i s Be y79/] P DISSERTATION AND ELEGY ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IMMORTAL MAXIMILIAN ROBESPIERRE, REVFALING, FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE REAL CAUSES AND _ AUTHORS OF HIS DEATH; WITH TRUE PORTRAITURES OF THE THREE ASSEMBLIES THAT MADE THE REVOLUTION—THE STATES-GENERAL, THE LEGISLATIVE, AND THE CONVENTION ; HISTORIC CELEBRITIES; SHOWING HOW COMPLETELY HISTORY HAS MISKEPRESENTED THE ORIGINALS: AS ALSO AN ODE TO LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. BY JAMES BRONTERRE O'BRIEN, Avruor or THE “ OrIGIN AND Procress or HuMAN SLAVERY” &e.; ‘Opz to Lorp Patmerstron”—“ Vision or HELL, or Pexp into Tar Reams Betow,” &e., &e. PRICE EIGHTPENCE, PUBLISHED BY HOLYOAKE & CO., FLEET STREET, AND E. TRUELOVE, STRAND. * 1859.A DISSERTATION AND ELEGY ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE INMORTAL MAXIMILIAN ROBESPIERRE, REVRALING, FOR THE FIRST TIM, THE REAL CAUSES AND AUTHORS OF HIS DEATH; WITH TRUE PORTRAITURES OF THE THREE ASSEMBLIES THAT MADE THE REVOLUTION—THE STATES-GENERAL, THE LEGISLATIVE, AND THE CONVENTION; HISTORIC CELEBRITIES; SHOWING HOW COMPLETELY HISTORY HAS MISKEPRESENTED THE ORIGINALS: AS ALSO AN ODE TO LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. BY JAMES BRONTERRE O'BRIEN, Avviior oF THE “ ORIGIN AND Procress or HuMAN SLAVERY” &e.; “Opa to Lorp PaLMErsron”—“ Vision or HELL, or Prep into TRE REALMS Betow,” &e., & PRICE EIGHTPENCE,. PUBLISHED BY HOLYOAKE & CO., FLEET STREET, AND E. TRUELOVE, STRAND. " 1859,TO MANY ENQUIRING OLD FRIENDS WHOM I CANNOT ANSWER BY PRIVATE LETTER. The reasons why I have not reprinted my “ Origin and Progress of Human Slavery, showing how it came into the world, and how it shall be made to go out,” and why I have been unable to finish my “ Life of Robespierre,” and to execute the larger and more important. works I promised the public twenty-two years ago,—inclnding a Philosophical History of Englan¢—A Real History of the French Revolution—and a Philosophical Review of the Life and Times of Oliver Cromwell, &c., will be seen in the following Dissertation. What is not stated there may be easily enough inferred.— Voluminous and elaborate works, requiring great research, profound thought, and the exercise of the gravest judgment, as well as of the higher faculties of the mind in the way of critical analysis and disquisitio—ought not to be lightly undertaken, Such works can come only from men in circumstances sufficiently easy to ensure to them personal safety, mental composure, and diligent application to the work on hand, undistracted by every-day cares and anxieties, merely to subsist a family from hand to mouth, I need say no more.—Had the chartists of 1839 kept their word with me, I could have kept mine with them. James B, O'Brien. [AU Communications, Subscriptions, and Donations, in aid of Mr, O'B.e forthcoming pubtications, to be forwarded to his address, Eelectic Hall, 18 Den- mark-street, Soho, London; and it ts'urgently requested by the members and Friends of the National Reform League, that all who have read their recent Appeal will form Committees, in town and country, to promote the subscription, 30 that no time may be lost in bringing out the Works referred to, The Secretary, Mr. J. Brown, jun., 39 Gromer Street, Gray's Inn Lane, London, will supyly copies of the Address to all that may apply for them, and he or Mr. O'BRIEN will answer all communications in reference thereto.|—J. Brows, Secretary.DISSERTATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF MAXIMILIAN ROBESPIERRE. With remarks on the Assemblies, the Men, and the Events which cansed the excesses of the revolution and its crimes—more especially the murder of Robespierre by the Convention at the height of his unexampled moral power and renown; and while projecting the regeneration of France, through political laws and social institutions, based on justice and mercy to all that would be just and merciful. TO THE MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF THE NATIONAL REFORM LEAGUE. Dear FRIENDS, If you and I attached any value to dedications, I should certainly dedicate this work to you, and to you only, as being the parties in this country most capable of appreciating both the motives of its author, and the sublime virtues of its hero, But, as you and I have nigher purposes to serve, than bandying conventional civilities with each other, instead of a dedication, I proceed at once, through the medium of this epistle, to give yon briefly, (for my space is limited) such dissertation on the life and character of the illustrious subject of it, accompanied with such strictures on his contemporaries and detractors, as will not only, I trust, justify the encomiastic strain of the Etegy, but also show, (what nowhere else has yet been) the real motives to Robespierre’s death, and the guilty parties. This preliminary discourse, together with the Elegy itself, and the notes thereto appended, will, I venture to say, enable all who read them to form a sounder appreciation of the Revolution of 1789—of its three famous, or infamous assemblies—of its leading events and proposed ends—above all, of its reputed Celebrities ——than could possibly be derived from the most voluminous compila- tions got up in the interest of the “ property” classes, who have spared no pains nor expense to suppress, or pervert, all the essential facts of the revolution, and to blacken and desecrate its illustrious memories, Of Robespierre’s pedigree, parentage, and carly life, I have no room for details here, nor for those of his every-day private life in maturer age; much less for detaiis of his stormy public life. 1canbutrefer the reader to reliable sources, where he may find all the information that now can, or need, be desired on these matters, You must be content,4 too, my friends, with only a rapid survey of those broad features of his character, and of those marked incidents of his career, which distinguish him from every other actor in the revolution, and make him stand out, as it were in relief, fromn every other legislator, statesman, orator, phi- losopher, politician, or philanthropic reformer of ancient or modern times, The space to which I am limited makes it impossible for me to do more, Todo anything like full justice to Robespierre, I should require at least, three volumes of the size of the first and only volume of my ‘Life of Robespierre,” &c., published by Mr Watson, in 1838, and which had to be discontinued, through no fault of mine, nor of the publisher, (both of whom have been grievous sufferers from its non- completion) but from a dark, cruel, and systematic private and public persecution, in which the middle classes involved me at the time, partly on account of my then influence ay a social reformer ainongst the chartists, but chiefly with a view to compel me. through absolute ruin to stop the progress of « publication, in which I made, and was about to make, revelations which no man has been suffered to make up to this hour, nor even to attempt without absolute destruction to his repu- tation and private interests. For, let me here, at the outset, apprise the reader that no trothful history of the revolution has yet appeared, nor ever can appear, until there be another revolution, which shall rescue the populations of Europe from the fanys of the middle classes, whose present social position gives them both the will and the power to effectually crush all such attempted publications, and all who may be daring enough to undertake them. A truthful history of the French revolution would necessarily have to trace all its crimes and horrors to the haute bourgeosie and to its middle-class sympathisers throughout Europe—England in particular—who can be proved toa demonstration to have been the wilfu! cause of all. Yes !—a faithful and enlightened historian holding himself accountable to God and posterity for his work, would be constrained by his conscience, to lay at the door of the ravenous commercial middle classes, the countless plots, massacres, insurrections, guillotinings, panics, famines, and conflagrations of that epoch, and to show these classes guilty in the sight of man, as they are in the sight of God, of having knowingly and wilfully caused all these horrors, in order to enrich themselves at the expense of king, aristocracy, eharch, and people. In other words, he would have to show that they made the revolution what it was—a revolution of blood and rapine, in order to seize and appropriate to their own uses the royal, national, and ecclesiastical domains—(which constituted, at that epoch, more than two fifths of the teritory of France) to seize the tithes and other pro- perty of the church, of the incorporated regular clergy, of the religious and educational foundations, monasteries, convents, hospituls, &c,, and to drive the nobility and wealthier gentry into revolt, or emigration, in order to bave their estates sequestrated to their own ultimate profit, bat, above all, in order to reduce the producing olssses, mechanics, and labourers of every description, and all who lived by the labour of their heads and bands through the sats and sciences, to a degree of physical, mental, and moral bondage, such as was never dreamt of in the darkestLN ages of French history, nor iu any part of the world, till the parliauents of Henry VIII. and Oliver Cromwell, made, with the aid of the middie classes of their day, two immense strides in the the saine divection, An honest historian, if alsv a philosophic one,—would be obliged,— in revealing these revolutionary atrocities, to make his reflections thereon—reflectious which must necessarily embrace te past as well ax the present, for the edification of the future; and amongst these must be this conspicuous one, that the history of all past revolutions in all countries, is little else than a record of the crimes ot the said iniddle classes to compel privileged Orders above them to divide their pluuder with them and to keep the classes below them, (from whom it was stolen, or taken by force), from being able to recover, or get any portion of it back, But we shali see more of this as we advance, Suffice it to say here, that no man in the present day dare publish such # history of the French revolution as would be useful to the world. Let those who doubt me make the attempt, and they will speedily find out, at the cost of their utter ruin, that the world they lived in before, is not the world they will be obliged to live in afterwards, To all who from ignorance, or malice, have blamed me for not finishing iny Life of Robespierre, I can only say in self-defence, that I was actually and effectually crushed before I gave it up—that I held tu the work till 1 was literally sold up for debts I did not owe, and for debts { did owe, but could easily have paid. it allowed time, and not debarred from employing that time profitably for myself and others. To speak out- right, (it is no good, mincing inatters), I discontinued the work only after I had been literally turned into the streets with a young aud helpless family, without a roof to skelter them, a chair to sit on, or a bed to lie on; stripped of books, furniture, and every essential conve- nience of lite, including all visible means of sustaining life, itself. I ‘was soon after locked np in Lancaster Castle for eighteen months, ostensibly for an illegal speech 1 never made, (one mannfactured for the occasion,) but, in reality, for many pertectly legal speeches I had made, and in which I committed the unpardonable sin of enunciating some ugly, but incontrovertible facts, touching the virtuous middle classes, Three several times have I had to go through a similar ordeal of seeing my home stripped ot all I could ecrape together, with the help of friends, and such employment as I could get; nor have I been worth a shilling to cail my own since I left Lancaster Castle, though, notwith- standing the loss of my profession as a barrister—due to similar canses —I could Lave realised an income of ut least £1500 a year, during the last twenty years, from literature alone, aided by my lectures, had it pot been for the dark and malignant combinations by which the middle classes have closed the public press against me, shut me out of every literary and scientitic institution in.the kingdom, as a lecturer, and, latterly, all but banished me from the public platform, through the agency of hired, or deladed, mobs, headed by ex-chartist renegades and ex-socialist impostors, who have made their peace with the middle clayses, to escape starvation and be let live an easy life. It is with great reluctance, my friends, I make these statements, but6 I owe them to you for the confidence you have so long placed in me, both by way of reply to the slanderers who have so long abueed me for not baying finished the Life of Robespierre, (the cause of which they well knew), and to show you why it is that you can no more have honest historians, than you can have honest newspapers, honest lecturers, honest parsons, or honest anything else. The middle classes will suffer no honest influences to prevail in any department of society ; for, their whole system is one of fraud and murder from top to bottom. Just as they were the wilful cause of all the crimes of the French Revolution, so bave they been in all ages, and in all countries, the prin- cipal authors of all the slavery, outbreaks, wars, famines, and such like calamities, which constitute the staple of past history, and they continue to this hour, the mortal and perfidious foes of all real or christian reform throughout the worlds wilfully keeping the industrious and virtuous classes everywhere in ignorance, poverty, and subjection to privileged aristocracies recruited from their own ranks, whom they craftily maintain in exaltation and seeming authority, in order to throw upon them, in dangerons times, the odium and reaponsibility due mainly to their own liberticidal and homicidal acts. You will see, as we advance, how they made the revolution to enrich themselves from above and from below, and then the counter-revolution to keep possession of the spoils—in both which processes they had necessarily, and therefore knowingly and wilfully, to cover France with scaffolds, blood, and mourning. Those wishing to acquaint themselves with the pedigree, parentage, infancy, and early life of the illustrious subject of my Elegy, will find the information required in the Memoirs of his sister, Charlotte Robespierre, supposed to be written from her dictation by Laponneraye; and in another work entitled ‘+ Autobiography of Robespierre ”—a work clearly apocryphal, but true in its main facts, and ascribed to Laponneraye himself. At the time of the July revolution (1830) Charlotte Robespierre, was still living in an obscure corner of Paris, and Laponneraye, an enthusiastic admirer of Robespierre, made it bis business to find her out, and learn from her lips every particular incident, and minute circumstance connected with his infancy and early career, that her note-book or her memory could supply, over and above what was then already known, These are given in the Memoirs, and in the Autobiography, supposed to be the production of Laponneraye and his friends. This latter work makes Robespierre tell the story of his own life down to the close of the Constituent Assembly, in two octavo volumes. Though feebly and tamely written, and containing nothing that would give umbrage in this country, Laponneraye has left it unfinished, owing, it is said, to the persecutions and imprison- ments he was subjected to, pnder Louis Phillipe’s Government. All that is of interest or importance in the two works just mentioned will be found in vol. i, of my “ Life of Robespierre”, published by Mr Watson, That volume, in addition to all the then known particulars of Robespierre’s descent, parentage, infancy, school-boy days, early habits, universily career, literary and forensic progress, aud successes,7 &c., &e., gives also the most complete account, yet published, of his public and political career, down to the close of the Constituent Assem- bly, in October, 1791; including faithful translations of all his principal orations and addresses in and out of the Assembly, or lengthy ex- tracts from them—translations also of sundry biographical notices, literary dissertations and critiques—extracts from memoirs and histories of the revolution, together with a dissertation of my own, in which I have exposed in extenso the utter falsity and groundlessness of the monstrous and malignant inventions of the Royalist histotiaus, auch as Mongaillard, Desodoards, Montjoye, Dulaure, &c., and the etill more injurious, because more perfidious, misrepresentations of such historians as Thiers, Mignet, and others of the “ liberal,” or middle-class school, who, knowing that the outrageous fabrications of the Royalist writers would no longer obtain credit except amongst the very bigoted and superficial, have been at great pains to give such artfully dressed-up and cunningly-qualified characters and softened portraitures of Robes- pierre as should seem impartial, and therefore probably correct ; while, in reality, they are far more calenlated to deceive the reader into con- clusions the very opposite of the truth. I have also given in that volume, and refuted, where I thopght necessary, the articles of Charles Nodier, in the Revue de Paris—of Deschiens, in the Bibliographie des Jour- naux, and the misstatements and misconceptions of many others, in- cluding our own countrymen— Mr Adolphus and Sir Richard Phillipsp— the latter of whom—honest, but weak-minded-—saw in the Girondists the demi-gods of the revolution. Amongst the intereating papers published in that volume will be found a Biographical Sketch of Robes- pierre, by the celebrated Buonarroti, his personal friend, who gave me the manuscript bat a few months before his death, Were there no other evidence of the grandeur and goodness of Robespierre’s nature than the intense love and enthusiastic devotion he inapired in such exalted patriots as Buonarroti, that evidence alone would be conclusive; for, never yet did man of Buonarroti’s stamp lavish admiration on any but God Almighty’s own nobles, and those only of the highest order —-the salt of the earth—the very flower of humanity. I have seen that brave and venerable old man at the advanced age of 78 shed tears like a child at the mention of Robespierre’s name; and the slightest aspersion thrown on his memory would fire the old man with an indig- nation such as no possible injury to himself could make him feel. Of Robespierre’s private life at mature age, and up to the time of his death, I have nowhere seen a juster, fuller, nor more graphic account than will be found in the 2nd vol. of Lamartine’s “History of the Girondists,” (p. 192 to 201 ineluded—Bohn’s edition.) I find it to be in strict keeping with all I could learn from divers conversations [ held with several distinguished men in Paris in 1836, and 1837, including Buonarroti himself, who had shared Robespierre’s private intimacy, a3 well as his opinions, and is one of the parties named by Lamartine, as ordinarily composing Robespierre’s private social circle, gathered within his own domicile, Didier, the locksmith, another old Jacobin named by Lamartine, was also living at that time; and, though8 from the cireumstance of his being bed-ridden and deaf,I could not see him, I saw others, the friends of Didier, who described that old man as quite as devoted to the memory of Robespierre as Buonarroti himself. Lamartine’s account squares also with all I could learn in repeated conversations with the late Armand Carrel, the ther reputed head of the republican party, with M. Cavaignac (brother of the General of that name), M. Etienne Arago (brother of the great Astronomer), with M. Thibeaudeau (son of the Count Thibeaudeau, known as one of Buonaparte’s most devoted adherents during “the 100 days,”) with M. Teste (brother of Louis Phillippe’s minister of that name), a republican of the true Robespierrean stamp, and a very different man from the corrupt minister ; with M. Marrast, late president of the ex-consti- tuent Assembly, who, the first time I questioned him about Robespierre, exclaimed —‘ Oh, mon Dieu! Robespierre etait un Saint,”—and with divers others, who, though not. old enough to have known Robespierre personally, concurred, all, in giving me just such a description of Robespierre’s private life as that sketched by Lamartine; having got their information from some few of Robespierre’s surviving friends, and from members of the Duplay family, with whom Robespierre resided