and this force was not greater than the emergency required; for the multitude pursued the carriages far on the road to Blois.

the guilty deputies had suffered the just punishment of their treason; and the power of the Mountain was broken for ever. These At Amboise the prisoners learned that events strengthened the aversion with which Tours was ready to receive them. The the system of Terror and the authors of that stately bridge was occupied by a throng of system were regarded. One member of the people, who swore that the men under whose Convention had moved, that the three prisorule the Loire had been choked with corpses, ners of Oléron should be put to death; anothshould have full personal experience of the er, that they should be brought back to Paris, nature of a noyade. In consequence of this and tried by a council of war. These pronews, the officers who had charge of the positions were rejected. But something was criminals made such arrangements that the conceded to the party which called for severicarriages reached Tours at two in the morn-ty. A vessel which had been fitted out with ing, and drove straight to the post-house. Fresh horses were instantly ordered, and the travellers started again at full gallop. They had in truth not a moment to lose; for the alarm had been given; lights were seen in motion, and the yells of a great multitude, disappointed of its revenge, mingled with the sound of the departing wheels.

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

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

great expedition at Rocheforte touched at Oléron, and it was announced to Collot and Billaud that they must instantly go on board. They were forthwith conveyed to Guiana, where Collot soon drank himself to death with brandy. Billaud lived many years, shunning his fellow-creatures and shunned by them; and diverted his lonely hours by teaching parrots to talk. Why a distinction was made between Barère and his companions in guilt, neither he nor any other writer, as far as we know, has explained. It does not appear that the distinction was meant to be at all in his favor; for orders soon arrived from Paris, that he should be brought to trial for his crimes before the criminal court of the department of the Upper Charente. He was accordingly brought back to the continent, and confined during some months at Saintes, in an old convent which had lately been turned into a jail.

While he lingered here, the reaction which had followed the great crisis of Thermidor met with a temporary check. The friends of the house of Bourbon, presuming on the indulgence with which they had been treated after the fall of Robespierre, not only ventured to avow their opinions with little disguise, but at length took arms against the Convention, and were not put down till much blood had been shed in the streets of Paris. The vigilance of the public authorities was therefore now directed chiefly against the Royalists, and the rigor with which the Jacobins They had not been long in this situation had lately been treated was somewhat relaxwhen news came that the Jacobins of Paris ed. The Convention, indeed, again resolved had made a last attempt to regain ascendency that Barère should be sent to Guiana. But in the state, that the hall of the Convention this decree was not carried into effect. The had been forced by a furious crowd, that one prisoner, probably with the connivance of of the deputies had been murdered and his some powerful persons, made his escape from head fixed on a pike, that the life of the Presi- Saintes and fled to Bordeaux, where he redent had been for a time in imminent dan-mained in concealment during some years. ger, and that some members of the legisla- There seems to have been a kind of underture had not been ashamed to join the riot- standing between him and the government,

ers.

But troops had arrived in time to pre- that, as long as he hid himself, he should not vent a massacre. The insurgents had been be found, but that, if he obtruded himself on put to flight; the inhabitants of the disaffect- the public eye, he must take the consequences ed quarters of the capital had been disarmed; of his rashness.

While the constitution of 1795, with its deaux when he received intelligence that the Executive Directory, its Council of Elders, mob of the town designed him the honor of and its Council of Five Hundred, was in op- a visit on the ninth of Thermidor, and would eration, he continued to live under the ban of probably administer to him what he had in the law. It was in vain that he solicited, his defence of his friend Lebon, described as even at moments when the politics of the substantial justice under forms a little harsh. Mountain seemed to be again in the ascend- It was necessary for him to disguise himself ant, a remission of the sentence pronounced by the Convention. Even his fellow-regicides, even the authors of the slaughter of Vendémiarie and of the arrests of Fructidor, were ashamed of him.

