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of Lisbon, would have. The energy for man's horses and saddles, without compensawhich the Jacobin administration is praised tion, is of all modes of governing the simwas merely the energy of the Malay who plest and most obvious. Of its morality we maddens himself with opium, draws his knife, at present say nothing. But surely it requires and runs a-muck through the streets, slash- no capacity beyond that of a barbarian or a ing right and left at friends and foes. Such child. By means like those which we have has never been the energy of truly great ru- described, the Committee of Public Safety lers; of Elizabeth, for example, of Oliver, or undoubtedly succeeded, for a short time, in of Frederick. They were not, indeed, scru- enforcing profound submission, and in raising pulous. But, had they been less scrupulous immense funds. But to enforce submission than they were, the strength and amplitude by butchery, and to raise funds by spoliation, of their minds would have preserved them is not statesmanship. The real statesman is from crimes, such as those which the small he who, in troubled times, keeps down the men of the Committee of Public Safety took turbulent without unnecessarily harassing the for daring strokes of policy. The great well-affected; and who, when great pecuniaQueen who so long held her own against for- ry resources are needed, provides for the pubeign and domestic enemies, against temporal lic exigencies without violating the security and spiritual arms; the great Protector who of property, and drying up the sources of fugoverned with more than regal power, in de- ture prosperity. Such a statesman, we are spite both of royalists and republicans; the confident, might, in 1793, have preserved the great King who, with a beaten army and an independence of France, without shedding a exhausted treasury, defended his little do- drop of innocent blood, without plundering a minions to the last against the united efforts single warehouse. Unhappily, the Republic of Russia, Austria, and France; with what was subject to men who were mere demascorn would they have heard that it was im- gogues, and in no sense statesmen. They possible for them to strike a salutary terror could declaim at a club. They could lead a into the disaffected, without sending school-rabble to mischief. But they had no skill to boys and school-girls to death by cart-loads and boat-loads!

conduct the affairs of an empire. The want of skill they supplied for a time by atrocity and blind violence. For legislative ability, fiscal ability, military ability, diplomatic ability, they had one substitute, the guillotine. Indeed their exceeding ignorance, and the barrenness of their invention, are the best excuse for their murders and robberies. We really believe that they would not have cut so many throats, and picked so many pockets, if they had known how to govern in any other way.

The popular notion is, we believe, that the leading Terrorists were wicked men, but, at the same time, great men. We can see nothing great about them but their wickedness. That their policy was daringly original is a vulgar error. Their policy is as old as the oldest accounts which we have of human misgovernment. It seemed new in France, and in the eighteenth century, only because it had been long disused, for excellent reasons, by the en- That, under their administration, the war lightened part of mankind. But it has al- against the European Coalition was successways prevailed, and still prevails, in savage fully conducted, is true. But that war had and half savage nations, and is the chief been successfully conducted before their elecause which prevents such nations from mak-vation, and continued to be successfully con ing advances towards civilization. Thousands ducted after their fall. Terror was not the of deys, of beys, of pachas, of rajahs, of na- order of the day when Brussels opened its bobs, have shown themselves as great mas-gates to Dumourier. Terror had ceased to ters of statecraft as the members of the Com- be the order of the day when Piedmont and mittee of Public Safety. Djezzar, we imagine, was superior to any of them in their own line. In fact, there is not a petty tyrant in Asia or Africa so dull or so unlearned as not to be fully qualified for the business of Jacobin police and Jacobin finance. To behead people by scores without caring whether they are guilty or innocent; to wring money out of the rich by the help of jailers and executioners; to rob the public creditor, and to put him to death if he remonstrates; to take loaves by force out of the bakers' shops; to clothe and mount soldiers by seizing on one man's wool and linen, and on another JUNE, 1844. 17

Lombardy were conquered by Buonaparte. The truth is, that France was saved, not by the Committee of Public Safety, but by the energy, patriotism, and valor of the French people. Those high qualities were victorious in spite of the incapacity of rulers whose administration was a tissue, not merely of crimes, but of blunders.