at the time of his death—ineluding Duplay’s youngest daughter, married to the brave Lebas, who chose to cie on the scaffold with Robespierre rather than (as he expressed) “participate in the infamy of such a proscription.” Lamartine’s picture of Robespierre’s private life may therefore be safely relied on; for one and all of the parties I have named concurred in describiug {t as pure and exemplary in the highest degree,—the life of a cheerful, affectionate, open-hearted man, of the most simple tastes, and the most amiable manners, loving and beloved by all who had his confidence; and with no other earthly ambition than to deliver France from its oppressors, and retire into the country, to bury himself in obscurity for the remainder of his days, living on one of the farms saved out of the patrimonial inheritance, there to enjoy peace and domestic happiness, as he hoped, with the eldest daughter of Daplay—the object of his affections, betrothed to him, and whom he was to make his wife when the storms of the revolution had passed. Let any unbiassed man who has read what I have recorded of Robes- pierre’s early and public life, from his infancy down to the dissolution of the States-general, and what Iamartine has related of bis private every-day life up to the day of his death—just ask himself whether there is even a possibility that such a man could be a bad man in any sense of the word, or other than a man of the most exalted virtues and talents in public life. Up to this hour, although thousands of venal tongues and pens have been let loose upon him, not one has been able to fix a stain npon either his private or political life, with the shadow of a fact to sustain it, or give itan air of probability, Instead of being sanguinary and cruel, he was humane and compassionate even to weakness. When a child a few years old, he cried for the death of a pigeon exposed to the night air, and bitterly rebuked his sisters for exposing it; and about the same period rebuked his younger brother for not seeming to share in his sorrows for the death of their mother.9 When a youth he visited the hermitage of Rousseau to bestow the tribute of his homage, reverence, and sympathy for the persecutions and sufferings of that great man, whose memory he ever after honoured and never failed to exalt in the days of bis power. When a man, in the vigour of life, and the reputed chief of a party then in the as~ cendant, he shuddered with horror at the bare thought of the massacres of September, (organized by Danton and the commune on behalf of the petite Bourgeosie), and paced his room in distraction all night, unable to compose himself, refusing to take his usual rest in bed while so many of his fellow-creatures were being summarily disposed of, although almost every one of the victims that perished on that occasion were royalists who, had they got the upper-hand, would have made no distinction between Danton and himself, but handed both over to the public executioner without scruple, without remorse. Saint Just, whose heart was not composed of such tender materials, though his conscience would not let him participate in such scenes, was astonished at finding Robespierre pacing his room at an early hour the next morn~ ing, and not to have gone to bed, and slept soundly, like himself, while the brigands of the middle class were butchering the “ suspected” brigands of the aristocracy. We find Robespierre, at a subsequent period, when Hebert and his ferocious rabble were howling for the blood of the queen, of the king’s sister, and ‘the impure remnant of the Capets,” exclaiming in mortified spirit, “‘ Encore du sang! toujours du sang! rien que du sang! pour ces monstres/”—‘ More blood, ever and always blood! nothing but blood will satisfy these monsters! Again we find him, not long after, risking his name, fame, and popu- larity—the sole guarantees for his life—in repeated and successful attempts to save some 73 Girondists from the scaffold, when the sections of Paris, hounded on by the Hebertists. called aloud for their blood. obespierre alone had influence to save, and he did save these base wretches, every one of whom would have sent himself to the seaffold, and who afterwards became his bitterest persecutors—even to the death. But novices and imbeciles may here exclaim, “if Robespierre had so much power to save, why did he not save the thonsands of victims that perished by the bands of Fouche and Collot d’ Herbois, in Lyons— of Barras and Freron, at Toulon—of Carrier in La Vendée—of Tallien, at Bourdeaux, and by the other terrorist proconsuls throughout France? Why did be not prevent the mitrailiades and the noyades, at Lyons and Nantes, and the fournées, or batebes of 40 and 50 victims a day, sent to the guillotine, on the Place de la Revolution, in Paris?” Honest men would never ask such questions if they knew Robespierre's actual position, and that of his enemies, at the time, Robespierre had no more power to save these victims, than had one of the scavengers of Paris, In the first place, a very large proportion of the victims deserved their fate; for they would have murdered every democrat in France, had they not been destroyed, themselves. In the next place, to attempt to save all would have been to put himself in antagonism with the committees of government, with the Convention, and with the mass of the people, as10 well as with the terrible commissioners, or pro-consuls themselves; and instead of saving the victims, he would have been voted a traitor to his country, and madea victim himself, In the third place, notwithstanding the almost hopelessness of such an attempt, he did all it was possible for aman so placed todo. Lamartine admits that he, Couthon, and St Just, saved thousands of lives during that epoch of terror-—Couthon at Lyons, St Just at Strasburgh, and Robespierre everywhere throughout the republic, wherever his influence extended.—And the proof—the un- erring pronf—that he had no share in those horrors is, that he incurred the mortal hatred of all the ferocious pro-consuls, and of their patrona in the committees of government and in the convention ; also of their partisans in Paris who never forgave him for the indignation he ex- pressed at the excesses committed, and all of whom lent their aid to overthrow him on the 9th Thermidor. In fact, he was himself mur- dered, by the very terrorists he is supposed to have been at the head of, and to have had the power to punish. And the secret. of his overthrow was, his attempt to wrench power from their murderous hands, on the one hand, and the covert hatred all the factions in the Convention had of his democracy, on the other—these parties being but tov glad to for- give the terrorist butchers all their crimes, if they would only rid France of the exulted democratic and social reformer, whose renown and moral power gave strength and prestige to the working classes and their friends throughout France, The convention well knew that in order to overthrow the republic, put down universal suffrage, und eject the working classes from the constitution and from the state, it was an in- dispensable preliminary to destroy Robespierre and his party in Paris,— So soon as they found the Mountain terrorists and the committees of government ready to do this bloody work for them, they jumped at the chance, and gave their traitorous sanction to the sacrifice, the moment they saw it might be accomplished with safety to themselves. They knew that in Robespierre and his party lay the future moral and physical force of the real democracy of France—that the Mountainists professed universal suffrage only to climb by it to power and place, and would be glad to kick it aside when they had got what they cared for— riches and station—and that such few of them as were sincere would be powerless after Robespierre’s fall. They had, therefore, every corrupt motive to join the Mountainists against Robespierre : well knowing that when the latter was destroyed by the former, the republic must come to an end, and the Mountain itself either seek refuge in the ranks of its opponents, or else fall under the weight of its own crimes and of the public indignation. Nothing but a dictatorship in the hands of Robespierre could have prevented the 9th Thermidor. Yet was he too conscientious a man to seize or even to accept it, unless it were freely voted him by the convention, or by the people themselves, acting in their sovereign capacity, through the medium of their primary assemblies—a condition manifestly impossible at a time when the mass of the public neither suspected his danger nor their own. Had Marat been alive in the crisis of Thermidor, he would not have hesitated a moment to grasp the dictatorship, whatever might be the consequences—for, Marat was noti a man to stop to count the cost either to himself or others, where he saw palpable treason to the democracy—and he cared little or nothing for legal forms or government authority, when he saw them used only to cloak, sanction, or protect oppressors in their crimes against the people, At the risk of being destroyed by the people, themselves, as a usurper, Marat would have put himself at the head of the insurgent forces of the Commune and the Jacobins on the 9th Thermidor, and dared all, in the hope of sending the traitors to the guillotine, Asa man. of action, Marat, at such a crisis, would have been invaluable for a coup de main against the coup d'etat of the convention and the com- mittees. He would have taken advantage of the fervor of the Jacobins on the night of the 8th Thermidor, accepted the offer of Coffinhal and Payan, on the part of the commune, to Robespierre—and marched at once upon the committees and the convention—putting the former to death, and compelling the convention, on pain of the like fate, to rescind its decrees; and on the next day he would have sent all the leaders of the conspiracy to the scaffold, and decimated the convention itself, though at the risk of a civil war throughout France, Kill or be killed ; down with the traitors or perish-~would have been Marat’s motto in such a crisis, and the world, which admires daring, will ever give the meed of its applause to such a policy. Let not my readers suppose I mean to detract from Robespierre by this apparent eulogy of Marat. The two men were essentially different in their organizations and in their capacities, Robespierre was not a jot iess courageous than Marat—onor feared death for himself a jot more. The proof of that is, that he voluntarily gave himself up to certain death, when the Commune and the Jacobins offered him the chance not only to save himself, but to destroy his enemies on the spot. But what he did not fear for himself, he feared for his country—for the republic—for the people—but above all—for the glorious principles he had illustrated by a genius and a life of devotion never surpassed— never equalled. He feared the character of a usurper would stain his principles in she eyes of the world—discredit everything he had said and done in the revoiution— make him and his party appear to France to have been hypocrites and impostors all their lives, seeking only their own ambitious ends, while preaching liberty, fraternity, and equality to the people. Besides, he knew that the democracy he sought to found could spring only from an enlightened public opinion and a pure public conscience, and could never engraft itself on a coup de main, ora coup @’ etat, against the established authorities of the state, however criminal they were, or however apparently justifiable a usurpation of dictatorial power might be at such a crisis, Such a dictatorship once seized upon, and inaugurating itself with blood—even though tempo- rary success might crown its first onslaught,—must necessarily march on from blood to blood, maintaining and extending its authority by blood, and by blood only :—for, all legal authority being suspended, the enemies of democracy would appeal to law and to democracy itself against an empire of brute force, (as they would qualify the dictatorship) ; and with the organized craft, wealth, hypocrisy, and power of the upper12 and middle classes on the one hand, and the shallow credulity of the masses on the other, (who always mistake words and symbols for the thing itself.) the power of such a dictator, whether he were a Marat, 8 Robespierre, a Danton or anybody else, must speedily be overthrown — not less by the shallow democrats themselves, than by their crafty enemies ; and then farewell to all hopes of spreading enlightened democratic opinion in the world for many a long day. The very name of demv- eracy would be associated in the minds of every community with murder and usurpation, so that no man dare mention the word with respect, anuch less demand the establishment of the thing, itself. Robes- pierre evidently foresaw all this; and as he cared nothing for his own life in comparison with the lives of the people, and with preserving to them a glorious cause unsullied, so that its triumph might be of easier accomplishment at a future time, he peremptorily refused to lend his name to an insurrection having for its aim the conferring of a dictator~ ship upon himself, and which, whatever might be its immediate successes in Paris, must have made « civil war inevitable, covered France with blood and mourning, and in the event of defeat—aresult more than probable— congign the cause of democracy and himself to the maledictions of pos- terity, which would judge of the usurpation only by its fruits. Nothing short of absolute certainty of success could have induced Robespierre to incur such a responsibility, — for, it is only ia the event of success that tho trve motives to the usurpation could appear—in the dictator bestowing beneficent institutions on his country, founding peace and prosperity ou the ruins of all factions, and then laying down his dictatorship at the feet of an enlightened, free, and grateful people. In the then condition of France—in the then state of public opinion amongst the labouring classes—such a result was clearly impossible, The masses would support no dictatorship not conferred by themselves; and even if there were time and opportunity for it, no man would dare make such a proposal at that period, The proof that Robespierre acted rightly 's this—had the mass of the people been as ripe for insurrection as the Jacobins and the commune. on the 9th Thermidor, they wou'd have risen spontaneously and put down Robespierre’s enemies without consulting Robespicrre at all, who ought never have been asked to compromise himself in such an affair, It is the right and duty of every people to'make insurrec- tions when they see law, justice, and virtue trampled on by crinie and treason in their rulers: but it is not the right of individuals, so oppressed, to demand insurrections for themselves. Their duty is to let the public will manifest itself freely, after doing all they can to enlighten it, and abide by the issue. They who blame Robespierre for not putting himself at the heud of the insurrection on the 9th Ther- midor, ought rather to blame those who asked him to assume such a position; and still more, the people themselves, for not making the insurrection on their own account: for, if it could not have been made without the authorization of Robespierre, it ought not to be tried at all —since, on no other condition than its spontaneity, could it be decisively successful, Rubespierre only spoke fact when he said to the leaders of the insurgents—“ You destroy me, you destroy yourselves, you13 destroy our cause.” Were there no insurrection, the Convention and the committees would have either to murder him in secret (which they dared not do), or send him for trial before the revolutionary tribunal, where he was sure to be acquitted, and his accusers made to take his place. This was just what his accusers in the convention and in the committees wanted to prevent; therefore the insurgents of the commune and Jacobins only played their enemies’ game, and fell into the trap laid for them, when they essayed an insurrection, which should not have been attempted except in the event of Robespierre being condemned by the revolutionary tribunal—a thing quite impossible uvless that tribunal were entirely remodelled ;—and then not only would an insurrec- tion have been justifiable, but it must have been also successful from the indignation Robespierre’s disclosures before the tribunal must have excited in the population of Paris and the departments. In a word, insurrections are justifiable only when all legal means have been tried, and failed, and when there is a reasonable chance of success. This latter condition is a sine qua non—seeing that in the event of failure, the condition of the oppressed must be only made worse, not better, than it was before. The revolution turned up other great and true men besides Robespierre, some few of whom surpassed him in certain showy qualities, essential to a reformer in stormy times ; such as oratorical vigour and fire, the advan- tages of physique and exterior, prepossessing manner and insinuating ad- dress, inflexibility of purpose or will, daring impetuosity, and the rougher kinds of mere animal dash and courage such as may be found amongst soldiers, brigands, sailors, and gens d’ armes. But I cannot, in the whole circle of history, find another man that will bear a comparison with him in respect of that ensemble of the loftier and holier qualities of the head, heart, and conscience requisite to form an exalted human nature of the first class—an inspired,—a born regenerator of humanity. —Marat and Saint Just came nearest to him in the revolution, and certainly surpassed him in some of the above-named qualifications; but neither possessed his eloquence, his far-sightedness, his indulgence for mere error, his entire exemption from every kind of fanaticism, his generous emotions and nice susceptibilities of heart; nor did either of them combine in himself so many of the loftier qualities of genins and virtue. Moreover, their spheres of action and influence in the revolution Jay lower, and were far less comprehensive, than his. The numerous ardent admirers of Marat, and tha fewer, but more thoughtful admirers of Saint Just, honoured and revered Robespierre; but the latter had multitudes of worshippers that cared little for Saint Just, except as Robespierre’s confidant and right arm; and who, while they recognized Marat’s energy, probity, disinterestedness, and devotion, disliked his cynicism, and feared to see the common cause compromised by his vehement denunciations, however richly they might be deserved. He went, they thought, not too far--but too fast. Saint Just was one of the most original and extraordinary men of the revolution, But for the disadvantage of being ten years younger than Robespierre, and some twenty-two years younger than Marat, there is no saying toEa what eminence he might not bave attained. Scarcely twenty-four years old when he became a member of the committee of public safety (which he entered before Robespierre did), he was the boldest—the most daring—yet the coolest and most self-possessed—and the most inflexible member of it. He shrank from no responsibility, either in the cabinet, or on the field of battle (whither he often went to give examples of courage to the soldiers, and to watch the aristocratic generals and officers he suspected of treasonable designs against the republic), and was, generally, the member of the committee selected to report on the graver and more perilous state affairs which involved the proscription of powerful factions. Once convinced that he was right, he proceeded to the execution of his duty with a stern and inflexible will which nothing could daunt, nor bend—determined to perish, or deliver his country from traitors. His influence was considerable, but subordinate to that of Robespierre; and being rather a closet influence than a public one, was not operative with the masses like that of Marat, who was more the idol of the rough insurgent combatants of the Faubourgs than Robespierre himself. The latter they honoured and respected rather than loved, he not having taken part in any of their insurrectional raovements ; whereas, Marat had had a principal share in instigating, if not organizing, them all. Bat, although Marat and Saint Just played conspicuous parts in the revolution, and, next after Robespierre, were the most devoted, intellec- tual and energetic leaders of the real democracy, neither, nor both, contributed anything like so much to the formation of that new public opinion, without which, the republic could have bad no