed by every imaginable fault of taste, "Si canimus sylvas, sylvæ sint Consule dignæ.” This literary foppery was one of the few things in which he was consistent. Royalist or Girondist, Jacobin or Imperialist, he was always a Trissotin. As the monarchical party became weaker and weaker, Barère gradually estranged himself more and more from it, and drew closer and closer to the republicans. It would seem that, during this transition, he was for a time closely connected with the family of Orleans It is certain that he was entrusted with the guardianship of the celebrated Pamela, afterwards Lady Edward Fitzgerald; and it was asserted that he received during some years a pension of twelve thousand francs from the Palais Royal. At the end of September 1791, the labouis of the National Assembly terminated, and those of the first and last Legislative Assembly commenced. It had been enacted that no member of the National Assembly should sit in the Legis. lative Assembly; a preposterous and mischievous regulation, to which the disasters which followed must in part be ascribed. In England, what would be thought of a parliament which did not contain one single person who had ever sat in parliament before? Yet it may safely be affirmed, that the number of Englishmen who, never having taken any share in public affairs, are yet well qualified, by knowledge and observation, to be members of the legislature, is at least a hundred times as great as the number of Frenchmen who were so qualified in 1791. How, indeed, should it have been otherwise? In England, centuries of representative government have made all educated people in some measure statesmen. In France, the National Assembly had probably been composed of as good materials as were then to be found. It had undoubtedly removed a vast mass of abuses; some of its members had read and thought much about theories of government; and others had shown great oratorical talents. But that kind of skill which is required for the constructing, launching, and steering of a polity was lamentably wanting; for it is a kind of skill to which practice contributes more than books. Books are indeed useful to the politician, as they are useful to the navigator`and to the surgeon. But the real navigator is formed by the waves; the real surgeon is formed at bedsides; and the conflicts of free states are the real school of constitutional statesmen. The National Assembly had, however, now served an apprenticeship of two laborious and eventful years. It had, indeed, by no means finished its education; but it was no longer, as on the day when it met, altogether rude to political functions. Its later proceedings contain abundant proof that the members had profited by their experience. Beyond all doubt, there was not in France any equal number of persons possessing in an equal degree the qualities necessary for the judicious direction of public affairs; and, just at this moment, these legislators, misled by a childish wish to display their own disinterestedness, deserted the duties which they had half learned, and which nobody else had learned at all, and left their hall to a second crowd of novices, who had still to master the first rudiments of political business. When Barère wrote his Memoirs, the absurdity of this self-denying ordinance had been proved by events, and was, we believe, acknowledged by all parties. He accordingly, with his usual mendacity, speaks of it in terms implying that he had opposed it. There was, he tells us, no good citizen who did not regret this fatal vote. Nay, all wise men, he says, wished the National Assembly to continue its sittings as the first Legislative Assembly. But no attention was paid to the wishes of the enlightened friends of liberty; and the generous but fatal suicide was perpetrated. Now the fact is, that Barère, far from opposing this ill-advised measure, was one of those who most eagerly supported it; that he described it from the tribune as wise and magnanimous; and that he assigned, as nis reasons for taking this view, some of those phrases in which orators of his class delight, and which, on all men who have the smallest insight into politics, produce an effect very similar to that of ipecacuanha. "Those," he said, "who have framed a constitution for their country, are, so to speak, out of the pale of that social state of which they are the authors; for creative power is not in the same sphere with that which it has created.” M. Hippolyte Carnot has noticed this untruth, and attributes it to mere forgetfulness. We leave it to him to reconcile his very charitable supposition with what he elsewhere says of the remarkable excellence of Barère's memory. Many members of the National Assembly were indemnified for the sacrifice of legislative power, by appointments in various departments of the public service. Of these fortunate persons Barère was one. A high Court of Appeal had just been instituted. The court was to sit at Paris; but its jurisdiction was to extend over the whole realm, and the departments were to choose the judges. Barère was nominated by the department of the Upper Pyrenees, and took his seat in the Palace of Justice. asserts, and our readers may, if they choose, believe, that it was about this time in