We have not time to tell how the leaders of the savage faction at length began to avenge mankind on each other; how the craven Hébert was dragged wailing and trembling to his doom; How the nobler Danton, moved by a late repentance, strove in

vain to repair the evil which he had wrought, and half redeemed the great crime of September, by manfully encountering death in the cause of mercy.

with an evil eye. Republicans of France!' yelled the renegade Girondist, the old enemy of the Mountain-Republicans of France! the Brissotines led you by gentle means to Our business is with Barère. In all those slavery. The Mountain leads you by strong things he was not only consenting, but eager- measures to freedom. Oh! who can count ly and joyously forward. Not merely was he the evils which a false compassion may proone of the guilty administration. He was the duce? When the friends of Danton musman to whom was especially assigned the of tered courage to express a wish that the Confice of proposing and defending outrages on vention would at least hear him in his own. justice and humanity, and of furnishing to defence, before it sent him to certain death, atrocious schemes an appropriate garb of atro- the voice of Barère was the loudest in opposicious rhodomontade. Barère first proclaimed tion to their prayer. When the crimes of from the tribune of the Convention, that ter- Lebon, one of the worst, if not the very worst, ror must be the order of the day. It was by of the vicegerents of the Committee of PubBarère that the Revolutionary Tribunal of lic Safety, had so maddened the people of the Paris was provided with the aid of a public Department of the North, that they resorted accuser worthy of such a court, the infamous to the desperate expedient of imploring the Fouquier Tinville. It was Barère who, when protection of the Convention, Barère pleaded one of the old members of the National As- the cause of the accursed tyrant, and threatsembly had been absolved by the Revolutiona- ened the petitioners with the utmost vengeance ry Tribunal, gave orders that a fresh jury of the government. These charges,' he said, should be summoned. Acquit one of the have been suggested by wily aristocrats. National Assembly!' he cried. The tribu- The man who crushes the enemies of the pecnal is turning against the Revolution.' It is ple, though he may be hurried by his zeal unnecessary to say that the prisoner's head into some excesses, can never be a proper obwas soon in the basket. It was Barère who ject of censure. The proceedings of Lebon moved that the city of Lyons should be des- may have been a little harsh as to form.' troyed 'Let the plough,' he cried from the One of the small irregularities thus gently tribune, 'pass over her. Let her name cease censured was this; Lebon kept a wretched to exist. The rebels are conquered; but are man a quarter of an hour under the knife of they all exterminated? No weakness. No the guillotine, in order to torment him, by mercy. Let every one be smitten. Two reading to him, before he was despatched, a words will suffice to tell the whole. Lyons letter, the contents of which were supposed to made war on liberty; Lyons is no more.' be such as would aggravate even the bitterWhen Toulon was taken Barère came for-ness of death. But what,' proceeded Baward to announce the event. The conquest,' said the apostate Brissotine, won by the Mountain over the Brissotines, must be commemorated by a mark set on the place where Toulon once stood. The national thunder must crush the house of every trader in the When Camille Desmoulins, long distinguished among the republicans by zeal and ability, dared to raise his eloquent voice After this, it would be idle to dwell on against the Reign of Terror, and to point out facts which would indeed, of themselves, sufthe close analogy between the government fice to render a name infamous, but which which then oppressed France and the gov-make no perceptible addition to the great inernment of the worst of the Cæsars, Barère famy of Barère. It would be idle, for examrose to complain of the weak compassion ple, to relate how he, a man of letters, a which tried to revive the hopes of the aristo- member of an Academy of Inscriptions, was cracy. 'Whoever,' he said, 'is nobly born, foremost in that war against learning, art, is a man to be suspected. Every priest, and history which disgraced the Jacobin govevery frequenter of the old court, every law-ernment; how he recommended a general conyer, every banker, is a man to be suspected. flagration of libraries; how he proclaimed Every person who grumbles at the course that all records of events anterior to the Revwhich the Revolution takes, is a man to be olution ought to be destroyed; how he laid suspected. There are whole castes already waste the abbey of St. Denis, pulled down tried and condemned. There are callings which carry their doom with them. There are relations of blood which the law regards

town.'

rère, " is not permitted to the hatred of a republican against aristocracy? How many generous sentiments atone for what may perhaps seem acrimonious in the prosecution of public enemies? Revolutionary measures are always to be spoken of with respect. Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is not lawful to lift.'

monuments consecrated by the veneration of ages, and scattered on the wind the dust of ancient Kings. He was, in truth, seldom so

well employed as when he turned for a mo- | bottle of iced champagne are to De Béranment from making war on the living to make ger. As soon as he began to speak of slaughwar on the dead.