life, no soul, nor influence upon foreign states, as did Robespierre—nor did they inspire a tithe of a tithe of the terror which Robespierre did in the coalesced despots of Europe, and in the enslavers of the human race everywhere. Much less have they produced those deep-rooted, enduring offects upon the world’s mental and moral progress, which Robespierre’s labours have; and which will, for all time to come, make his name a tower of strength to real reformers all over the earth, and transmit it down to the remotest posterity, with an ever-increasing lustre propor- tional to the spread of moral and intellectual light in the world, more especially amongst its down-trodden classes and races. There is not an enslaved population, nationality, nor race in Europe, that the name of Robespierre is not working its way amongst, and, with it, his doctrine; and that does not appreciate him in the exact measure of their own virtue and intelligence. I have ascertained this fact personally, from Spaniards, Portuguese, Poles, Belgians, Germans, Italians, and even Russians; in fact, from men of every European state except Holland, where the people seem to have had their souls debased beyond redemption by mercantile money-grubbing pursuits. The French people too, admire Robespierre at the present day far more than at any period since the revolution; time and events baving shown them by woful experience how hopeless it is to found a republic on any principles but his, and how utterly useless universal suffrage is without those moral and social guarantees with which he sought to accompany it in the form15. of just fundamental laws on property, on commerce, on education, on the constitution of juries and corporations, on the organisation of' the army and the nationai guards—upon strictly democratic priociptes— above all, on the constitution of the legislature, the government, and every subordinate jurisdiction—-all based on the true principle of perfect equality between citizen and citizen, rich and poor, in the eye of the law. . The democracy of France, enlightened by the past, now see the necessity of these reforms; that universal suffrage is worthless and cannot subsist without them; that they are all as much the people's rights as universal suffrage itself—that they are, in fact, infinitely more important without universal suffrage, than is universal suffrage without them, Under Robespierre’s constitutional laws, the legislature could only frame and discuss projets de lois, or bills ; but could not pass them into laws without the previous sanction and consent of the people, themselves, voting in their primary assemblies. For this, fifteen clear’ days were allowed; so that there could be no usurpation of the rights of the people by the legislative assemblies, as afterwards happened. Neither could thera be any coups d’ etat: for, by Robespierre’s constitu- tional laws, the troops of the line could not act against the citizens under any pretence, nor by any authority, without committing high treason. Only the national guards could be called out to suppress disturbances or assist the magistrates in maintaining the peace. But the national guards were the whole adult male population able to carry arms, (poor and rich being upon a strict equality, and the officers all chosen from the ranks) so that the rich and the murderous middle classes could have no hireling assassin-force at their call to drown the rights of the people in their blood, and then make them bondsinen as they have since done. Under such laws there could be no June massacres, no December butcherings, no coups d'etat, no traitorous usurpations by Chambers, Presidents, or Emperors. The intelligent social reformers in France now see these things, and hence their admiration of Robespierre. It is said that already there are nearly two millions of Statuettes of Robespierre distributed throughout France in private honses; not conspicuously, for, the Bourgeosie will tolerate no admiration of Robespierre in public; the present hideous despotism having been set up by these robbers, for the express purpose of forcibly suppressing every book, pamplilet, newspaper, ballad, effigy. and symbol that might recal the memory and the works of that illus trious apostle and martyr of liberty. Indeed the 600,000 troops placed at Buonaparte’s disposal exist for no other purpose than to prevent an insurgent population from rising to wreak vengeance on the Bourgeosie— assassins (whose class is now pretty well known to have been the mur- derers of all the people’s devoted champions, and the rea! authors of all the bloodshed, and of all the crimes committed in the three revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848), and to enthrone the constitutional laws of Robespierre upon the ruins of their godless system of exploitation, rapine, lies, and murder, Where is the public man of any school or class, in modern times, of whose posthumous influence over the future, facts like these could be1G predicated ? There is not one. Who, out of England, or in England, cares anything, nowadays, about our Cromwellian heroes—the Pyms, Hollises, Vanes, Russells, Sidneys, Hazzlerigs, Bradshaws, or Hamp- dens of our Commonwealth? nor about those more modern celebrities— the Chathams, Pitts, Burkes, Foxes, Sheridans, Wyndhams, Cannings, Tierneys, and Ponsonbys of our own time? Not one in ten thousand of the population. And why? Because these orators and statesmen lived, or died, only to promote the ephemeral interests of bloody land- usurpers, and base profit-hunting middle-class vampires. With the real people of England, they never had an idea in common—nor one particle of earthly sympathy. In truth, all their boasted reforms only tended to sink them lower in the social scale, and make them more helpless slaves than ever to their ali-desolating oppressors, Tis much the same with the French chiefs opposgd to the party of Robespierre, Marat, and St Just—the Mirabeaus, ‘Lafayettes, Baillya, Sieyes, Lameths, Barnards, Brissots, Vergniauds, Petions, Barreres, Collots, Billands—nay, even the Dantons, Camilles, Barrases, Talliens, Bourdons, and Legendres of the Mountain. Not a man of these has the least. hold of opinion, nor the slightest influence over the fatore, in the present day. Although the Girondists and the Mountainists called themselves republicans, and professed universal suffrage, as did Robes~ pierre, every rational and well-informed democrat knows nowndays, that tike Napoleon the Little, they took the name and garb of republicanism, only the more easily to séélletto the republic, and availed themselves of universal suffrage only as a temporary scaffolding necessary to raise them toa level with their work, but to be pulled down and pushed aside, the moment its help was no longer needed to complete the edifices of their own fortunes, built up at the public expense, and cemented with its blood, Unlike Robespierre, who sought universal suffrage only for the people’s own sake—only for the general benefit—the despicable intriguers of the Gironde, and the brigand-terrorists of the Mountain desired it only for themselves, and only as long as they could promote their own interests better with it than without it, As for those institations on property, commerce, education, and internal defences, without which universal suffrage could be but a name—a phantem—the Mountainists not only set their faces against every- thing of the kind, but were ready to assassinate the first man or party that should attempt any reform of that description. In a word, they considered society to be the natural prey of whoever could rule it with the strongest hand, and the least mercy for the weak. Robespierre had a perfect horror of these wretches, regarding them as worse men than even the rash, false, intriguing, cowardly Girondists. On the night of the 9th Thermidor, he disdained to address them a word except indirectly through the chair, when, glancing at them, he exclaimed— ‘ President of assassins, hear me for the last time!” He knew they were only agents for feudal and commercial villains in the part they played that night. But a few months befure, many of them would have been ready to kill every landlord, manufacturer, and merchant, in France, to enrich themselves with the spoils of their crimes. HavingW now gtown rich by their brigandisms in the provinces, they were equally ready to dip their hands in the blood of the people's defenders, in order to keep, unquestioned, what they had got. Robespierre’s nature was too noble to address these wretches in their own persons. He knew it was his blood, not his justification, they wanted. He does not appear to have been equally-cognisant of the intentions of the Constitu- tionalist-chiefs and base Girondists towards him; although these scoundrels were just as ready to sacrifice him as was the Mountain: but being either more cowardly, or less desperate, they dared not strike the first blow. To compare Robespierre with any of the chiefs of these factions, would, I repeat, be a wanton and cruel insult to his memory. Virtue and erime ought not to be placed in juxta-position—much Jess in com- parison, as if they had anything in common. They can only be con- trasted ; and never was contrast more striking than that presented by Robespierre’s revolutionary career, contrasted with theirs, Every one of these parties had formed plots and conspiracies to assassinate him for his virtues. He had never formed one to get them destroyed for their crimes. In the revolution he was the author of all tne new and ennobling ideas destined to shape the future of mankind,—to redeem them from sin and bondage. These factions, on the contrary, did nothing throughout the revolution, but intrigue, plot, bum, corrupt, rob, and murder, in order to drown the democracy in its own blood, and deliver up France, chained like a malefactor, into the custody of land-usurpers, capitalists, and counting-house villains, who, they expected, would richly reward them for their exploits. With all the pains taken by historians to hold up these monsters for the admiration of posterity, and to present Robespierre and his party, as the great hug-bears of the period, they cannot point out a single law, decree, speech, or doca- ment, emanating from the chiefs of any one of these factions, worth preserving in the present age, nor that can be of interest to posterity, except as monuments of lying meretricious eloquence, perfidious intrignes, and murderous plots—to destroy the lives and reputations of ail known to be in the interest of the oppressed classes, and to puff’ themselves and one another, as savioura sf their country, while they were pillaging it from end to end, and deluging it with slavery, blood, and crime, After the dethronement of the King, (10th of August, 1792), when universal suffrage and the republic became inevitable, these murderous factions, in order to get themselves elected to the Convention, became sudden converts to universal suffrage and republicanism, professing wondrous admiration of both—althongh they had shot down thousands for only petitioning for them, some twelve months before. I need not, after what I have said, describe what sort of a republic they wanted— nor what they wanted it for. Their arguments in favour of it were to Robespierre’s arguments what a bad half-crown is to a good one, Both would pass current for the same sum, so long as the public knew not the difference between the genuine and the base metal—and just that long the factions resolved their republic should last, but ne e18 Tonger. They threw it to the people as a toy to amuse them, while they were secretly plotting the destruction of every man in France that desired it to be a permanent reality; just as we have seen the same game played, and for the like purpose, within the last few years by the middle-class hypocrites who “ accepted” the republic of 1848, but only to stab it under its own wing, and used universal suffrage to destroy all its real friends, and then, for universal suffrage, gave to France in its room, their owa uncontrolled despotism disguised under the form of a military empire, with their puppet Buonaparte at its head. Robespierre’s republic was to the republic of these brigands, what.a flower-garden is to a charnel-house; or what a rich vale covered with teeming harvests, orchards, and vineyards, is to a howling wilder- ness, where nothing is to be seen but beasts of prey, and the bones and offal-remains of the tame animals they had killed and devoured, In other words, the grizzly republic of the Gironde and the Mountain-terrorists no more resembled the beneficent republic of Robespierre, than the grinning skeleton of a malefactor hung in chains, resembles a living model of the Belvidere Apollo, radiant with youth, vigour, grace, and beauty. Robespierre’s republic would (to use his own words) “ substitute the greatness of man forthe iittleness of the great, anda people flourishing, virtuous, and happy, for a people frivolous, poor, and miserable.” The republic, such as it issued from the hands of the Gironde, Mountain, and other murderers of Robespierre, only tended to make France a nation of deformed pigmies, governed by the lash, with closed doors, and to substitute for the greatness of man the littleness of the great ; ending at last, after fifty years of rapine, war, and tyranny, with a Napoleon the Little, surrounded with 600,000 bayonets, to attest the blessings of middle class government, Compare, or rather contrast, Robespierre with these grasping, ambi- tious, and treacherous men, Everything said and done by him was said and done for the nation, not for himself, or a faction. He is always truthful—always disinterested—always wise and provident for the people’s welfare. Lamartine admits he sacrificed everything for the republic and the people—youth, love, repose, domestic happiness, am- bition, fortune, the society of the gay—the polished—the great—ever life itself— everything, even his memory and his work, Yes, he sacri- ficed all—-even the two last, temporarily at least. And what a sacrifice! —how different from those eulogized in ancient history! Rome had her Regulus; Sparta, her Leonidas; Athens, her Codrus; indeed, every old Asiatic State has its list of self-immolating martyrs, who gave up their lives for a dynasty—a creed—a dogma—a point of national honour—of military etiquette—or in obedience to some oracle com- manding some barbarous rite, or imposing sume form of self-immola- tion, But who would compare the seif-sacritice of Robespierre with those of these semi-barbarous enthusiasts and faratics? His was the self-immolation not of a blind fanatic, or crazy enthnsiast, for some deplorable creed or dogma, that the world might or might not adopt, without taking harm either way—not for the success of a dynasty, a faction, a war or battle, the fulfilment of a prophecy, the submission19 to an oracle, or the establishment of some barbarous code of honour. It was the self-immolation, of the most highly-gifted, highly-prized citizen of the most advanced nation and age, for no less grand an object than the deliverance of the whole human race from the vices of tyranny and slavery, which had hitherto made it wretched and crimeful—devoid. of faith in Providence or in itself, and ignorant of virtue, freedom, and happiness, So grand a mission, with so grand a self-immolation to crown it, was never witnessed in the world before. It is a phenomenon —unique in history. There was not a crowned head in Europe that would not have been glad to treat with Robespierre in 1794. To secure him on their side, they, und their aristocracies would have guaranteed to him the highest position in his own country, with the most coveted honours in their power to bestow, But sooner than betray the canse of humanity to the bauded tyrants of the earth—rather than replace the soas and daughters of toil (whose recognition, as citizens of the State, he had won) under the yoke of Jand-nsurpers and their base middle-class accomplices (who everywhere uphold individual pro- prietorship of the soil, in order to have a monopoly of its occupancy, as tenant farmers, for themselves, and the ejected m'Ilions for their serfs and slaves)—rather than commit this crime against God and man, he spurned every solicitation of ambition ani cupidity ; pre= ferring to accept death on the scaffold along with the certainty of pos- thumous infamy to weigh on his memory as long as the monsters of a * civilisation” which victimises the many for the gain of the few, should be able to impose their regime of rapine and murder on the world, An exampie of self-immolution like this is not, [ repeat, to be found in all history. Napoleon said at St Heleaa that had Robespierre been offered 20,000,000 francs to betray the republic, he would have spurned the offer with disdain. Napoleon might have said a deal more, on the evidence of Robespierre’s whole life. Had he possessed the riches of all France he would have expended them in establishing the laws of nature and the “ Kingdom of Heaven on earth,” all over the world, ax well as in France. It is difficult to make a commercial people like that of England appreciate, or even coiprehend, an exalted being of Robespierre's stamp—bred up as they are in the midst of sp-culators, flankeyism, profit-mongering exploitation, and Mammon -worship in all its most debasing forms. A man sacrificing himself for others, who care nothing for him, appears incredible to a people accustom-d, all their lives, to see the opposite example of everybody trying to sacrifice every other body to himself. If not absolutely mad, they are apt to regard such a being as either more or less than man. Besides, they have no type of such a character in their own country, where patriot~ ism consists in taking all you can from those above you,'and keeping all you can from those below you; aud where “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost” is the golden rule preached, under the term “self-reliance.” It would be, therefore, a cruel insult to Robespierre’s memory to compare him with any of the noted “ patriots” aad “reformers” of English history, I know of no British legislate:20 or statesman that ever had a higher, or holier, ambition than that of compelling the aristocracy to divide their power and plunder with the commercial middle-class, in order to make both stronger, and abler to wring more plunder, by their united action, from the labouring classes, than they could do, when disunited. If ever they went beyond this, it was only to throw back some crusts and crumbs to their hungry victims, to keep them from desperation, lest they might turn upon their despoilers, and suddenly discover the secret of their own strength, The idea of making the people really free, intelligent, masters of their own time, and proprietors of their own produce, seems never to have entered the head of a British statesman, The boasted “ patriots” and “ veformers” of our Cromwellian Commonwealth knew no higher, no holier, mission than converting themselves from land-holders into Jand- eoners at the expense of crown and people—stripping the crown of all its fendal revennes to put them into their own pockets, and making the land-less people supply their place with excise duties wrung by the bayonet from their labour—driving Ireland and Scotland into revolt and carnage, in order to seize the church property of both, and the estates they coveted, by attainting the blood of their massacred victims, and dividing amongst themselves and the base squirearchy and shop- ocracy they represented, the bloody spoils they had acquired by usurp= ing the prerogatives of the King, the privileges of the Peers, and the rights and liberties of the “ Sovereign people ;” whom they imprisoned, pilloried, whipped, branded, hung and shot like dogs under the opprobious name of “ Jevellers,” for the crime of asking for their own. Assuredly, ho just man would offer such an ontrage to Robespierre’s memory as to compare him to hell-hounds of this description, who ended their every massacre with a hymn or a prayer, and had “the Lord” on their lips as constantly as they had the devil in their hearts, and the spoils of their victims in their homes. Jf we descend to our own times, the difficulty of finding a parallel for Robespierre becomes greater. In the days of the Commonwealth, England could boast of many brave and disinterested men—especially in the educated, if not wealthy grades——Andrew Marvel, Milton, and Colonel Lilburn, are examples. But they were, all three, mere children in politics compared to Robespierre, and had no public influence worth