contemplation to make him minister of the interior, and that, in order to avoid so grave a responsibility, he obtained permission to pay a visit to his native place. It is certain that he left Paris early in the year 1792, and passed some months in the south of France. He In the mean time, it became clear that the constitution of 1791 would not work. It was, indeed, not to be expected that a constitution new both in its principles and its details would at first work easily. Had the chief magistrate enjoyed the entire confidence of the people, had he performed his part with the utmost zeal, fidelity and ability, had the representative body included all the wisest statesmen of France, the difficulties might still have been found insuperable. But, in fact, the experiment was made under every disadvantage. The king, very naturally, hated the constitution. In the Legislative Assembly were men of genius and men of good intentions, but not a single man of experience. Nevertheless, if France had been suffered to settle her own affairs without foreign interference, it is possible that the calamities which followed might have been averted. The king who, with many good qualities, was sluggish and sensual, might have found compensation for his lost prerogatives in his immense civil list, in his palaces and hunting-grounds, in soups, Perigord pies, and Champagne. The people, finding themselves secure in the enjoyment of the valuable reforms which the National Assembly had, in the midst of all its errors, effected, would not have been easily excited by demagogues to acts of atrocity; or, if acts of atrocity had been committed, those acts would probably have produced a speedy and violent reaction. Had tolerable quiet been preserved during a few years, the constitution of 1791 might, per haps, have taken root, might have gradually acquired the strength which time alone can give, and might, with some modifications which were undoubtedly needed, have lasted down to the present time. The European coalition against the Revolution extinguished 4 all hope of such a result. The deposition of | with which, after the victory of the republiLouis was, in our opinion, the necessary con- cans, he and his family were treated. But this sequence of that coalition. The question was we say, that the French had only one alternanow no longer, whether the king should have tive, to deprive him of the powers of first an absolute veto or a suspensive veto, whether magistrate, or to ground their arms and subthere should be one chamber or two chambers, mit patiently to foreign dictation. The events whether the members of the representative of the tenth of August sprang inevitably from body should be re-eligible or not; but whether the league of Pilnitz. The king's palace was France should belong to the French. The in- stormed; his guards were slaughtered. He dependence of the nation, the integrity of the was suspended from his regal functions; and territory, were at stake; and we must say the Legislative Assembly invited the nation to plainly, that we cordially approve of the con- elect an extraordinary Convention, with full duct of those Frenchmen who, at that conjunc-powers which the conjuncture required. To ture resolved, like our own Blake, to play the men for their country, under whatever form of government their country might fall. this Convention the members of the National Assembly were eligible; and Barère was chosen by his own department. It seems to us clear that the war with the con- The Convention met on the twenty-first of tinental coalition was, on the side of France, at September, 1792. The first proceedings were first a defensive war, and therefore a just war. unanimous. Royalty was abolished by acclaIt was not a war for small objects, or against mation.. No objections were made to this despicable enemies. On the event were staked great change, and no reasons were assigned all the dearest interests of the French people. for it. For certainly we cannot honour with Foremost among the threatening powers ap- the name of reasons such apophthegms, as peared two great and martial monarchies, that kings are in the moral world what moneither of which, situated as France then was, sters are in the physical world; and that the might be regarded as a formidable assailant. history of kings is the martyrology of nations. It is evident that, under such circumstances, But though the discussion was worthy only of the French could not, without extreme impru- a debating-club of school-boys, the resolution dence, entrust the supreme administration of to which the Convention came seems to have. their affairs to any person whose attachment been that which sound policy dictated. Ir to the national cause admitted of doubt. Now, saying this we do not mean to express an it is no reproach to the memory of Louis to opinion that a republic is, either in the abstract say, that he was not attached to the national the best form of government, or is, under ordicause. Had he been so, he would have been nary circumstances, the form of government something more than man. He had held abso- best suited to the French people. Our own lute power, not by usurpation, but by the acci- opinion is, that the best governments which dent of birth