Equally idle would it be to dilate on his sensual excesses. That in Barère, as in the whole breed of Neros, Caligulas, and Domitians whom he resembled, voluptuousness was mingled with cruelty; that he withdrew, twice in every decade, from the work of blood to the smiling gardens of Clichy, and there forgot public cares in the madness of wine, and in the arms of courtesans, has often been repeated. M. Hippolyte Carnot does not altogether deny the truth of these stories, but justly observes that Barère's dissipation was not carried to such a point as to interfere with his industry. Nothing can be more true. Barère was by no means so much addicted to debauchery as to neglect the work of murder. It was his boast that, even during his hours of recreation, he cut out work for the Revolutionary Tribunal. To those who expressed a fear that his exertions would hurt his health, he gaily answered that he was less busy than they thought. The guillotine,' he said, does all; the guillotine governs.' For ourselves, we are much more disposed to look indulgently on the pleasures which he allowed to himself, than on the pain which he inflicted on his neighbors.

“Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedisset Tempora sævitiæ, claras quibus abstulit urbi Illustresque animas, impune ac vindice nullo."

An immoderate appetite for sensual gratifications is undoubtedly a blemish on the fame of Henry the Fourth, of Lord Somers, of Mr. Fox. But the vices of honest men are the virtues of Barère.

ter, his heart seemed to be enlarged, and his fancy to become unusually fertile of conceits and gasconades. Robespierre, St Just, and Billaud, whose barbarity was the effect of earnest and gloomy hatred, were, in his view, men who made a toil of a pleasure. Cruelty was no such melancholy business, to be gone about with an austere brow and a whining tone; it was a recreation, fitly accompanied by singing and laughing. In truth, Robespierre and Barère might be well compared to the two renowned hangmen of Louis, the Eleventh. They were alike insensible of pity, alike bent on havoc. But, while they murdered, one of them frowned and canted, the other grinned and joked. For our own part, we prefer Jean qui pleure to Jean qui rit.

In the midst of the funereal gloom which overhung Paris, a gaiety stranger and more ghastly than the horrors of the prison and the scaffold distinguished the dwelling of Barère. Every morning a crowd of suitors assembled to implore his protection. He came forth in his rich dressing-gown, went round the antechamber, dispensed smiles and promises among the obsequious crowd, addressed himself with peculiar animation to every handsome woman who appeared in the circle, and complimented her in the florid style of Gascony on the bloom of her cheeks and the lustre of her eyes. When he had enjoyed the fear and anxiety of his suppliants he dismissed them, and flung all their memorials unread into the fire. This was the best way, he conceived, to prevent arrears of business from accumulating. Here he was only an imitator. Cardinal Dubois had been in the habAnd now Barère had become a really cru-it of clearing his table of papers in the same el man. It was from mere pusillanimity that way. Nor was this the only point in which he had perpetrated his first great crimes. But the whole history of our race proves that the taste for the misery of others is a taste which minds not naturally ferocious may too easily acquire, and which, when once acquired, is as strong as any of the propensities with which we are born. A very few months had sufficed to bring this man into a state of mind in which images of despair, wailing, and death, had an exhilarating effect on him, and inspired him as wine and love inspire men of free and joyous natures. The cart creaking under its daily freight of victims, ancient men, and lads, and fair young girls, the binding of the hands, the thrusting of the head out of the little national sash-window, the crash of the axe, the pool of blood beneath the scaffold, the heads rolling by scores in the panier-these things were to him what Lalage and a cask of Falernian were to Horace, what Rosette and a

we could point out a resemblance between the worst statesman of the monarchy and the worst statesman of the republic.