naming. In the present day, there is not a vestige left of the old puritanical sincerity in any class, except the very poorest. Our modern patriots and reforming celebrities are, without exception, the most auda- vious quacks and hypocrites of the age. At the moment I write, the feudal and mercantile spoilers who inherit, amongst us, the blood-begotten fruits of the Commonwealth, and of the ‘glorious revolution of 1688,” are plundering the industrious classes of the United Kingdom of, at least, £350,000,000 per annum, and have made them such complete ciphers in the state, that about half a dozen landed-proprietors, and the like number of millionaire-capitalists in London city, exercise more veal influence over the national councils and over the destinies of the state than do five and a half millions of skilled and unskilled workmen —representing twenty millions of its population, and producing all its21 riches (some 700 to 800 millions of pounds sterling per annum) as well as fighting all its battles. And while a ery for reform rings throughout the land, not one slave, nor slave’s friend of any class, dare vent the real cause of the national distresses at any public meeting, nor through any newspaper, through fear of being ruined in private life by the middle classes. Yea, the most belauded, be-slobbered, of our great public men, —our loudest reformer and Bright-est popular legislator—can discover no deeper grievance—no greater iniquity in our system-—than our church rates, game laws, and the difference between the succession duty paid by landlords, and that paid on the devolution of property, other than land 1! A cancer is preying on the heart or stomach of the nation, and our state-doctors par excellence—our Duncombes, Roebucks, Brights, and Cobdens, are busy at work to cure it by paring away at some corns on its toes, What were the real evils of France in Robespierre’s time, are still the real evils of both France and England, only enormously aggra- vated. They are, on the one hand, outrageously unjust fundamental Jaws on land, eredit, and commercial interchange, which make property almost synonymous with robbery, and industry with poverty, by giving to aristrocratic sybarites and mercantile vampires, the great bulk of the fruits of other men’s industry,—and on the other band, the usurpation of all the powers of the state by those said sybarites and vampires, in order to perpetuate their own rule, and, with it, their own irresponsible power of dragooning, plundering, and enslaving the nation. The Bright and Cobden remedy for this two-fold evil is to suppress all mention of the first or social evil, so that the multitude, kept in ignorance of its cause, may, if asked what they want the suffrage for, be unable to assign any rational or adequate reason, or make fools of themselves by par- yoting some of their own ridiculous stock-grievauices—church rates, game laws, succession duties, primogeniture, estabiished church, bishops in parliament, House of Lords, &c., &c.,—And for the 2nd or political evil—(the seizure of all the powers of the state by landlords and profit mongers—the seizure of both houses of the legislature, all the corpora- tions, vestry boards, grand and petty juries, educational boards, poor-law guardian boards—army, navy, and church—in short, of every thing down 1o newspapers and parish beadles)—their grand remedy for this monster evil, (designed to preserve the first)—is to increase the power of the middle-classes in all the principal towns of the kingdom, by doubling or trebling the number of their representatives in parliament, and giving those classes (the real authors of all the nation’s woes) the mask of the ballot to conceal them from their victims, while they are sucking the nation’s blood. The proposed machinery for effecting this is, the assim- ilation of the parliamentary to the municipal franchise, with the ballot super-added and a more equal distribution of seats in parliament in proportion to clectors, Mr Bright (who would be an honest man, if the imiddle-elasses would allow any able man to be honest without combining to ruin him) has lent his sanction to this concoction of fraud and injustice, which would not seat one honest man in parliament in a century. And with the help of the newspapers (all in the hands of the middle-classes)22 he is persuading the unrepresented. that the Reform Bill just sketched will fully emancipate them from the yoke of the lendlord and the capitalist ! whose power it is designed and admirably adapted to largely sugment. No man will be allowed a vote, but the man who least warts it—the house- holder rated to the poor for three years in the town he resides in—i.e. the man well enough conditioned tu be abie to keep others besides himsrlf and family, (which is not the condition of one working-man in seven or ten), and as the house he lives in is sure to belong to some landlord or profit-monger, and as the work he lives by depends on the same classes, (to give or withhold.) it is obvious the landlord and profit-monger will have an ultimate controlling power over every poor-rated inhabitant in the borough. Besides, the few working-class votes possible under such conditions, would be perfectly useless to the voters, 23 they would in every borough, be swamped by the vastly larger number of voters the aristocracy, clergy, and middle-classes, with their dependants, could bring to bear against them, In short, the working. classes would not be able to return even one representative of their order throughout the whole kingdom. A bill that would enable them to return only a dozen representatives fer the twelve largest towns, to be chosen exclu- sively by non-electors, would be infinitely better for them than the hocus-pocussing bill projected by the Manchester schoo], Throngh twelve able and conscientious men so chosen, their real wants, grievances, and sentiments, could be made known to the world throush parliament, and so force a real reform; but under the Bright and Cobden concoction, they would not be suffered to return cne such member as would be of any use to them, in a hundred years. Compare the magnificent organic laws proposed in the Constituent As- sembly and Convention, by Robespierre, with the concoctions of fraud snd injustice which our “liberal” patriots seek to impose upon‘us in this country. Verily, it maketh the heart sick to reflect on the sort of progress, which patriotism, and the rights of man have made since 1794, under the inspirations of middle-clas newspapers, middle-class parlia- ments, and middle-class bribery and bayonets. Jt would seem just now as if the bourgeoisie of France and England had subsidized hell, itself, to help them to eradicate from man the image of his Maker. and 10 squeeze the souls out of the bodies of the poor in this world, to escape their reproaches, befure they come to jeopardize their own in the next. Robespierre’s noble nature would have shrunk with ineffable disdain from these juggling artifices of our British legislators, statesmen, and trading politicians, ca!ling themselves reformers. No wonder the latter should dread and abhor bis name: for, his success would have been the estinction of all such jngglers all over the world. ft was Chateaubriand’s opinion that, notwithstanding the prodigious efforts and sacrifices of so many eminent men of the revolution to immortalize their names in history, only three great memories will survive with posterity, viz—Miraheaa, Robespierre, and Bonaparte. GH these, [ venture to say, Robespierre will stand alone for admiration, Mirabeau and Buonaparte will survive only to inspire contempt and23 horror at their profligate and criminal abuse of great natural talents. Mirabean will be remembered as the representative par excellence of Bourgeois corruption, venality, and perfidy; Buonaparte as the high- handed incarnation of Bourgeois brigandism and blood-letting. Their names will never be pronounced in connection with Robespierre’s, except in the sense of contrasting great vices and great crimes, with great works, and great virtues. Their fame will be only that infamous sort of notoriety which will for ever {cling to the memories of Sylla, Herod, and Lysander ; hardly preferuble to that of Judas Iscariot, or of the despicable wretches who sold the pass of Thermopyle, and burned Diana’s Temple at Ephesus. They have left nothing behind them; they never attempted anything in life, for which posterity can owe them gratitude or admiration. Plato, and a greater than Plato, tells us that they who flourish by the sword shail perish by the sword. The systems of Mirabean and Buonaparte can tive only by the sword—and by the sword shall both perish. The system of Robespierre founded in nature and reason—the only system that can reconcile man to his Creator— must be co-eternal with human nature itself;—and—once realized in practice by man’s reason matured—must be indestructible ever after. No more revolutions—no counter-revolutions, after that. Robespierre’s labours in the Constituent would alone suffice to immor- talize a dozen names, were justice done them. Never did man, under more discouraging circumstances, make such a struggle as did he, in that corrupt assembly, to subject its councils to the empire of reason, justice, and humanity, with a view to the future welfare of France and the world. Had its decrees and its constitution been what he struggled so arduously to make them, there would have been no revolution in the sense of convulsion. Instead of purchasing increased rapine and slavery at the expense of rivers of blood, France would have acquired the freest government, and the happiest social state ever known, at the cost only of some quires of foolseap, and some pounds’ weight of printers’ ink. Let any unprejndiced man only compare Robespierre'’s projets de loi (bills), and speeches in that assembly with those ot his opponents, and he will see at once who were the men of blood—who, the real authors of the calamities which ensued. I have given a brief analysis of the assembly's decrees and constitution in Vol. i. of my Life of Robespierre ; and whoever has seen, from the facts therein stated, the atrocious manner in which the assembly disposed of the rights, liberties, and property of the people, will wonder-—not at the torrents of blood and crime they let lovse—but that a single land-usurper, or Bourgeois robber was left alive in France. ‘The authors of such Monstrous concoctions of fraud and cruelty towards the mass of the population, could not be left alive in any conntry, with safety to its inhabitants, They treated every man that was not a landlord or Bourgeois villain as if he were a dog, or a beast of burden.” Against the assembly's deeds of rapine and tyranny, one voice— that often a solitary one—was uniformly raised,— It was the voice of Robespierre. In no one instance did he fail to invoke the laws of God and humanity against its homicidal decrees, and to predict the future24 consequences of its Bourgeois constitution. Anything to equal his untiring perseverance, his indomitable zeal and energy, his unflinching m oral courage, and incorruptible devotedness, during two years and five m onths of endless conflicts with the assembly, I have nowhere seen, in the history of national councils. Everything that aristocratic morgue, and Bourgeois insolence could contrive to unnerve and abash him, was put in requisition, He was always received with sneers or murmurs, continually interrupted, often coughed down, seldom listened to with common decency, and frequently not listened to at all. But mindful of the voluntary pledges he had given to his constituents, and of the solemn mission he had undertaken for the friendless outcasts of society, he confronted and bore all for their sake, though not one in a thousand of them could have been cognizant of his labours and sufferings, to say nothing of the endless dangers he ran, like Marat, of being assassinated by royalist hirelings and bourgeois mobs. While preparing projets de lot, and discourses to support them, for the assembly, he was constant in his attendance at the Jacobin-club, issued frequent addresses to his constituents and other bodies—warning them of intrigues against their liberties—wrote articles for his own and other journals to enlighten public opinion, and co-operated with the choice spirits of the day in rousing the dormant energies of the country to assert its rights. Well, indeed, may Lamartine say his life was one continuous self-sacrifice : and pity it is that one so conversant as Lamartire with all the great facts of the revolution, and who, generally, does Robespierre justice, when he has facts to deal with, should rarely, if ever, render him justice in the inferences and reflections with Which he accompanies them, This, ¥ am aware, is a tribute he pays to the ascendancy of the middle classes, and without which, his ‘‘ History of the Girondists” could not have been published with safety to himself. But it was better, I hold, not to publish the work at all, than damage his reputation by giving us faithful narratives of atrocious acts on the part of the Girondists and Constitutionalists, without a word of indignant comment mipon them, (nay, often accompanied with high encomiums on the actors ihemselves); whilst the glorious acts of Robespierre, which he acknow- Jedges, he almost always accompanies with injurious reflections of his own, utterly at variance with the facts he is recording. No degree of danger lhe might have incurred from the middle classes by being as honest in his reflections as he is in his facts, ought to have intimidated him into a course so injurious to his honour as a man, and so projndicial to his weight and reputation as a_ historian, Thronghont his work, the constitutionalists of the assembly appear with a halo of eloquent praise thrown around them, as if they had been a galaxy of shining impersonations of all the virtues and talents. ‘Then the Girondists are the professed heroes of his work, written ostensibly 10 record their virtues, talents, cloquence, patriotism, and untimely end. Yet not one fuet has Lamartine adduced, ner could he, to justify his encomiuns of these factions, or to prove either of them entitled to any ether commemoration than contempt for their hypocrisy, selfishness, and eawardice, with abhorrence of their notorious crimes—amongst25 which, rapine, massacre, usurpation, and dastardly plots to assassinate opponents (who opposed them only with reason and facts)—are not the Teast prominent. Lamartine, for instance, describes the bloody massacre of the Champ de Mars, (in which some thousands of men, women, and children were cold-bloodedly butchered while peaceably signing a petition), without uttering a word of condemnation against the constita~ tional-chiefs of the assembly who had concocted it; nor against Bailly, the mayor, Lafayette, the commandant, and the base cowardly Bourgeois national guards of Paris, who executed it, and who never fought, save against unarmed starving people. Not a spark of indignation does Lamartine let fly against the perpetrators of this and similar massacres. Nay, the principal of them are subjects for his most glowing panegyrics. In like manner, he coolly narrates how the Girondists plotted at the house of that metaphysical intriguer, Sieyes, (the future accomplice of Buonaparte), the destruction of Robespierre, Marat, &c., with that of the workmen of the Faubourgs, by hireling sol- diery; but not a sentence does he utter to brand with infamy the villains capable of such a crime. On the contrary, he wearies and disgusts us with praises of the hollow, declamatory, meretricious eloquence of these malignant assassins, and seemingly for no better reason than because they were in the pay and interest of the murderous Bourgeoisie, and had for their object. the subjugation of France to the exclusive rule of those would-be Christ-crucifying miscreants. Lam disposed to make great allowance for Lamartine, I know he wrote his book under a terror of the Bourgeoisie, who would have des- troyed him, bad he done complete justice to Robespierre, Marat, &c., or denounced the crimes of their persecutors, the fruits of which the said bourgeoisie now inherit. Indeed, as it is, they have ruined Lamartine for his truthfulness in respect of narrating facts : for, it is owing 10 their underhand malico he is overwhelmed with debts and private obloquy. Still Tassert that no degree of danger to be incurred from the base middle classes ought, for an instant, to have weighed against the certainty of irretrievably damaging himself in his own conscienee, and with posterity, for eulogizing criminals, whose crimes he relates, and vilifying the very flower of humanity, whose virtues, genius, and philanthropy he bears witness to, by the very acts and facts he records. He ought, therefore, either to have done full justice to all parties, or not have written his book at all;—at least, deferred it, till it might be less dangerous to speak the troth, the whole truth, and nothing but the trath, . Upon Lamartine’s own showing, (confining ourselves to the facts he records and admits) the Constitutionalists and the Girondists have no claims whatever upon our admiration, but, on the contrary, have fully earned the scorn and execration of posterity for the parts they played jn the revolution. While, on the other hand, Robespierre, St Just, Couthon, and their party, are entitled, upon the same showing, to the admiration, gratitude, and benedictions of posterity for their heroie and almost super-human struggles and sacrifices to deliver France and the world from aristocratic and bourgeois rule, which can nowbere live but26 by the sword, and at the cost of slavery and misery for the mass, If Ido not add Marat to this list, it is not because [ deem him unworthy of it, but because Marat was notoriously an active agent in promoting the September marsacres and other violent movements, the gnilt or inno- cence of which it is fur God alone to determine, because He, and (fe alone knows the secrets of all hearts and the motices by which men act. We frail mortals can only conjectare, or deduce by reason, often fallible, what man’s motives are. Judging hy this method—I could not, for a moment, place Marat in the same category with Danton and the middle- class Commune who organized these massacres and had the victims’ graves actually dug. and their assassins hired and armed, before they were paraded, for “trial” before their mock “ judges ;”—nor in the same category with Petion, the mayor, and Danton’s ministerial colleagues, who, with the national guards and other public forceseunder their com- mand, took not a single step to prevent those massacres, but basely connived at them, with an eye to reap the profit of them, on the one hand, which they did; and to get a spurious character for humanity, on the other, by afterwards denouncing what they secretly desired, and took no steps to prevent. These men only sought to replace royalist crimes by their own crimes, and to substitute for the kiny’s rule their own rule—infinitely the worse of the two. But Marat’s noble and self- sacrificing nature makes it morally certain that his only object was to save the republic from invasion, by striking terror into the coalition on the frontiers, and to establish the sovereign rights of the people on the ruins of all the monarchical factions inthe realm. Lamartine, I regret to say, makes no distinctions of this kind throughout his work, although, aga man of superior mind anl culture, he must well know that the same act may proceed from the most opposite motives, may be devoted to the most opposite ends, and may therefore be either a very great crime, or a very great virtue, according to the motive impelling, or to the end proposed. Marat's violence was the violence of virtue against the violence of crime—a temporary and exceptional violence to overthrow a system of permanent vivlence, and to substitute for it one that would require no violence at all. Danton and the bourgeois commune whose motives ani ends were even more guilty than those of their victims (as evidenced by their lives) only sought to substitute a violent regime of their own in liew of what they overthrew, or to speak more correctly, to perpetuate the same system under new names and forms; but having themselves at’ its head, instead of the party of their victims. Lamar- tine ignores all such distinctions. Worse still; wherever he does draw the line, it is to place virtue on the culpable side, and vice and crime on the other side. For instance, while he repeatedly vilifies Robespierre and his friends for acts of