and by the ancient polity of the have ever existed in the world have been kingdom. That power he had, on the whole, limited monarchies; and that France, in par used with lenity. He had meant well by his ticular, has never enjoyed so much prosperity people. He had been willing to make to them, and freedom as under a limited monarchy. of his own mere motion, concessions such as Nevertheless, we approve of the vote of the scarcely any other sovereign has ever made Convention which abolished kingly governexcept under duress. He had paid the penalty ment. The interference of foreign powers had of faults not his own, of the haughtiness and brought on a crisis which made extraordinary ambition of some of his predecessors, of the measures necessary. Hereditary monarchy dissoluteness and baseness of others. He had may be, and we believe that it is, a very usebeen vanquished, taken captive, led in triumph, ful institution in a country like France. put in ward. He had escaped; he had been masts are very useful parts of a ship. But, if caught; he had been dragged back like a run- the ship is on her beam-ends, it may be necesaway galley-slave to the oar. He was still a sary to cut the masts away. When once she state prisoner. His quiet was broken by daily has righted, she may come safe into port under affronts and lampoons. Accustomed from the jury rigging, and there be completely repaired. cradle to be treated with profound reverence, But, in the mean time, she must be hacked he was now forced to command his feelings, with unsparing hand, lest that which, under while men, who, a few months before, had been ordinary circumstances, is an essential part of hackney writers or country attorneys, sat in her fabric, should, in her extreme distress, sink his presence with covered heads, and addressed her to the bottom. Even so there are politica. him in the easy tone of equality. Conscious emergencies in which it is necessary that of fair intentions, sensible of hard usage, he governments should be mutilated of their fair doubtless detested the Revolution; and, while proportions for a time, lest they be cast away charged with the conduct of the war against for ever; and with such an emergency the the confederates, pined in secret for the sight Convention had to deal. The first object of a of the German eagles and the sound of the good Frenchman should have been to save German drums. We do not blame him for France from the fate of Poland. The first this. But can we blame those who, being re-requisite of a government was entire devotion solved to defend the work of the National to the national cause. That requisite was Assembly against the interference of strangers, were not disposed to have him at their head in the fearful struggle which was approaching? We have nothing to say in defence or extenuation of the insolence, injustice, and cruelty, And wanting in Louis; and such a want, at such a moment, could not be supplied by any public or private virtues. If the king were set aside, the abolition of kingship necessarily followed. In the state in which the public mind then was. brought to the deliberations of her husband's friends masculine courage and force of thought, tempered by womanly grace and vivacity. Nor was the splendour of a great military reputa tion wanting to this celebrated party. Dumourier, then victorious over the foreign invaders, and at the height of popular favour, must be reckoned among the allies of the Gironde. I would have been idle to think of doing what lent the whole weight of their names to the our ancestors did in 1688, and what the French Girondist connection. The wife of Roland Chamber of Deputies did in 1830. Such an attempt would have failed amidst universal derision and execration. It would have disgusted all zealous men of all opinions; and there were then few men who were not zealous. Parties fatigued by long conflict, and instructed by the severe discipline of that school in which alone mankind will learn, are disposed to listen to the voice of a mediator. But when they are in their first heady youth, devoid of experience, fresh for exertion, flushed with hope, burning with animosity, they agree only in spurning out of their way the daysman who strives to take his stand between them and to lay his hand upon them both. Such was in 1792 the state of France. On one side was the great name of the heir of Hugh Capet, the thirty-third king of the third race; on the other side was the great name of the Republic. There was no rallying-point save these two. It was necessary to make a choice; and those, in our opinion, judged well who, waiving for the moment all subordinate puestions, preferred independence to subjugation, the natal soil to the emigrant camp. As to the abolition of royalty, and as to the vigorous prosecution of the war, the whole Convention seemed to be united as one man. But a deep and broad gulf separated the representative body into two great parties. The errors of the Brissotines were undoubt edly neither few nor small; but when we fairly compare their conduct with the conduct of any other party which acted or suffered during the French Revolution, we are forced to admit their superiority in every quality except that single quality which, in such