Of Barère's peculiar vein of pleasantry a notion may be formed from an anecdote which one of his intimate associates, a juror of the revolutionary tribunal, has related. A courtesan who bore a conspicuous part in the orgies of Clichy, implored Barère to use his power against a head-dress which did not suit hey style of face, and which a rival beauty was trying to bring into fashion. One of the magistrates of the capital was summoned, and received the necessary orders. Aristocracy, Barère said, was again rearing its front. These new wigs were counter-revolutionary. He had reason to know that they were made out of the long fair hair of handsome aristocrats who had died by the national chopper. Every lady who adorned herself with the relics of

criminals might justly be suspected of inciv-terview with Robesbierre. Suspicions arose; ism. This ridiculous lie imposed on the au- she was searched; and two knives were found thorities of Paris. Female citizens were sol- about her. She was questioned, and spoke of emnly warned against the obnoxious ringlets, the Jacobin domination with resolute scorn and were left to choose between their head- and aversion. It is unnecessary to say that dresses and their heads. Barère's delight at she was sent to the guillotine. Barère dethe success of this facetious fiction was quite clared from the tribune that the cause of these extravagant; he could not tell the story with- attempts was evident. Pitt and his guineas out going into such convulsions of laughter had done the whole. The English Governas made his hearers hope that he was about to ment had organized a vast system of murder, choke. There was something peculiarly tick- had armed the hand of Charlotte Corday, and ling and exhilarating to his mind in this gro- had now, by similar means, attacked two of tesque combination of the frivolous with the the most eminent friends of liberty in France. horrible, of false locks and curling-irons with It is needless to say, that these imputations spouting arteries and reeking hatchets. were not only false, but destitute of all show of truth. Nay, they were demonstrably absurd; for the assassins to whom Barère referred rushed on certain death, a sure proof that they were not hirelings. The whole wealth of England would not have bribed any sane person to do what Charlotte Corday did. But when we consider her as an enthusiast, her conduct is perfectly natural. Even those French writers who are childish enough to believe that the English Government contriv ed the infernal machine, and strangled the Emperor Paul, have fully acquitted Mr. Pitt of all share in the death of Marat and in the attempt on Robespierre. Yet on calumnies so futile as those which we have mentioned, did Barère ground a motion at which all Christendom stood aghast. He proposed a decree that no quarter should be given to any English or Hanoverian soldier.* His Carmagnole was worthy of the proposition with which it concluded. That one Englishman should be spared, that for the slaves of George, for the human machines of York, the vocabulary of our armies should contain such a word as generosity, this is what the National Convention cannot endure. War to the death against every English soldier. If last year, at Dunkirk, quarter had been

But though Barère succeeded in earning the honorable nicknames of the Witling of Terror, and the Anacreon of the Guillotine, there was one place where it was long remembered to his disadvantage, that he had, for a time, talked the language of humanity and moderation. That place was the Jacobin Club. Even after he had borne the chief part in the massacre of the Girondists, in the murder of the Queen, in the destruction of Lyons, he durst not show himself within that sacred precinct. At one meeting of the society, a member complained that the committee to which the supreme direction of affairs was entrusted, after all the changes which had been made, still contained one man who was not trustworthy. Robespierre, whose influence over the Jacobins was boundless, undertook the defence of his colleague, owned there was some ground for what had been said, but spoke highly of Barère's industry and aptitude for business. This seasonable interposition silenced the accuser: but it was long before the neophyte could venture to appear at the club.

At length a masterpiece of wickedness, unique, we think, even among Barère's great achievements, obtained his full pardon even from that rigid conclave. The insupportable tyranny of the Committee of Public Safety *M. Hippolyte Carnot does his best to excuse had at length brought the minds of men, and this decree. His abuse of England is merely laugheven of women, into a fierce and hard tem-able. England has managed to deal with enemies per, which defied or welcomed death. The of a very different sort from either himself or his life which might be any morning taken away, hero. One disgraceful blunder, however, we think it right to notice. in consequence of the whisper of a private enM. Hippolyte Carnot asserts that a motion similar emy, seemed of little value. It was some- to that of Barère was made in the English Parliathing to die after smiting one of the oppress-ment by the late Lord Fitzwilliam. This assertion ors; it was something to bequeath to the surviving tyrants a terror not inferior to that which they had themselves inspired. Human nature, hunted and worried to the utmost, now turned furiously to bay. Fouquier Tinville was afraid to walk the streets; a pistol was snapped at Collot D'Herbois; a young girl, animated apparently by the spirit of Charlotte Corday, attempted to obtain an in

is false. We defy M. Hippolyte Carnot to state the date and terms of the motion of which he speaks. We do not accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; but we confidently accuse him of extreme ignorance and temerity. Our readers will be amused to learn on what authority he has ventured to publish such a fable. He quotes, not the Journals of the Lords, not the Parliamentary_Debates; but a ranting message of the Executive Directory to the Five Hundred, a message, too, the whole meaning of which he has utterly misunderstood.