unquestionable virtue and magnanimity, he ipenegyrizes such men as Brissot and Louvet, the former, a low trader in libels, the Jatter, the author of obscene publications, (both of whom he knew to be unprincipled hirelings of the toargevisie of Paris, paid for caricaturing men whom they knew to be above reproach), and such cowardly wretches as Guadet and Vergniand, who voted for the king’s dewth after having denounced every man who had conscientiously, but27 relnctantly, expressed a similar opinion, (through fear of a civil war, which would deluge France with blcod)—wretches who with the cant of "* peace, law, and order,” “ moderation,” “ morality,” &c., &¢., eternally on their lips openly preached stheism and ridiculed the acknow'edg~ merit of Gud’s providence in the preamble to the ‘Declaration of Rights,” and who never ceased plotting to pull down those above them, and to keep down those below them, from the moment they set foot in Paris— to say nothing of their everlasting lies, libels, and intrigues to discredit the democratic leaders, and their infamous abuse of the Post-office and of the Treasury for the same object, and, failing these means, their atrocious plots to have destroyed by hireling soldiers and assassins, the illustrious men and the sacred cause they could not otherwise overthrow. The death of Robespierre was the greatest calamity that ever befel the human race in the person of one man. ‘The middle classes had no sooner got him murdered by the Convention than they resolved them~ selves into packs ot blood-hounds to hunt down the democrats of France, and under the names of ‘‘ Societies of Jesus,” “ Societies of the Sun,’ &e., &c.,&e., (of what blasphemies are not these villains capable!) murdered more than 100,000 of them in the South of France alone. War became a necessity to them to drain Frarce of its revolutionary population. So, under the Directory and Buonaparte, they had not less than 3,600,000 of Frenchmen destroyed by war alone, and its consequences. Since the death of Robespierre in 1794, up to the present year, 1858, they have rothed the industrious classes of France of at least 250,000,0002 per annum, or, in the aggregate, of no less a sum than 16,000,000,000, Jn other words, they wrung out of their labour (through rents, profits, usury, dividends, rates, tases, commissions, brokerage, fees, &c.) at the very least, siateen thousand millions of pounds sterling, over and above what they ever gave them any value for, in service of any kind. Had Rcbespierre succeeded in establishing his property institutions, these millions of lives and millions of property would have been saved to the workmen, whilst the middle-clas-es would be no worse off; for, his insti- tutions would have enabled them to get more solid wealth and happiness, by just and lawful means, from the universal development to be given to chemical and mechanical science, (as applicable to manufactures, hus~ bandry, and the arts), than they have been able to wring out of the sweat and poverty of the working-classes, by all their homicidal and Uberticidal schemes, Well may Lamartine say of such a man—* There is a design in his “ life, and this design is vast—the reign of reason through the medium ‘of democracy. There is a momentum, and this momentum is divine. “Tt was a thirst after truth and justice in the laws. There is an “action, and that action is meritorious; it is the struggle for life and ‘death against lying, vice, and despotism. There is a devotion, and this “devotion is as constant, as absolute as an antique immolation. It “wag the sacrifice of himself—of his youth—his repose—his happi- “ness—his ambition—his life—his memory—and his work.” True, every word but the last two; and well wonld it have been for Lamartine’s future reputation had he been always as truthful. Robes-28 pierre did make all these sacrifices, but the last two, which it was neither in his own power to make, nor in the power of his enemies to make for him. His memory and his work are not sacrificed, They remain, and will live in the world as long as there is a human heart to throb for liberty and thirst for justice—a human soul capable of noble aspirations and sympathies—and a human conscience to loathe hypo- crisy, perfidy, and murder. The very words I am now writing, and the Elegy which follows, prove that his memory is not defunct, but green and flourishing; and what I have but just recorded as to the progress of his name and doctrine amongst the down-trodden races of Europe, is ample proof that his work still goes on—the work of human regeneration through the light and heat of his principles and doctrine, silently permeating all who have brain to understand, and hearts to feel. He made the greatest—the grandest struggle ever made on earth—and the nearest to success—to rescue the human race from its eternal enemies—accursed landlords, who rob God’s people of God’s free gift to all the land—and the baser multitudinous villains who, as capitalists, employers, and traffickers, have turned the producers of the world’s riches into bondsmen and wages-slaves, through their nefarious system of commerce.—Neither of these abominations could possibly exist under Robespierre’s projected institutions on property and com- merce, which were to make both “a source of riches to the public, and not to a few great houses only. The memory of such a man become extinct!—his work, the sublimest ever conceived on earth, perish with his memory! It is an insult to humanity—it is impiety towards God—to believe such a thing possible, If its accomplishment were possible, it would have been accomplished long ago—for, millions of money have been lavished, millions of calumnies propagated, and millions of bayonets employed in Europe to that end in the present century. Yet is his memory being rehabilitated ; his doctrine finding its way in despite of gold, spies, and bayonets, and his werk going on at this hour all over the world, even in Australia and the remotest regions of America, To say nothing of other men’s labours (with which J am less acquainted,) I could prove on the testimony of thousands, that my own writings and speeches on Robespierre, and his doctrines, have been read and heard by tens of thousands of human beings now settled throughout every state in America, and in every colony of Australia, Suck a memory die!—It would be to suppose God’s providence had for ever abandoned the human race, and given them up, as past redemption, to land-usurpers and counting-house wolves. No! his memory will live embalmed in the grateful hearts of millions and millions unborn; who, in future generations, will thank God for having sent upon earth a man capable of undergoing such labours, struggles, pangs, dangers, and self-immo- lation at Jast, with the beneficent design of bestowing freedom and happiness on his fellow-creatures for all time to come. If the spirits of the great dead were allowed to commune with mortals, Robespierre might new say to us—"] told you they would never let me complete “my work—that they would assassinate me when I attempted to found29 “ just social institutions; I told you they had done so in all past ages, “that they had murdered every true reformer, whether king, prophet, ‘philosopher, seer, legislator, apostle or statesman, that ever sought ‘‘the deliverance of his fellow-creatures from the demons of land- ‘ monopoly, usury, and commercial fraud; and that I could not expect “to form an exception. I told you, in the words of Christ—that the seed must perish before it brings forth fruit of its kind. But I stole “a march on the murderers. I gave glimpses of the all-saving doctrine, “Cand laid down the basis of its future laws, before the murderers “penetrated my designs ; and I fortified myself with an unrivalled moral “power and popularity, which gave the doctrine prestige with the “many, before the few saw any danger of its success, and which made “their murder of me a work of harder accomplishment, and more “ dangerous to the murderers, than all their other crimes put together. “ This murder of a man, reputed in his time to be the most incorruptible, “devoted, self-sacrificing, highly-gifted, highly-prized, and popular “citizen in the state, can never be forgotten as an historical fact. All “that read of it hereafter will enquire into the cause, and seeing no “ history satisfactorily account for it, will go back to the records of the “day, consult my own speeches, reports, manifestoes, Declaration of “Rights, Constitution of 1793, and the various projets de lot I brought * forth in the Constituent and in the Convention, and they will not fail “to see that I was murdered for doctrine therein broached, which “ pointed clearly to the new social laws E announced to the convention, “that we should submit to its consideration, when the ‘friends of “liberty might get a first respite from the daggers of assassins’. “These circumstances will cause the doctrine to be looked into; and “ onee understood, it will never be forgotten. ear not then, my friends, “that my memory will pass away, or my work be left unfinished. I ** told the Convention, on the eve of my death, when I saw my destruc- **tion resolved on,—that though they could take my life, they should “not make me retract a word I had uttered, nor renounce one iota of “the principles or doctrine I had promulged; and that with all the “efforts of wicked men to undo what I had done, and to blast my “memory with posterity, I should leave behind me a name that would “taro tyrants palo to the remotest posterity. Fear not, then, for my “ work, nor for my memory. The necessities of society itself, aided by © the sacrifices of myself and others, will perfect my work in the reali- “ zation of the social institutions, of which I was suffered to give but the ‘ outline. And with respect tomy memory, although perfectly indifferent “ to posthumons fame, except in so far as it may accredit my doctrine, ‘and popularise my work, 1 may proudly exclaim in the lofty language ‘of Ossian, ‘My fame shall remain, and my name shall grow and “ flourish like the oak of Morven, which lifts its broad head to the storm, “ and rejoices in the course of the wind.’” Most of the present generation .have grown up with the idea that Robespierre, Marat, St Just, Couthon, and their followers were violent men, whose wild ambition, fanaticism, and blood-thirstiness, caused all the troubles of the revolution. No delusion can be more complete.30 They were, all of them, the very opposite of what history has painted them. They were all upright, single-minded, kind-hearted, humane, generous, and devoted men. They had no base ends of their own to serve, but served their country and their kind with the most perfect disinterestedness, conscientiousness, and devotedness, Instead of viulent and aggressive, they were bearing and forbeariog, toa fault. Everything that human foresight, human energy, and human patience could do, ‘was done by them to make the revolution pure and bloodless. Lawmartine says they were all tame at the outset of their career. Tame enough, heaven knows, they were, and a gool deal too tame, till tamencss beca:ne almost a crime. They witnessed the most revolting atrocitics on the part of the bourgeoisie, and endured in their own persons, the most outrageous insults, and cruel persecutiun, before they retaliated even in words. If, instead of taking their opinions on trust from lying middle-class historians, impa tial enquirers will go back to the records of the time, the debates of the assemblies, the reported proceedings of the Jacobin, Cordetier, and other clubs, to the writings and speeches of Marat and Robespierre, and to the comments cf their adversaries on these writings and speeches —they will find these calumniated men always on the side of peace, law, and order, as well as on the side of justice, mercy, tolera~ tion, humanity, and real civiliz tion —whilst their opponents and ferocious enemies will be as invariably found on the side of violence, injustice, barefaced oppression, and the most revolting contempt of all law and decency. Resi, for instance, the Mistoire Purlementaire de la evo- lution Francuise, a voluminous, but invaluable work, in which every- thing necessary to enable the reajer to form a just judgment will be fount. In particalar, I would recommend vols. 25 to 35 inclusive, which contain several of Robespierie's and St Just's most interesting reports to the Convention, and speeches at the Jacobin clab, as also a4 great deal of information on the characters and habits of the prin- cipal mea of the Mountain and of the Committees who served the Convention as instruments for compassing his death— Vols. 33 and 34 contain all the particulars of bis death, and of the means taken by his ene.nies to destroy all his papers, and all the documents of the day, which would have revealed their crimes to France. The trials of Care rier, Joseph Lebon, Fouquier ‘Tinville, and others also throw li :ht’ on the principal men and parties of that period. Altogether, the Histoire Parlementaire is the best work to consult for getting a clear insight into the motives and policy of the active men of the time. Although Robespierre’s death was attended by every indignity and atrocity that depraved natures can inflict upon superior beings, whose greatness reproaches them, it does not appear that they embittered his last inoments. Mignet says, he looked with compassion on the crowds he passed through, on his way to execution—even on the wretches that booted hin— Father, forgive them, for they know not whut they do”, was, no doubt, the sentiment which prompted his pity. Thiers, Lamar- tine, and most other historians, admit that he exhibited perfect impas- sibility during the last twenty hours of his existence, notwithstanding31 the acute pain he must have suffered from his wound, and the brutal outrages heaped on him by mobs, and undertiags of the ruling powor. There is a reason for this, although historians affect nut to see it. He was sick of men—weary of humanity—and but too eager (as he and St Just had often expressed in their last days) to quit a scene where life was but a weary burden to all who had conscience, and could have charms but for the selfish despoilers and enslavers of mankind. Robespierre had seen so much of fiendish malice and horrid hypocrisy in the arts employed to compass his destruction and posthumous infamy, that death seemed to him but a heavesly messenger sent to release hiar from the companionship of such monsters, His sufferings therefore were not what might have been expected. What he did suffer was on others’ account, aot on his own. He suffered for the Duplays, his loved hosts—for the betrayed people sti'l dear to hin—above all, for the non-completion of the great work which Providence had so mar- vellously endowed him for, To leave that work unfinished was, un- questionably, his greatest grief. Here, however, conscience came to his relief. It whispered him that he had done his utmost—more than mortal mao had ever done before— that he had made success easy and certain for future reformers in God’s own good time—and that be must not despair at the retardation of a work which might, after all, require ages to consummate, as it had required ages to prepare the world for its introduction, With such reflections, no doubt, Robespierre consoled his last moments. ‘They are in harmony with what is related of them. His preference of death to solidarity with the monsters who had com- passed it for the middle-classes, he had fully stated, the night before, in his last discourse. So cruel and bitter had been his persecutions by these monsters—(who not content with murdering his friends and pro- tegées, caused their blood to recoil upon himself, by making him appear to the public and to the victims themselves, as their destroyer) —so horrified was he at the aspect of such profound wickedness, that he hailed death as his deliverer from such mousters ; and shrinking from the contemplation of their crimes, he fled, as it were, from life to take refuge in the bosom of the Divinity. I end by re-asserting that his birth was the greatest honour ever conferred upon France—his death, the greatest calamity to France and the world that could have befallen them in the person of one man. Yours devotedly, James B. O'Brizy. P.S.—As the enemies of real reform—especially the rich mercantile class—will secretly do their best to prevent the sale of this little work, and as nearly the whole publishing trade and newspaper press are, more or less, at the mercy of the middle-classes, may I request the good offices of the members of the National Reform League, and of all friends of truth, who may read the foregoing, to counteract the manceuvres of these foes of our rights, to the best of their ability, by forming com- mittees to promote its circulation and that of the “ Vision of Hell,” &e., and other works to follow.-—J. B. 0’B.This tribute to the rsamory of Robespienre is intended not only as an act of tardy justice to the greatest Reformer and Legislator the world has yet known, but also to throw light on the events which produced the 9th Thermidor—and which the histories, hitherto written, of the French Revolution have, purposely, cither falsified or wrapt in mystery, to subserve the policy of the class-interests, én whose behoof Rodespierre was murdered. Nowhere else will the true character of his enemies and the reat cause of his death, be found. Nowhere else (until there be @ great radical revolution in Europe) may the reader expect to find true portraite of the Three Assemblies which made the Revolution—more especially of the Concention, which murdered Robespierre and his friends, in order to effect a counter-revolution for the middle-classes, The words of this Elegy are supposed to be spoken by a small group of brave, sorrowing workmen of the Faubourg St Antoine, in Paris, a few days after the ‘fatal 9th Thermidor, when they saw the last hopes of the Revolution extinguished ‘in the blood of its most Mlustrious chief and his devoted friends. They ave repre- sented in the act of plucking laurel, myrile, and ivy berries, to strew the bier of their murdered apostle, A few lines are copied, literally, from Milton's Lycidas; as also one or two exquisite passages, which I found applicable to the situation". T regret I could not find others, as I should gladly have borrowed more of the inspirations of our sublimest poet (the glory of our English Commonwealth), to render that homage to the Father of Social Democracy in France, which no other pen than Miton's could so worthily furnish, I have made only a few verbat alterations in Milton 8 text, (where the language was quaint, and the rhythm or structure harsh and involved), and completed some lines he left unfinished, J.B. OB.AN ELEGY OW THE DEATH OF ROBESPIERRE. L Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, We come with brimful eyes, and hearts full sore, To pluck your berries, rifle your sad store, To strew the hearse of him, to Frenchmen dear, A chief whose name will live for evermore, ‘The man of men, whom myriads will deplore ; For, Maximilian’s dead! great Robespierre ! And nowhere, on this earth, hath left his peer. Who would not weep for him who wept for all? ( Whose fate, with sorrow, ages will recall) Who will not burn with vengeance for his fall ?— Slain in his prime !—the man we most adore, By traitors marr’d—now weltering in his gore! (1—2) We must not leave him mangled on his bier, To feast, as food for ribald jest and jeer,* Vile knaves his every glance once shook with fear. * Buonarroti records in his “ History of Baboenf’s Conspiracy,” that as Robespierre lay speechless, with his broken jaw bandaged up, the blood oozing from his mouth, and seemingly unconscious of what was passing around him, stretched on a table in the ante-room of the Committee of Public Safety (whither he was conveyed on a stretcher), the clerks of the office, and underlings of the committee, outraged his name and person in the most atrocious manner—going the length of spitting ou him, and stabbing his flesh with the points of their pen- knives. Lamartine says, “The wretched man, lately the idol and ruler of the republic, was overwhelmed with expressions of contempt, invective, and abuse. Nothing was spared him, the officers of the Convention pointing bim out to the curious mob as a ferocious beast is exposed in a menagerie,” Such was the treatment of the man at whose feet they cowered but a few days before, calling him the Cato of R34 IL He, whose inspiring voice, (when France was rife With all the elements of war and strife,) Made millions rise, and crush with one same blow, Th’ internal traitor, and th’ external foe; FEvok’d the force Democracies can wield, Bade fourteen civic armies take the field; And, through their might, triumphant all around, Made every frontier, consecrated ground. He who proclaimed those Rights,*as Heaven’scommand Which on eternal justice take their stand; Raised into men the serfs of ages past, Absolv’d from curse of privilege and caste, That all God’s peoples, sprung from one same blood, Might form one great united brotherhood : (3) France, and comparing bim to Orpheus civilizing the savages with his lyre!