times, prevails over every other-decision. They were zealous for the great social reform which had been effected by the National Assembly; and they were right. For though that reform was, in some respects, carried too far, it was a blessing well worth even the fearful price which has been paid for it. They were resolved to maintain the independence of their country against foreign invaders; and they were right. For the heaviest of all yokes is the yoke of the stranger. They thought that, if Louis remained at their head they could not carry on with the requisite energy the conflict against the European coalition. They therefore concurred in establishing a republican government; and here, again, they were right. For in that struggle for life and death, it would have been madness to trust a hostile or even a half-hearted leader. On one side were those statesmen who are called, from the name of the department which some of them represented, the Girondists, and, from the name of one of their most conspicuous Thus far they went along with the revolu leaders, the Brissotines. In activity and prac- tionary movement. At this point they stopped; tical ability, Brissot and Gensonné were the and, in our judgment, they were right in stopmost conspicuous among them. In parliamen- ping, as they had been right in moving. For tary eloquence, no Frenchman of that time can great ends, and under extraordinary circumbe considered as equal to Vergniaud. In a stances, they had concurred in measures which, foreign country, and after the lapse of half a together with much good, had necessarily procentury, some parts of his speeches are still duced much evil; which had unsettled the read with mournful admiration. No man, we public mind; which had taken away from are inclined to believe, ever rose so rapidly to government the sanction of prescription; which such a height of oratorical excellence. His had loosened the very foundations of property whole public life lasted barely two years. This and law. They thought that it was now their is a circumstance which distinguishes him duty to prop what it had recently been their duty from our own greatest speakers, Fox, Burke, to batter. They loved liberty, but liberty associ Pitt, Sheridan, Windham, Canning. Which ated with order, with justice, with mercy, and of these celebrated men would now be remem- with civilization. They were republicans; but bered as an orator, if he had died two years they were desirous to adorn their Republic with after he first took his seat in the house of Com- all that had given grace and dignity to the fallen mons? Condorcet brought to the Girondist monarchy. They hoped that the humanity, the party a different kind of strength. The public courtesy, the taste, which had done much in regarded him with justice as an eminent mathe- old times to mitigate the slavery of France, matician, and, with less reason, as a great would now lend additional charms to her free. master of ethical and political science; the dom. They saw with horror crimes exceeding philosophers considered him as their chief, as in atrocity those which had disgraced the the rightful heir, by intellectual descent, and by infuriated religious factions of the sixteenthsolemn adoption, of their deceased sovereign century, perpetrated in the name of reason D'Alembert. In the same ranks were found and philanthropy. They demanded, with eloGuadet, Isnard, Barbaroux, Buzot, Louvet, tooquent vehemence, that the authors of the lawless well known as the author of a very ingenuous massacre which, just before the meeting of the and very licentious romance, and more honour- Convention, had been committed in the prisons ably distinguished by the generosity with which of Paris, should be brought to condign punishhe pleaded for the unfortunate, and by the in- ment. They treated with just contempt the trepidity with which he defied the wicked and pleas which have been set up for that great powerful. Two persons whose talents were crime. They admitted that the public danger not brilliant, but who enjoyed a high reputation was pressing; but they denied that it justified for probity and public spirit, Pétion and Roland, a violation of those principles of morality on which all society rests. The independence and | Girondists refused to listen. They therefore, honour of France were indeed to be vindicated, by voting for the death of the king, conceded but to be vindicated by triumphs and not by to the Mountain the chief point at issue be murders. tween the two parties. Had they given a manful vote against the capital sentence, the regicides would have been in a minority. It is probable that there would have been an immediate appeal to force. The Girondists might have been victorious. In the worst event, they would have fallen with unblemished honour. Thus much is certain, that their boldness and honesty could not possibly have produced a worse effect than was actually pro Opposed to the Girondists was a party which, having been long execrated throughout the civilized world, has of late-such is the ebb and flow of opinion-found not only apologists, but even eulogists. We are not disposed to deny that some members of the Mountain were sincere and public-spirited men. But even the best of