refused to them when they asked it on their | the sword unless they surrender at discretion knees, if our troops had exterminated them in twenty-four hours. The English, of all instead of suffering them to infest our for- course, will be admitted to no capitulation tresses by their presence, the English Gov- whatever. With the English we have no ernment would not have renewed its attack treaty but death. As to the rest, surrender on our frontiers this year. It is only the dead at discretion in twenty-four hours, or death, man who never comes back. What is this these are our conditions. If the slaves remoral pestilence which has introduced into sist, let them feel the edge of the sword.' our armies false ideas of humanity? That And then he waxed facetious. 'On these the English were to be treated with indul- terms the Republic is willing to give them a gence was the philanthropic notion of the lesson in the art of war.' At that jest, some Brissotines; it was the patriotic practice of hearers worthy of such a speaker, set up a Dumourier. But humanity consists in ex- laugh. Then he became serious again. terminating our enemies. No mercy to the 'Let the enemy perish,' he cried; 'I have execrable Englishman. Such are the senti- already said it from this tribune. It is only ments of the true Frenchman; for he knows the dead man who never comes back. Kings that he belongs to a nation revolutionary as will not conspire against us in the grave. nature, powerful as freedom, ardent as the Armies will not fight against us when they saltpetre which she has just torn from the en- are annihilated. Let our war with them be trails of the earth. Soldiers of liberty, when a war of extermination. What pity is due to victory places Englishmen at your mercy, slaves whom the Emperor leads to war under strike! None of them must return to the ser- the cane; whom the King of Prussia beats vile soil of Great Britain; none must pollute to the shambles with the flat of the sword; the free soil of France.' and whom the Duke of York makes drunk with rum and gin?' And at the rum and gin the Mountain and the galleries laughed again.

The Convention, thoroughly tamed and silenced, acquiesced in Barère's motion without debate. And now at last the doors of the Jacobin Club were thrown open to the disciple who had surpassed his masters. He was admitted a member by acclamation, and was soon selected to preside.

For a time he was not without hope that his decree would be carried into full effect. Intelligence arrived from the seat of war of a sharp contest between some French and English troops, in which the Republicans had the advantage, and in which no prisoners had been made. Such things happen occasionally in all wars. Barère, however, attributed the ferocity of this combat to his darling decree, and entertained the Convention with another Carmagnole.

If Barère had been able to affect his purpose, it is difficult to estimate the extent of the calamity which he would have brought on the human race. No government, however averse to cruelty, could, in justice to its own subjects, have given quarter to enemies who gave none. Retaliation would have been, not merely justifiable, but a sacred duty. It would have been necessary for Howe and Nelson to make every French sailor whom they took walk the plank. England has no peculiar reason to dread the introduction of such a system. On the contrary, the operation of Barere's new law of war would have been more unfavorable to 'The Republicans,' he said, 'saw a divi- his countrymen than to ours; for we believe sion in red uniform at a distance. The red- that, from the beginning to the end of the coats are attacked with the bayonet. Not war, there never was a time at which the one of them escapes the blows of the Repub-number of French prisoners in England was licans. All the red-coats have been killed. not greater than the number of English priNo mercy, no indulgence, has been shown towards the villains. Not an Englishman whom the Republicans could reach is now living. How many prisoners should you guess that we have made? One single prisoner is the result of this great day.'

soners in France; and so, we apprehend, it will be in all wars while England retains her maritime superiority. Had the murderous decree of the Convention been in force from 1794 to 1815, we are satisfied that, for every Englishman slain by the French, at least And now this bad man's craving for blood three Frenchmen would have been put to the had become insatiable. The more he quaff- sword by the English. It is, therefore, not ed, the more he thirsted. He had begun as Englishmen, but as members of the great with the English; but soon he came down society of mankind, that we speak with indigwith a proposition for new massacres. All nation and horror of the change which Bathe troops,' he said, ' of the coalesced tyrants rère attempted to introduce.

The mere

in garrison at Condé, Valenciennes, Le slaughter would have been the smallest part Quesnoy, and Landrecies, ought to be put to of the evil. The butchering of a single un