—and who, but for his respect for law, and horror of bloodshed, might have had those miscreants slaughtered like sheep only the night before. The leaders of the Commune, and of the Jacobins, asked but the signal of their doom from his lips, He refused the signal, preferring to die himself rather than countenance a seeming usurpation of power, though necessary for his own protection—and though (as subsequent events proved) the last plank left to the republic.—See Notes 1 and 2 after Elegy. * Robespierre’s ‘ Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,” appended to this Elegy—the noblest, the sublimest, tho most truly philosophic and christian document of its kind the world has yet seen, —Had the Convention adopted this declaration as the basis of the con- stitution of 1793, and made that constitution in strict conformity with it, the liberties of France would have been founded upon a rock of adamant, indestructible and imperishable, But the Convention struck out all its more important articles—more especially those on property, defining its rights and limitations—thus making all the other articles utterly worthless, even if adopted in good faith. They gave France the plum-pudding without the plums, the rump-steak pie without the rump-steak, the play of Hamlet with the character of the Prince of Denmark omitted. A constitution based upon “ Robespierre’s Declaration of Rights”-—and such as he would have made that of 1793 had he not been overruled—would have given to France, and to all other countries that might adopt it, a real golden age, superior to any dreamt of by poets and sages of the past, or by any of our modern schools of socialism —so called. Indeed, socialism and socialists would never have been heard of. We should havo had the dking itself—not mere names and phrases,35 Hie, whose great soul to those just laws gave birth, Which, put in force, would make a heaven of earth ; He, on whose lips admiring senates hung, Whose heart his fellows’ sufferings ever wrung, (For pity grew there with increasing store, In midst of factions’ strife, and cannons’ roar,) Must not go down to dust, unwept, unsung, By whom he bled to save, and shone among— No! we'll not leave, to welter on his bier, The great and good—our glorious Robespierre, Without the meed of a melodious tear. Ill. Nor shall his murd’rers flourish by his fall, Their salt is sown !—we’ve sworn their doom to fate, ‘The furies shall pursue them, each, and all, Vengeance’ red hand shall smite them, soon or late ; Doom’d from this hour to infamies and pains, Abhorrence everlasting is their lot, No tear shall hallow their accurs’d remains, Mercy to them will be, to be forgot : Hate shall pursue them to their very names, (4) All works that laud them shall be food for flames. Hell’s blackest gloom shall be their funeral pall, And woe to who their mem’ries would instal ! Iv. Begin, then, sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring! Begin! and loudly, boldly, sweep the string, For millions yearn to know what ye can sing; Say, why such cruel destiny befel The brilliant sage and chief ye lov’d so well. Promulge to all the man of .God-like parts, Who liv’d and gave his life for human kind: Reveal, too, by what dark perfidious arts, Through what atrocities, and errors blind,36 Treason and gold so multiplied his foes, While staking life to save the commonweal ; That when th’ assassins in Convention rose, ‘Whose treasons he alone did dare reveal, The mighty athlete sank beneath their blows, Just as their reign of blood he sought to close.* Vv. But ere his bleeding form resolves to dust, Th’ Immortal Spirit pois’d on heaven-ward wing, Let Poeans sound for him, and young Sj. Just, Heaven’s hosts applauding as ye sweep the string ; Let your exulting strains, as loud ye sing, O’er earth be wafted in harmonious wave, That Godless men may know death had no sting For him who liv’d for life beyond the grave, Where to him still all kindred spirits cling, Like brave Saint Just, who with him freely gave All he held dear on earth our race to save, To that blest world, while borne along from this, Let strains extatic tell their coming bliss ; * All historians agree that the ‘‘ Reign of Terror” must have ended with Robespierre’s triumph, as it did with his fall. But they take care not to add that Robespierre songht to end it with a regime of strict jastice for all, and with patriotic laws to ensure general and individual prosperity and security; whereas his enemies’ triumph ended it, only by substituting another reign of terror infinitely worse than the first, but of which only democrats and friends of the poor were the victims. Of these, Mignet admits that not less than 100,000 were murdered within a few months after Robespierre’s death,—making, as that historian adds, “* The whole south of France a new 2nd September.” All these were massacred in cold blood by the reactionists of the middle-class party, without judge, jury, or trial of any kind. Caleu- Jating the effects mere names and titles have with the ignorant multitude, these monsters, assuming the pompons titles of “ Associations of Jesus and of the Sun,” took advantage of Robespierre’s death, and of the divisions it caused in the democratic ranks, to attempt, literally, the extermination of every honest man in France that would not passively subscribe to their usurpation of all power for their own class, and connive at their rapine and treason against the commonweal.—Never was France so infamously governed as it was by the middle classes under the Directorial government they installed over the grave of Robespierre,37 And be these strains re-echo’d round and round, Wherever martyr’d saints lie bleeding, bound—* Let their full hearts in raptures sweet be drown’d While bloody tyrants startle at the sound. VL Ere yet th’ Estates, convoked in ’Eighty-nine, Gave presage of the fierce impending storm, A sad presentiment bade us divine The direst fate for friends of true reform. lad we not seen in records of the past, All god-like benefactors of our race, End their careers in cruel deaths at last, Else, wear out life in exile and disgrace ? f * The late M. Marrast, president of the Ex-National Assembly, has often said to the author of this Elegy—Robespierre !—il etait un saint! No saint, ever canonized by a Pope of Rome, made a tithe of the efforts made by him for the redemption of the human race from sin and bondage. He had all the purity and disinterestedness of the best of them, without the ascetism, ignorance, and fanaticism which charac- terized too many ef the calendar saints. + We doubt if there be a single recorded instance in the whole history of civilized society, of any king, ruler, statesman, legislator, prophet, philosopher, orator, or other public man, seeking honestly, and with probabilities of success, the reign of justice, humanity, and fraternity for his fellow-countrymen, that was not overwhelmed with calumny, overpowered by factions, and ultimately either put to death, or forced to fly for his life and bury himself in poverty and obscurity, to escape the malice of the oppressors of his country.—But who were those oppressors ?—The same everywhere—the same now as ever—the idle rich who prey on their industrious fellow-creatures, through the inven- tions of rents, profits, interest of money, dividends, taxes, and so-forth —all arising out of usurpations of the soil, and making money grow money. The antient prophets and apostles suffered for causes not essentially different from those which destroyed the Gracchi at Rome, and Agis and Cleomenes, of Sparta. Romulus and Julius Cresar were victims of the same spirit that beheaded Pant, and sawed Isaiah asunder. Heraclides and Hippo, of Sicily, perished through landlordis:: and profit-mongering, in no other sense that did John the Baptist under Herod; St. Stephen by the Jewish rabble (let loose upon him by the middle-class Pharisees), and Socrates by the hypocritical ‘ property "= classes of Athens—nay, the Saviour himself, whose crucifixion was perpetrated by like influences on behalf of like interests. All honest reformers, spiritual or temporal, must necessarily be foes to landlordism38 Kings, prophets, tribunes, orators,—alike Philosophers, apostles, legislators, All—did the sword of persecution strike, The moment they became regenerators. Rome saw her Gracchi murder’d, and their cause, The cause of Rome herself, subdued by treason ; ‘Vain was the boasted empire of her laws, >Gainst men of spoil, who brook’d nor laws, nor reason. Did not her founder, Romulus, himself, « (5) Fall by Patrician hands that seized the soil— The lands of Veii—which in lieu of pelf, He wish’d to be his conquering soldiers’ spoil ? And mightier far—did not great Julius bleed, *Mid all his incens’d power, pomp, triumphs, guards, A victim of the Conscript Fathers’ greed,* Who grudg’d his troops their lands—bard-earn’d rewards. and usury—thongh not to the persons of landlords and usurers, The latter, however, havo ever considered attacks upon their system, to be attacks upon themselves: and, accordingly, they have crushed or mur- dered every honest reformer whose influence has hitherto threatened to supplant their own with the millions. And so it ever will be—until the millions shall become wise enough, and moral enough, to be able to dispose summarily of landlordism and usury, without farther preaching or teaching. * Any one who will take the trouble to read over a list of the laws proposed by Julivs Cesar, in any book of Roman antiquities (say “ Adams’ Antiquities,”) will see by their titles, that they were all essentially popular, and designed to protect the citizens from the cupidity of land-monopolists, usurers, and dilapidators of the public revenue. In this we have the true secret of his murder by the Patri- cian-conspirators, headed by Brutus, who, with all the stoic virtues attributed to him, was a rank aristocrat in grain, and a usurer to boot; for, according to the testimony of his friend Cicero, he used to charge interest for his money at the rate of 48 per cent., and gather it in, too, with the sabre’s edge, when necessary.—The whole story of Casar’s overthrow, as told by historians, is a tale fit only |for school-boys, debating-clubs and the stage. ‘The lives of him given by Suetonius und Plutarch, are wretchedly defective.39 And so in Sicily, in Persia, Greece, Where’er the just, the gen’rous, had gain’d power, Their anguish ended but at their decease : And so hath Fate ordain’d it to this hour. Dion’s and Dionysius’ factions join’d, To murder Heraclides and his friends,* Re-seiz’d the lands and wealth they had purloin’d From them who had us’d both for nobler ends, And gave up Sicily to feuds and fiends. Persia once had (then was her golden age,) The greatest of her sons for chief and master, But men of blood destroy’d her gifted sage, The glorious, the all-but christian Zoroaster. (6) Cleomenes and Agis, Sparta’s pride, With all their fame, their virtues, their blood-reyal ; For daring with their subjects’ rights to side, And make with them Lycurgus’ laws abide, Fell butcher’d by Aristocrats disloyal. Banish’d was Aristides, nam’d the just, Poison’d was Socrates, the good and wise; Flung from the Tarpeian rock, or roll’d in dust, Was every chief the Romans learn’d to prize, Some, whom th’ Athenians would but ostracize. * The secret of Heraclides’ murder is his having made the philosopher Hippo his confidant and mentor, and adopted, at the same time, his political philosophy, which taught, amongst other things, that poverty and slavery were convertible terms meaning the same thing—alias, that the poor must be always slaves, and the vast majority of every people must necessarily be poor, and remain so, as long as they allowed their territory, or land of their country, to be the private property of the few. The two factions of Dionysius and Dion, though at war with each other—one representing the aristocratic, the other the middle- class or citizen party—took fright at this doctrine, and forgetting their own quarrel for the moment, united and made common cause to put it down ia their usual way—ie,, by murder. They assassinated Hippo, as well as Heraclides.40 As fared these patriots in Rome and Greece, So fared our prophets in the Holy Land ; Likewise th’ Apostles after Christ’s decease, And all preferring God’s to Sin’s command. Most of them spear’d, or scourg’d, or ston’d to death, Greatest of all—Isaiah sawn asunder; But—since the Saviour had to yield life’s breath At others’ suff’rings need we, can we, wonder? For when did knaves, who prey on others’ labor, Ever shrink from murd’ring their victims’ friends ? When did that wretch fear God, or love' his neighbour, Who spurns the laws of both, for carnal ends ? VIL These, and a thousand such like facts before her, Little had France to hope for from her ’States ; How could men save her, whose ambitions tore her, To feed their rapine, lusts, and faction-hates Even if they revolutionized the Fates? Vers’d in a world of falsehood, fear, and strife, We saw the wicked everywhere prevail ; We fear’d in public, as in private life, The good must, likewise, through their virtues fail. The bad man scruples nought to raise himself, All means to him are lawful for that end ; To gain his lustful objects, power and pelf, He'll coolly sacrifice both foe and friend— Nay, he’ll be all things, or éo be pretend. Not so the good !—their pure and feeling hearts Oft spare, through clemency, their deadliest fues, Nor will they practise those politic arts, Needed so oft to parry treason’s blows, For safety “gainst th’ assassin’s hidden darts, On conscience, and that only, they repose. Hence, in the broad-day fight, ’twixt Right and Wrong, Where both alike profess the public good,41 Virtue must fall—the wicked prove the strong, Victory, in short, must to the bad belong ; Since e’re the “ situation’s” understood, They'll eke out fraud with treason and with blood. VOL Twas so in Thermidor :—great Robespierre (To save whom, millions forward would have rush’d), Fell by a horde he scorn’d too muck to fear, And whom, a dozen times, he might have crushed ; Could he, like them, have conscience set aside, Surpris’d his foes, and killed without remorse, They must have fall’a, with all their guilt and pride, And he were not, as now, a headless corse ! But so ’twill ever be, until the mass Shall judge their rulers by the act, not word ; Look to their ves and see what laws they pass, Not mind their phrases :-—folly most absurd. For, these the hypocrite will ever suit To time and place, to circumstances, fashions, * All things to all,”—to reap the golden fruit, Which fools bestow on knaves who pet their passions. Wisdom alone the mass can free and bless, With it no knave, nor tyrant, could enslave ’em, Sole key to liberty and happiness, Nor king, nor prophet can, without it, save ’em. Once know the laws whereby they should be rul’d, To freedom then, the road lies clear before ’em, No more by knaves, with names and creeds, be-fooPd, They'll crush, as traitors, all who dare ignore ’em, And make just laws the only rulers o’er ’em, A people wise, and master of just laws, For land, for credit, and for fair exchange ;* On rock of adamant hath bas’d its cause, Beyond all revolutions’ utmost range. * Whoever has read the well-known Secon Propositions of the Na- tional Reform League, will know what is bere meant by “ Just laws for land, for credit, and for fair exchange.” Whoever has not, ought to42 No despot from without will dare molest ’em, His troops would yield to liberty’s infection ; Nor traitor from within, though he detest ’em, Certain of death, as certain of detection, The moment plots matured to insurrection, Resistance to just laws reveals all traitors, And makes all peoples just exterminators. IX. We saw, too, in th’ Elections for the ’States, How Bourgeois, who for power were fierce aspirants, Breath’d nought of what to our sad lot relates, But what was ominous of future tyrants. We mark’d the ’States, their tone, their looks, behaviour, Three Orders, numb’ring just twelve hundred men, Most of them such as crucified the Saviour, Or, living now, would murder him again. read them, and study their contents. There can be no freedom, nor safety, much less prosperity, for any people, till they obtain just laws to regulate landed tenures, credit, and commercial interchange. With such laws there could not exist a bad Government, nor would oppression in any form be possible. Without such laws there cannot be a good Government, be its form, its administration, its institutes, or its fran- chises, what they may. Land, and whatever else the Deity has made for man’s use, must be expropriated by commutation, on equitable terms, for the general good, and never again be made private property. Credit must be accessible for every member of the community, on terms beneficial for the individual, and just and safe for the public. And all commerce must be gradually reduced to equitable exchange on the principle of equal values for equal values, measured by a labor, or corn standard. Robespierre was projecting these reforms, and had even vaguely an- nounced them, when conspiracies of long standing against his life, (but the execution of which had been retarded, because his existence was still judged necessary to the maintenance of order amongst the poorer classes),—broke out simultaneously, consolidating themselves into one general conspiracy of which the nucleus was in the Convention and Committees of Government, and which overthrew him on the night of the memorable 9th Thermidor. His later discourses and reports shew clearly that he had a vast'plan of social reform preparing for France, and only awaited a moment of calm and sunshine, to submit its details to the Convention. Indeed it was that very circumstance which preci- Pitated his doom. The Committees, the Convention—the drones they represented out of dvors—alias proprietary classes, dreaded, as these43 Proud Lords, Financiers, Prelates, Hommes de loi, Contractors, Bourgeois—knaves of every tint, Tax-farmers, Placemen, belching vive le rot, And prowling Usurers that would skin a flint, Whose God was gold; whose temple was the Mint. Mayhap, not twenty of the whole twelve hundred, Had ever earn’d an honest Louis d’or, Indeed, to answer you, they must have blunder’d, If asked, whence came their fortunes, and what for ? In brief, such knaves as muster’d at Versailles, (Convok’d by statecraft, under royal summons,) Could not be match’d from here to New South Wales, Save only by a British House of Commons. Three hundred Nobles, and three hundred Priests, Embodied Two Estarzs of France’s realm, The rest, with few exceptions, rav’nous beasts, Stood for the Tuirp, and soon usurp’d the helm ; These latter knaves, self-styled the Third Estate, Professed to represent th’ Industrial Class : As well to wolves might sheep entrust their fate : They fleeced us, and disfranchis’d us in mass. All who paid not a certain direct tax, They branded slaves—as citizens ignor’d— Yet should we toil, and fight, and low’r cur backs, To bear the weight of the whole plund’ring horde ! One hundred “ Citizens” had just one voice In choosing rogues, fools legislators call, But full nine-tentks were barr’d from e’en that choice, For, these were held no “ citizens” at all! classes dread still, all allusions to social reform.