them, Carnot, for example, and Cambon, were far too unscrupulous as to the means which they employed for the purpose of attain-duced by their timidity and their stratagems. ing great ends. In the train of these enthusiasts followed a crowd, composed of all who, from sensual, sordid or malignant motives, wished for a period of boundless license. Barère, as we have said, sided with the Mountain on this occasion. He voted against the appeal to the people, and against the respite. His demeanour and his language also were widely different from those of the Girondists. Their hearts were heavy, and their de When the Convention met, the majority was with the Girondists, and Barère was with the majority. On the king's trial, indeed, he quit-portment was that of men oppressed by sorrow. ted the party with which he ordinarily acted, voted with the Mountain, and spoke against the prisoner with a violence such as few members even of the Mountain showed. It was Vergniand's duty to proclaim the result of the roll-call. His face was pale, and he trembled with emotion, as in a low and broken voice he announced that Louis was condemned The conduct of the leading Girondists on to death. Barère had not, it is true, yet atthat occasion was little to their honour. Of tained to full perfection in the art of mingling cruelty, indeed, we fully acquit them; but it is jests and conceits with words of death; but impossible to acquit them of criminal irreso- he already gave promise of his future excellution and disingenuousness. They were far, lence in this high department of Jacobin oraindeed, far from thirsting for the blood of Louis; tory. He concluded his speech with a sentence on the contrary, they were most desirous to worthy of his head and heart. "The tree of protect him. But they were afraid that, if they liberty," he said, "as an ancient author re| went straight forward to their object, the sin-marks, flourishes when it is watered with the cerity of their attachment to republican insti- blood of all classes of tyrants." M. Hippolyte tutions would be suspected. They wished to Carnot has quoted this passage, in order, as save the king's life, and yet to obtain all the we suppose, to do honour to his hero. We credit of having been regicides. Accordingly, wish that a note had been added to inform us they traced out for themselves a crooked from what ancient author Barère quoted. In course, by which they hoped to attain both the Course of our own small reading among their objects. They first voted the king guilty. the Greek and Latin writers, we have not hapThey then voted for referring the question re-pened to fall in with trees of liberty and waspecting his fate to the whole body of the people. | tering-pots full of blood; nor can we, such is Defeated in this attempt to rescue him, they our ignorance of classical antiquity, even reluctantly, and with ill-suppressed shame and imagine an Attic or Roman orator employing concern, voted for the capital sentence. Then imagery of that sort. Then imagery of that sort. In plain words, when they made a last attempt in his favour, and Barère talked about an ancient author, he was voted for respiting the execution. These zig-lying, as he generally was when he asserted zag politics produced the effect which any man any fact, great or small. Why he lied on this conversant with public affairs might have fore-occasion we cannot guess, unless, indeed, it seen. The Girondists, instead of attaining both their ends, failed of both. The Mountain justly charged them with having attempted to save the king by underhand means. Their own consciences told them, with equal justice, that their hands had been dipped in the blood | of the most inoffensive and most unfortunate of men. The direct path was here, as usual, the path not only of honour but of safety. The principle on which the Girondists stood as a party was, that the season for revolutionary violence was over, and that the reign of law and order ought now to commence. But the proceeding against the king was clearly revolutionary in its nature. It was not in conformity with the laws. The only plea for it was, that all ordinary rules of jurisprudence and morality were suspended by the extreme public danger. This was the very plea which the Mountain urged in defence of the massacre of September, and to which, when so urged, the VOL V.-80 was to keep his hand in. It is not improbable that, but for one circumstance, Barère would, like most of those with whom he ordinarily acted, have voted for the appeal to the people and for the respite. But, just before the commencement of the trial, papers had been discovered which proved that, while a member of the National Assembly, he had been in communication with the court respecting his reports on the woods and forests. He was acquitted of all criminality by the Convention; but the fiercer republicans considered him as a tool of the fallen monarch; and this reproach was long repeated in the journal of Marat, and in the speeches at the Jacobin club. It was natural that a man like Barère should, under such circumstances, try to distinguish himself among the crowd of regicides by peculiar ferocity. It was because he had been a royalist that he was one of the foremost in shedding blood. |