—How mnst they have trembled, then, when the first citizen of France, and the then greatest reputation in the world, was known to have taken the matter in hand! Nothing could have saved him, under such circumstances, from the land- lord and profit-mongor, short of a general insurrection of the people,— a thing impossible at the moment, as the masses were for the most part ignorant both of Robespierre’s benevolent projects on their behalf, and of the plots formed, in and out of the Convention, for his destruction, to prevent their development and execution.44 The same throughout! the Tribune and the Press, Were both proserib’d for men of our condition, And lest our grievances should claim redress, They maim’d our last sad right—that of Petition, So that our plaints and prayers became sedition! There’s not a Right to human beings known, By which men’s lives and fortunes are preserv’d, That these foul knaves did not point-blank disown. From God and nature’s laws alike they swerv’d. Their Constitution, and their fell Decrees,: Numb’ring, in all, two thousand and some odd, Worse than the works of Scribes and Pharisees, Fill’d France with murm’ring and the wrath of God. The sum and substance of their legislation, As shown, in every law, by its contents, Was, for the millions, utter confiscation. To gorge the thieves of Profits, Tax, and Rents, Suffice to say, in letter and in spirit, Th’ Assembly serv’d Perdition’s Chief right well ; They gave the drones our bee-hives to inherit, And for the bees, themselves, made France a hell.* x. Oh, Robespierre !—we owe thy injur’d Shade, This faint brief sketch of that unhallow’d crew, ’Gainst whom, for thirty moons, thy struggles made, Were such, till then, as mortal never knew |— Alone! unfriended! scorn’d! and bullied down ! *Mid interruptions, insults, yells and jeers, Thou battl’d’st Riches, Power, Prestige, Renown, For who could give thee but their prayers and tears. * See Note 7, headed “States Generals and the Bourgeoisie,” and my Life of Robespierre, vol. i., pages 251 to 257 inclusive, and pages 510 to 522 inclusive,45 Day after day, unconquer’d, at thy post, Disputing inch by inch, and clause by clause, Did’st thou confront that supercilious host; And, true as Nature to her own good cause, Oppose God’s justice to their impious laws. The world’s wide annals yield no parallel To thy vast works in the “ Constituent,”— Like thee, immortal !—not the gates of hell Shall e’er prevail against that monument. Yet are they but a portion of the store Of treasur’d wisdom thou hast giv’n to France ! No other statesman, known to Earth before, Hath left the world the like inheritance. There’s not a subject, interest, nor relation, That can affect us in our social state, Whereon thy genius, big with inspiration, Hath not been clear as Truth, and fix’d as Fate— Thy doctrine made for every age and nation, Can ne’er be obsolete, nor out of date. Yet (cruel destiny !) thy own reward For these—the priceless gems—thou did’st bequeath, Was first, as we shall see, to be abhor’d, And then to die a malefactor’s death i ‘Thy fame aspers’d by foulest villains’ breath ! But let us our sad narrative resume, While rend’ring this last homage at thy tomb. XI. As like breeds like—a “ Legislative” horde, The spawn of the “ Constituent’s ” Constitution Succeeded it: this, too, our rights ignor’d, And fully mateh’d its parent in pollution. The pseudo-patriots of this second gang, Profess’d grea: rev’rence for the “ Sov’reign” crowd, But ’stead of measures gave us pompous slang, *Gainst kings, prerogatives, and courtiers proud.46 To hear these orators, on either side, Whom their own journals puff, and Saviours dub, One might suppose they were their country’s pride, When they were but a vain debating club. For, not one measure did they even moot, (Though largely with sweet phrases they caress’d us) That could by possibility uproot, The monstrous social evils which oppress’d us. Without just laws on Credit, Money, Land, "T'was vain to talk of bett’ring our condition, Yet these were just what the Girondist band And sham-republicans, call’d rank sedition ! Alternately, these hypocrites play’d off, King against people—people against king ; Our purest chiefs they never ceas’d to scoff, Themselves, safe shelter’d under bourgeois’ wing ; To whom these parasites the hat would doff, In hopes of what th’ Elections might them bring. But us, who had no vote, the caitiffs spurn’d, They pilloried our friends in all their journals, ’Gainst Marat and great Robespierre they burn’d With fury, in their Weeklies and Diurnals. These chiefs, they knew, above all bribes and fear, Would stand by justice, or with justice fall; ILenee, “down with Marat!” “down with Robespierre !”’ ‘Was the one passion uppermost with all. XI. But soon the nation, fir’d by these great men, Against the fountain of so much pollution, Menac’d the traitors’ in their licens’d den, And loudly claim’d an honest Constitution For them whose blood had made the Revolution. Ah! now was come that crisis we foresaw— War threaten’d from without, and blood within, That working-men might only know, for law, The will of Plutocrats embalm’d in sin ; (For there’s the source wherein all wars begin !)47 Robbers, who rob God’s people of God’s earth, To make us beasts of burden for their use; Exprorreurs, who, ’mid plenty, give us dearth, Making us goods and chattels fronr our birth, That trading thieves may fatten on abuse. Now Europe’s despots, back’d by England’s gold, (Urg’d by our traitors!) march their hordes on France, When, lo! all Paris rises, young and old! And by “ the 10¢h of August” checks th’ advance ; Thus barring Louis from his last fell chance. On that great day, the traitors’ plots we foil’d— Pull’d down the throne—decreed the assembly’s fall. We taught the robbers, who had France despoiled, Forthwith to recognize the rights of all, In a Convention they were fore’d to call, xuL Alas! though Universal Suffrage won, Promis’d, at first, deliverance to bring; We soon found out, our work was but begun— We found we got the name, but not the thing ! The thoughtless multitude, by frauds misled, And slyly work’d on by our middle classes, Replae’d the old delinquents at our head, Who, in the two Assemblies, quash’d the masses, Spurn’d their complaints, and cudgel’d them like asses, Excepting some two dozen upright men, For whom the democrats, had won fit places, The new Convention, muster’d in its den, Seem’d but a transcript of the old black faces. (7) Oh! the heart sickens, and the brain is craz’d At thought of this Convention’s hideous deeds ; All hopes that universal suffrage rais’d, Now sleep in blood !—yet still the country bleeds, A reign of hell !—republic falsely call’d, Of Civic worth, and Christian virtues void; All good proscrib’d ! red crime in pow’r install’d— The true republicans, by shams destroy’d.48 Heav’ns! what an outrage on our race and age! Chief after chief! our champions murder’d, all! Tn vain we ransack Hist’ry’s darkest page To match in crime, O Robespierre ! thy fall, Now cov’ring France with one huge fun’ral pall. Seven hundred traitors, at thy risk, oft sav’d From fierce insurgent sections, basely league With noted brigands, thou hadst nobly brav’d, To save both law, and France, from worse than plague. Reptiles, who crawl’d to thee, three days before, Call’d thee their Cato—prais’d thy lips of fire— Who liken’d thee to Orpheus—nay, what’s more, To Orpheus taming wild beasts with his lyre. These reptile traitors, in great France’s name, League with a knot of miscreants steep’d in crime, (7a) To rob her of that chief of spotless fame, Whose works had rais’d her to the True Sublime. How durst ye, villains, claim for France to act, When nine in ten of all her virtuous sons Would, had they but conceiv’d your fiendish pact, Have stood by Henriot to point his guns ? No representatives of France are ye! But traitors foul and mercenary jobbers: Ye kill’d oar friends, but that ye might be free, To fetter us for Lords and Bourgeois robbers, Monsters! we vow to foil your black intents ; France shall escape the doom ye would award her : Ye fiends of Profits, and ye fiends of Rents, (8) We swear eternal vengeance to your Order! XIV. Say, Muse of History, who taught’st our youth, To look to thee with reverence for truth : What power sustained us through those dismal times, So full of treasons, plots, and impious crimes, When three Assemblies, faithless to their mission, Did, reckless of our interests and volition,43 Confiscate all our Rights without contrition, And murder who would save us from perdition— Assemblies of felonious knaves and jobbers, That sold the worth of France to licens’d robbers? Who was the Man of faith, and godlike parts, That planted courage in our sinking hearts— Taught us the pow’r of truth, with trust in God: To burst our chains, and break the tyrant’s rod. Fill’d us with hope, when all around was dark : Kindled to flame what was but freedom’s spark ; Drove back despair to Slavery’s long night, ) And bath’d our souls in floods of living light, + "Till God was manifest, and Heav’n in sight? ) O, Robespierre, when Hist’ry’s Muse is free, “ There ts the man!” she'll say, and point to thee. XV. - Yes, truly great, in thee of human kind, Did most concentre, those endowments ripe, Of head and heart, and conscience, all combined, That go to form the perfect human type. For God the Father, gave thee wisdom rare ; And God the Son, for human kind vast love ; And God the Holy Ghost, that gift most fair— Pare truth of Soul, which comes but from above.* * All mystery about the Trinity disappears at once, if, instead of listening to incomprehensible nonsense about ‘* Three Incomprehensibles in One Incomprehensible, and One Incomprehensible in Three Incom- prehensibles,” we simply regard the Deity from a three-fold point of view, or in a threo-fold relation to his human creation—First, as God, the fountain of all power, wisdom, and knowledge, alias, God, the architect of the visible or material creation.—Second, God, the fountain of all Jove and all the pure affections, in which point of view we stand towards him in the relation of children to their common father—and—Third, as the fountain of all truth, conscience, or conviction, in which respects he corresponds with what Christians call God the Holy Ghost. Without considering God in this three-fold capacity, it is impossible to make belief in the Deity the basis of any rational religion. A God with in- finite power, but without love or regard for his creatures, would convey only the idea of an infinite despot.—Such a God, even with love for his creatures (but a love regardless of truth, justice, or their own deserts) would give only the idea of an infinitely powerful, but capricious despot E50 ‘These gifts it was, that gave thee sway o’er France, With them, in vain, did fraudful art compete ; They crush’d whate’er obstructed thy advance, And laid the revolution at thy feet. Actors, more showy, graced our public stage, Through wealth’s prestige shot up in sudden blaze ; But soon discovered far behind the age, Have ceas’d, long since, to fix the public gaze. Other—more daring, Chiefs—we saw appear, Who filled, in vulgar eyes, a larger space, Yea, brighter seem’d, because th’ observer near, Took no account of distance, time, nor place. Men of the world, in whom the world beholds Its own reflex,—but burnish’d, magnified, Like natures,—only cast in larger moulds Than the gross herds that swell'd their trains of pride. How could blind wordlings know thy proper place; Thy spiritual doctrine, how revere? Thy views so vast, how could small minds embrace ? Thou mov'dst, for them, in too remote a sphere. When did a part e’er comprehend the whole? Or the dark worldling, see things not of earth? Can carnal natures read th’ inspir’d soul? Verily, not,—without a second birth. That second birth must come, e’er heav’n reveals Its true deliverers to a fallen race, Whose distance from their sphere sublime conceals —whom we might, or might not, worship in vain—as subordinates or menials worship earthly tyrants. Hence the necessity of adoring God in his third capacity—that of fountain, or origin of all good, accurding to conscience, without which we could have no idea of a religious basis for divine justice. Any man who takes the trouble to think, will find that unless we acknowledge God in this three-fold capacity, we might as well be Atheists as Theists, for not to believe in the existence of God at all—amounts practically to the same thing~ss to believe only in an omnipotent inexplicable being, who creates creatures without love er care for them, and endows them with consciousness of right and ‘wrong, and then is indifferent as to which they may practice.51 The living fire divine, their souls embrace. Baptismal fire of life, and light and grace, That five’s the giver of new birth to all On whom its quick’ning sparks ’mid darkness fall ; Its beams, God’s messengers, its light, sole source Whence Man’s regeneration runs its course. XVI. Behold two planets in those cloudless skies, One east, one west, with Heaven’s wide span between; And mark yon star, how close to one it lies, So close that nought, ’twould seem, could intervene. Now, those two bodies, planet and fixed star, Which, seemingly companions, space absorbs, Are, from each other, beyond distance, far, And, altogether, diff’rent kinds of orbs. The star than either planet looks less bright, And smaller than the one it seems to kiss; Yet ’tis a sun that floods whole worlds with light-= Worlds which sweep round it in the black Abyss. Those worlds are to that star, what to our sun Yon planets are, which shine but by his rays; Like them, within fixed, narrow bounds, they ran, And look to it for seasons, nights, and days. Those planets that would seem, to our dull sight, Lustres, hung wide apart, as heav’n’s broad swoop Are earth’s near neighbours, dark, like it, as night, And, with it, form but parts of one dull group. Yea, Earth, Sun, Planets,—all that they embrace, Though wide apart they seem, and distant far, Make but a speck in that unbounded space, Which yawns between us and yon flick’ring star. XVIL Thus in the little world of Man we find Small faculties look large, and dull ones bright, While those of luminous and massive mind Distance will dwarf and dim to vulgar sight, Which, like its worship’d idols, dark, confin’d, Kens not th’ increate from the borrow’d light,52 Likewise, as seen in planet and fix'd star, Minds will oft seem alike and near in place, While Beings, wholly different they are, And objects totally distinct, embrace Some near us—others, beyond distance, far Dissever’d by unfathomable space.* Thus was our Revolution born of men Of shining surface, and proportions rude, Enlarg’d, and blazon’d forth to vulgar ken, Through mists of ignorance or judgment crude. Convicted traitors now—but giants then They rul’d us crouch’d, like wild beasts in a den, Dazzling with borrow’d light that multitude, To whom all obligations they eschew’d. XVII. Such were our chiefs of every rank and faction, That grasp’d at wealth and power since "Eighty Nine, The chiefs alike of movement and re-action, Who knew not God, nor worship’d truth Divine ; Reform was in their eyes, a mere transaction To settle ’mongst themselves the “ mine” and “ thine :” All beyond that was “ theory”, ‘‘ abstraction”, To “entertain the lovers of moonshine.” Their politics was pelf—their law self-will— Their liberty free scope to kill and plunder— Their summum bonum was to feast and swill— Their majesty, to make the poor crouch under. Wretches !—they liv’d but for their lusts and maws, Reserving for the men of soul and heart— Who sought to plant God’s standard on our laws— ‘The cup of bitters and th’ assassin’s dart. * Robespierre’s nature and politics were as essentially different from those of Danton, Hebert, and of the factions they represented, as the inereate light of a fixed star is different from the borrowed light of a planet. Tueir distance, too, from the vulgar point of view, was in- caleubly greater than those of Danton, Hebert, &c., whose ideas were more on a Jevel with those of the gross herd. Of this, however, the said herd was unconscious; they believing that all persons who voted in the same lists, and sat in the same part of the Chamber, were of the same principles and politics.53 Fatal necessity—oh ! Robespierre !— Cast thee amongst these carnal men of note, Made thee, with them, in the same lists appear, And seem with them to think, and act, and vote, Yet was thy soul from their’s as far remote, (Even when thy signature to their’s stood near), As yon fix’d star—(our parable to quote)— Lies from those planets, or our own earth’s sphere. Such men were Bailly, Sieyes, Lafayette, The Bourgeois chiefs, that group’d round Mirabeau, The Gironde, Mountain, Hebert, and Chaumette, Ev’n Danton, Camille, Brissot, Vergniaud, All but the glorious few that round thee met, Like smaller brilliants round a larger set, Souls like thy own that heav'nly fire made glow, With all the holier passions of Rousseau. XIX, Foremost, and first of these, shone great Marat, Blazing, like Sirius, with true increate fire ;_ Then bold Saint Just, Couthon, and young Lebas, Who brav’d th’ assassins with indignant ire, Conscious that freedom must with thee expire. Thou crush’d, for life they knew no more desire, They scorn’d to live, and died with true éclat, Martyrs, at once, to Liberty and Law. These, with thy friends, the trusted Jacobins, And that brave Commune, link’d with thee in death, Wash’d with their blood, our Revolution’s sins Surrend’ring France’s rights, but with their breath. Such were the men, whose truly glorious deeds Redeem’d the horrors of our Revolution ; The men for whom the heart of France now bleeds, Oppress’d by carnage, treason, and pollution. These set apart, the rest seem’d born, design’d To scourge us, and their destiny fulfill’d, Not one memorial have they left behind, But of the wrongs they did—the blood they spill’d.54 Our Dantons, Talliens, Fouchés, and such like, Saw in convulsion but a bloody game, At which, whoe’er the hardest blows could strike, Might win a throne, a fortune, or a name. XX, Yes, Robespierre !—our Revolution owes All that ennobled it to thee and thine; Its crimes alone belong to thy fell foes, Who spurn’d all justice, human and divine. But for their treasons, France would now rejoice In Nature’s reign, vouchsaf’d her through thy laws, The world’s oppress’d would wake up at thy voice, And burst their chains amid a world’s applause. The rich, made safe in all they now possess, But barr’d from future rapines on the poor, Would gladly in thy statutes acquiesce, That they, and what they held, might rest secure The Poor, likewise thy Institutes would bless, Seeing they opened wide to them the door Of future acquisition, till distress Should flee their homes, nor ever haunt them more.* And thus, while all must gain, and none could lose, By smooth transitions, scarcely-felt degrees, The new and old would blend their forms and hues, Till all were chang’d by Nature’s mild decrees ; Just as seen, melting in dissolving views, The frowning fortress turns to groves of trees ; While as each picture with another blends, None see where one begins—the other ends. * Robespierre is the only legislator and statesman known to history that sought a radical reformation of society for the millions, through just fundamental laws on property, with analogous institutions to reach and purify every department of the state, so that the poorest man in France tight get rich through his own industry if he those to work, and have the whole armed power of society to guarantee to him the exclusive ownership and enjoyment of his earnings and accumulations, But at the same time he left to the rich all they had; depriving them only of the power of future robbery. To this end were directed articles 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, of his “ Declaration of Rights.”55 Arrived at last, were that beatic Reign So long foretold, of joy and peace on earth, When Greed, Lust, War, with all their hideous train, Would flee before a New Creation’s birth. When swords to ploughshares turned, to sickles, spears, Would glad all lands, all savage natures, tame ; And Earth, no more a wretched vale of tears, Would ring with praises of the Maker’s name. Then should we see for ever realized, Isaiah’s visions, and the heav’n of sages ; What Jesus taught, what Plato but surmis’d, Would be Man’s destiny for countless ages ; Philosophy would reign, but christianis’d, And thine the brightest name in hist’ry’s pages. XXL But, oh, the heavy change, now thou art gone ; Now thou ari gone, and never must return ; Thee, chieftain, thee, the poor, with looks so wan, The bondsman and the labourer will mourn. The outcasts of proud wealth, look’d down upon, On whose drear souls thy revelations shone, And all who with the love of country burn, Commingling their sad echoes round thy urn. No more will hearts beat high to hear thy voice: The young, the brave, the gen’rous hang the head ; With anguish rent, are they thou bad’st rejoice : With thee liv’d hope; with thee now hope is dead. As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint worm to the weanling flocks unshorn, Or east wind to young plants when fierce it blows, Or desert-sands to verdure newly born. Death-chilling as the frost to gay-rob’d flowers, (In summer’s dawn, when first the hawthorn blows) Whose life-warm fragrance, born of sun and showers, Exhales, mid icy dews, their last perfumes. Such, Robespierre, thy loss to freedom’s cause, So sweetly link’d by thee with Heav’n’s own laws, .56 XXIE Men of the Faubourgs! think ye of the past !— Join your condolence with our sorrowing muse, Beat up the vales and bid them hither cast Their bells and flow’rets of a thousand hues: Ye valleys deep, where Echo lonely sighs, To plaintive winds and woods, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks ; Throw hither all your quaint enamel’d eyes, That on the green turf suck the honied showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers : Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-tow, and pale jessamine, ‘The white-pink and the pansy freak’d with jet, And spring’s first-born, the fragrant violet ; The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine— With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroid’ry wears ; Bid Amaranthus all his beauties shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, ‘To strew the hearse where lies our sainted sage: At once the pride and sorrow of our age ; Mayhap, the bursting heart may find relief In these poor outward offices of grief. XXII, Immortal Citizen! Great heir of fame! (Who liv’d and died to raise a fallen race ;) Brave France will yet do justice to thy name, And ’mongst her Worthies, give thee foremost place. Shade of our lov’d—our venerated chief! We hold this curs’d Convention in abhorrence ; Nought, while it reigns, can we presage but grief, At seeing patriot blood still flow in torrents. Full well we know the secret of thy death— In striking thee they struck our bulwark down: Thou and the million breath’d but with one breath : Our lov’d Republic falls with thy renown.57 Yea, thy great Works now with thyself entomb’d, Our Ark of safety, as by thee design’d, Thy murd’rers, from the outset, had pre-doom’d, To sink with thee, in infamy enshrin’d. But they shall rise again renew’d in prime, Despite of treason black, and madness blind, They'll reign on earth, and live throughout all time, Big with the future weal of human kind. Fate hath them now, an embryo in Time’s womb, Conceiv’d in Chaos—Order waits their birth: But then they'll flourish with immortal bloom, Dispensing promis’d lands throughout the earth. Nor art thou dead, but glorying in new life, Benignant Spirit! now in realms of bliss : Too good for earth—th’ assassins’ cruel knife, But gave thee to a better world than this. XXIV. Weep no more, gallant Frenchmen, weep no more, For, Robespierre, your sorrow, is not dead ; Sunk though he be beneath a tide of gore, So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, But yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangl’d ore, Flames in the fore-head of the morning sky ; ‘Thus Robespierre sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him who walked the waves, ‘Where other groves and other streams along, With nectar pure his gory locks he laves, And hears the in-expressive nuptial song. In the blest kingdom, meek of joy and love, There entertain him all the saints above, With choral troops and sweet societies That sing, and singing in their glory move, And wipe the tear for ever from his eyes. XXvV. Now, Robespierre, thy comrades weep no more, Henceforth thou art.our Genius evermore;38 In thy large recompense, and wilt be good,* To all that war, with heav’n, ’gainst men of blood— Thy soul, no longer prison’d in thy clay, ‘Shall flame above us, like the orb of day ; Pillar of light to guide us, and to bless, ‘We'll hail thy beams throughout life’s wilderness ; Sure, if like thee, we hold, by God’s command, To win, at last, fair freedom’s promis’d land ; Thy god-like works, thy life’s pure sacrifice, Shall conquer, for the world, that priceless prize. Thy spirit, ever present, shall be ours, With it, we'll combat tyranny’s fell powers: Thy name our talisman, thy life our charm, While vengeance for thy death shall nerve our arm. Nor peace, nor truce, we’ll know with freedom’s fous, Till the last tyrant sinks beneath our blows ; Nor till God’s providence to earth recall’d, Shall bless our race, from bondage disenthrall’d. Yes, Robespierre, the foul ones of this earth Shall read their condemnation in thy fume ; Despots shall rue the hour that gave thee birth, And blench before the terrors of thy name. Meanwhile, thy cherish’d memory shall live, Green as these laurels strewn upon thy bier, And every fostive board this toast shall give, Embalming that sweet mem’ry with a tear: XXVIL We'll toast a name—a name for ever dear ‘To all that thirst for justice, far and near ; A name that once made many a freeman cheer, And many a gloomy despot quake with fear ! Of Heaven's own righteous laws the friend sincere— ‘To crime and tyranny a foe severe— One whose resplendent merits must appear Brighter and brighter every coming year ; _ * The word good is used here in the sense of propitious or tutelary as it is often by Spencer, Milton, and the olden poets,59 As time and progress shall make facts more clear, And truths divine illume our hemisphere ; These will reveal that helmsman without peer, Who taught what course republies ought to steer ; Whose virtues only Vice thought too austere ; Whose life was grand—whose death was sad and drear— For, bloody treason triumphed o’er his bier ! We'll, therefore, drink in silence, with a tear, The Man who in God’s service knew no fear— That Chief who lived and bled for all now here— “ Th’ Immortal Memory of Robespierre !”* NOTES IN ELUCIDATION OF THE ELEGY, AND OF THE DISSERTATION WHICH PRECEDES IY, [Nore 1.) Composition and. character of the Committees of Government at the time of Robespierre’s death, with some account of their principal accomplices in the Convention, §e., Sc. There were two committees of government—the committee of public safety, and the committee of general security. Their business was to superintend the ministers of each department, and exercise a strict surveillance upon all the administrations of the republic, over which they had entire control—subject only to the future approval of the Convention. The principal committee, that of publie safety, was the centre and focus of government. Upon it devolved all the great questions of state policy which affected the very existence of the republic, in respect of its enemies at home and abroad. The other committee, that of general security, was more occupied with matters of detail. Its functions were more limited; applying themselves chiefly to the surveillance of parties and matters of internal police, Each committee was theoreti- cally composed of twelve members ; but at times there were only nine, ten, or eleven, owing to resignations, neglect of filling up vacancies, &c. And as, owing to the frequent absence of members on important missions, and to extreme pressure of business, they found themselves obliged to * The last verse is purposely constructed with only the one rhyme, to be more easily remembered, and to serve as a prefatory speech, in proposing the memory of Robespierre at banquets, soirées, &c., cele- brated by the friends of political and social reform.60 lend each other their signatures in confidence—but a very small number —often not more than three—were really present at a time, and so formed a quoram. Saint Just complained, on the 9th Thermidor, in his Jast report, (which the conspirators would not suffer him to read), that latterly, Billaud Varennes, Barrere, and Collot d’ Herbois had mono~ Polized the whole power to themselves, through the absence of the other members; Couthon was absent from illness, St. Just with the armies, Robespierre driven away by studied insults, and the other members buried in their offices, attending to particular administrations. At the time of Robespierre’s death, the members of the committee of public safety, were Robespierre, Couthon, St. Just, Barrere, Billaud Varennes, Collot d’ Herbois, Carnot, Robert Lindet, the two Prieurs, (Prieur de la Marne, and Prieur de la Cote d’or), and St. André, Those of the committe of general security were Vadier, Amar, Jagot, Louis, (du bas Rhin) David, Lebas, Lavicompterie, Moise Bayle, Elie Lacoste, and Dubarraa. . Lamartine says ‘‘ Almost all the members of the committee of general security had an absolute respect for the opiniors of Robespierre.” This is not true. They co-operated with him only in so far as they required his help to overthrow the old royalist regime: but they had no sympathy whatever with, him in respect of the regime, or system, he sought to put in its place; with the exception of Lebas and David, the only two real friends he had on that committee. Of the remaining nine members, Lavicompterie was perbaps the only one not absolutely and personally hostile to him. All the rest wished for his destruction—more especially Vadier, Dubarran, Amar, and Louis (du bas Rhin). These co-operated zealously and indefatigably to that end with the hostile members of the committee of public safety, and with the brigand- terrorists of the Mountain, His system of virtue and clean hands, was abhorrent to those wretches, who had literally covered themselves with blood and corruption, and to whom the operations of tae guillotine was a standing theme for their sanguinary jests and pastime. They attended the executions on the Place de la Revolution, as men go to a theatre, a race-course, or a concert—for the sake of pleasure and excitement, The conversations they were in the habit of indulging in on those occasions, show them to have been thoroughly demoralized miscreants. Robespierre regarded them with horror; and they regarded him with mixed feelings of fear and hatred, lest he should open the vials of public wrath on their impurities, as he did on the 8th Thermi- dor, and as he would have done Jong before, but that he saw they were secretly supported by his own treacherous colleagues of the committee of public safety, and by Danton’s and Hebert’s sanguinary and corrupt factions in the convention. aes Of the members of the committee of public safety, Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just, were the only three that sought an honest and permanent republic for the nation at large—more especially for the industrious and virtuous majority, least able to take care of themselves, On that account, they got the name of Messieurs de la haute main, and that of “ the politicals,” from their colleagues in the two committees—61 Billand, Collot, and Barrere were called ‘ the Revolutionists” ; by which was meant that they had no particular political creed, beyond what might best serve their own political interests for the hour; which was to conform to what they knew to be the secret policy of the Conven- tions for the time being—violent and murderous towards the aristocracy and royalists when the convention saw its dangers in this direction, but still more violent and blood-thirsty towards the friends of democracy, when the convention saw the regime of the middle-classes in greater danger from that direction. Considering the revolution to have oo other end than that of deposing the aristocracy, in order to make the middle-classes the predominant and all-absorbing power of the state, these “ revolutionists ” (Barrere, Billaud, and Collot) were the main- spring of all the sanguinary measures of the epoch. It was they that directed all the pro-consulships, or commissionerships, in the depart~ ments; which, through their agents, Barras and Freron, at Toulon, Fouché at Nevers, (and afterwards at Lyons with Dubois Crancé, and Collot, himself) Tallien and Isabean, at Bourdeanx, Carrier, at Nantes, Joseph Lebon in Alsace, &c, covered France with scaffolds, blood, and ruins. These men could not endure the idea of Robespierre seeking to make the working-classes aspire to any higher destiny than that of making themselves sanguinery instruments in the hands of the middle-classes, (when the latter wanted rough work done for them in the way of overthowing thrones, bastiles, and feudal institutes)—and then subsiding into soulless slaves and drudges, after having done the middle~ classes’ bloody work for them. They wanted Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just, to be, like themselves, base instruments of rapine, murder, and atheism, for the aggrandisement of the counting-house vampires of France, at the expense of both aristocracy and people. But finding they had souls, hearts, and consciences above such an atrocious mission, they resolved to murder them upon the first favourable opportunity. To do that, they must have a majority both of the committees and of the conven- tion itself—and they must choose a time when the mass of the people divided, dispirited, and off their guard, would not be able to come to the rescue of their friends till it was too late to save them;—and when, also, Robespierre’s moderating power in the republic was no longer necessary to keep the masses in subjection to the authority of government. Up to the 9th Thermidor, the committees and the con- vention could not have risked a conflict with Robespierre, without letting Joose upon themselves the royalists on the one hand, and the factions of Hebert and the lower-classes of fanatics on the other. But after the overthow of the factions of Danton and Hebert on the one hand, and the decimation of the royalists and aristocrats on the other (both wecomplished through Robespierre’s moral ascendancy), they saw their way towards destroying Robespierre himself, by arraying against him the remnants of all the factions overthrown, and by making him appear as the author of all the massacres rendered inevitable and perpetrated hy themselves. During ihe six weeks preceding the 9th Thermidor, they murdered in Paris alone, nearly 1,300 victims by the revolutionary tribunal. Many of these were of Robespierre's party; some personal62 friends, like the family of Madame St. Amaranthe, with whom he had been in communication to stop the reign of terror. The Committees threw all this blood, wickedly shed, on Robespierre, who had no more to do with their operations than the man in the moon—he having abandoned them in disgust and horror, when he saw they were massacreing innocent victims out of doors, and sparing traitors and criminals of the blackest die in the Convention itself; of the proofs of whose guilt their hands were full. Barrere, Billand, and Collot were the prime movers in this conspiracy to destroy the party of virtue by their own crimes; but the remaining members of the committee of public safety were by no means innocent. There is abundant evidence to show that Carnot, Lindet, Cambon, and one of the Prieurs, if not both, were anxious to destroy Robespierre, and worked secretly for that end with Billaud, Collot, Barrere, and the majority of the other committee. These members, (who got the name of gens d’ examin, or mere administrators,) were complete tools of the middle-classes—even more so than Billaud or Collot—but too cautious to commit themselves either for or against Robespierre, until the last moment, when success appeared no longer doubtful, They ostensibly confined themselves to their bureaux or offices, but knew, through Barrere & Co., all that was passing, and waited the favourable moment to declare themselves against Robespierre. For this purpose they connived at all Barrere’s tergiversations (he had belonged in turns to all the factions of the republic), at all the sanguinary excesses of Billaud and Collot in the departments, through their pleni- potentiary commissioners, at all the arbitrary arrests and persecutions of patriots by the committee of general security, and at all the horrible crimes of the mountain terrorists—hoping to unite them all in one grand onslaught on Robespierre, so as to break up the republic, and hand over France onca more to the murderous middle-classes, whose instruments they were, Thus, Robespierre had but two steadfast friends on each committee— Couthon and St. Just on the committee of public safety, Lebas and David on the other. All the rest, composing the great majority, were dead against him; so that, but for his immense popularity and influence ont of doors, he would have been nemo and nil in the government, as he was virtually such, in the Convention itself, There never was a greater mistake than to suppose (as most people do, from the misrepresentations of history), that Robespierre was all-powerful both in the Convention and on the Committees of government.—Qn the contrary, he had no power at all over either; not even toleration, except in so far as his moral ascendancy out of doors made them afraid of him-—and rendered it politic on their part to treat him openly with respect, in order to cover themselves with the mantle of his popularity, while at the same time, they threw upon him all the odium of their own acts. In other words, they made use of his name and co-membership to consecrate their own crimes in the eyes of France; while secretly, and in the cabinet, they opposed and counteracted all his benevolent designs for Franca, not allowing him to carry out a single glorious project of the wany he had conceived for the industrious classes. In these respects,63 Carnot, Lindet, Cambon, St. André, and the two Prienrs were not a jot more favourable to him than were Billaud, Collot, and Barrere, or the majority of the other committee. They all envied him his reputa- tion and popularity—they all undermined him by calumny and secret, agencies—they all worked, under-hand, against him ia the Convention, more especially with the suppleans, or newly-elected members. In a word, they all sought his death, and cared not how it was brought about, provided it did not involve their own. Of this the proof is, that they all concurred in the 9th Thermidor ; and, to accomplish his destruction on that day, made common cause with every faction in the Convention they had helped him to pull down—even with all the infamous brigands of the Dantonist and Hebertist factions, whom they knew to be steeped in blood and crime—whom they knew to have conspired and plotted the assassination of Robespierre within a few paces of his own domicile, and whom, some of them have since openly confessed, in published pamphiets, they would have sent to the guillotine for their brigandism and murders in the provinces, but that their co-operation was necessary to them in order to overthrow Robespierre and democracy, They all wanted to expel the working-classes from their share of the government, to oust them from the constitution and from the state, as aliens—and to re-instal, in omnipotence, the middle-classes, who they expected would let them enjoy in quiet the plunder and positions they had won in the revolution, out of gratitude for their services in making them once more the masters of France. This is the true solution of Robespierre’s death, He was not overthrown (as history falsely represents) by the “Thermidorians”, nor even by a majority of the committees. He was overthrown by a general combination of all the factions leagued together in and ont of the Convention—the committees and Mountain-terrorists only taking the lead, partly through fear of Robespierre getting them punished for their crimes, but chiefly with a view to purchase forgiveness for them, from the Convention and the middle~-classes—who, they well knew, would not condone them on any terms short of murdering Robes- pierre and his friends, and breaking up the democracy altogether. Indeed, the Convention and the middle-classes would have had him murdered long before, but that his moral influence was indispensable to them in keeping the mass of the poorer classes from breaking out into general insurrection, and revenging themselves by massacre and pillage for the innumerable wrongs and sufferings cansed to them by the said middle-classes and by their three traitorous assemblies—the Consti- tuent, the Legislative, and the Convention. By getting the democratic constitution of 1793 decreed, on the one hand, and by causing several beneficent measures of practical relief to the poor to be ordained, on the other—such as the providing of gra- tuitous education for the young—the bestowal of state annuities upon the superannuated—and the voting of a part of the’ national domains, and of two milliards (2,000,000,000 francs) to the “defenders of the country,”—i.¢., to the brave volunteers of the army, who had sacrificed their homes to save the country from invasion and dismemberment—by. these and similar means, Robespierre's party had kept the masses from