in clothes such as were worn by the carpenters of the dock. In this garb, with a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he made his escape into the vineyards which surround the city, lurked during some days in a peasAbout eighteen months after his escape ant's hut, and, when the dreaded anniversary from prison, his name was again brought be- was over, stole back into the city. A few fore the world. In his own province he still months later he was again in danger. He retained some of his early popularity. He now thought that he should be nowhere so safe had, indeed, never been in that province since as in the neighborhood of Paris. He quitthe downfall of the monarchy. The moun- ted Bordeaux, hastened undetected through taineers of Gascony were far removed from those towns where four years before his life the seat of government, and were but imper- had been in extreme danger, passed through fectly informed of what passed there. They the capital in the morning twilight, when knew that their countryman had played an none were in the streets except shop-boys takimportant part, and that he had on some oc-ing down the shutters, and arrived safe at casions promoted their local interests; and they stood by him in his adversity and in his disgrace, with a constancy which presents a singular contrast to his own abject fickleness. All France was amazed to learn, that the department of the Upper Pyrenees had chosen the proscribed tyrant a member of the Council of Five Hundred. The council which, like our House of Commons, was the judge of the election of its own members, refused to admit him. When his name was read from Barère assures us that these events almost the roll, a cry of indignation rose from the broke his heart; that he could not bear to see benches. 'Which of you,' exclaimed one of France again subject to a master; and that, the members,' would sit by the side of such if the representatives had been worthy of a monster?''Not I, not I answered a that honorable name, they would have arrestcrowd of voices. One deputy declared, that ed the ambitious general who insulted them. he would vacate his seat if the hall were pol- These feelings, however, did not prevent him luted by the presence of such a wretch. The from soliciting the protection of the new govelection was declared null, on the ground ernment, and from sending to the First Conthat the person elected was a criminal skulk-sul a handsome copy of the Essay on the Libing from justice; and many severe reflections erty of the Seas.

the pleasant village of St.Ouen on the Seine. Here he remained in seclusion during some months. In the mean time Bonaparte returned from Egypt, placed himself at the head of a coalition of discontented parties, covered his designs with the authority of the Elders, drove the Five Hundred out of their hall at the point of the bayonet, and became absolute monarch of France under the name of First Consul.

were thrown on the lenity which suffered him The policy of Bonaparte was to cover all to be still at large. the past with a general oblivion. He belongHe tried to make his peace with the Di-ed half to the Revolution and half to the rerectory by writing a bulky libel on England, entitled, The Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He printed three thousand copies, and, in order to defray the expense of publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousand francs. The book came out; but nobody bought it, in consequence, if Barère is to be believed, of the villainy of Mr. Pitt, who bribed the Directory to order the Reviewers not to notice so formidable an attack on the maritime greatness of perfidious Albion.

action. He was an upstart, and a sovereign ; and had therefore something in common with the Jacobin, and something in common with the Royalist. All, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who were disposed to support his gov ernment, were readily received-all, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who showed hostility to his government, were put down and punished. Men who had borne a part in the worst crimes of the Reign of Terror, and men who had fought in the army of Condé, were to be found close together, both in his antechambers and in his dungeons. He decBarère had been about three years at Bor-orated Fouché and Maury with the same

cross. He sent Aréna and Georges Cadou- | Republican armies had been great. Napodal to the same scaffold. From a govern- leon himself, when a young soldier, had been ment acting on such principles, Barère easily delighted by those compositions, which had obtained the indulgence which the Directory had constantly refused to grant. The sentence passed by the Convention was remitted, and he was allowed to reside at Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in the most honorable form; and he remained, during some time, under the special supervision of the police. He hastened, however, to pay his court at the Luxembourg palace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was honored with a few dry and careless words by the master of France.

Here begins a new chapter of Barère's history. What passed between him and the Consular government cannot, of course, be so accurately known to us as the speeches and reports which he made in the Convention. It is, however, not difficult, from notorious facts, and from the admissions scattered over these lying Memoirs, to form a tolerably accurate notion of what took place. Bonaparte wanted to buy Barère: Barère wanted to sell himself to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; and there was an immense interval between what was offered and what was demanded.

much in common with the rhapsodies of his favorite poet, Macpherson. The taste, indeed, of the great warrior and statesman was never very pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and his proclamations, are sometimes, it is true, masterpieces in their kind; but we too often detect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and of the Carmagnoles. It is not strange, therefore, that he should have qeen desirous to secure the aid of Barère's pen. Nor was this the only kind of assistance which the old member of the Committee of Public Safety might render to the Consular government. He was likely to find admission into the gloomy dens in which those Jacobins whose constancy was to be overcome by no reverse, or whose crimes admitted of no expiation, hid themselves from the curses of mankind. No enterprise was too bold or too atrocious for minds crazed by fanaticism, and familiar with misery and death. The government was anxious to have information of what passed in their secret councils; and no man was better qualified to furnish such information than Barère.

a spy.

For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barère as a writer and as But Barère was it possible that he would submit to such a degradation? Bad as he was, he had played a great part. He had belonged to that class of criminals who fill the world with the renown of their crimes; he had been one of a cabinet which had ruled France with absolute power, and made war on all Europe with signal success. Nay, he had been, though not the most powerful, yet, with the single exception of Robespierre, the most conspicuous member of that cabinet. His name had been a household word at Moscow and at Philadelphia, at Edinburgh and at Cadiz. The blood of the Queen of France, the blood of the greatest orators and philosophers of France, was on his hands. He had spoken; and it had been decreed, that the plough should pass over the great city of Lyons. He had spoken again; and it had been decreed, that the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. When depravity is placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe. place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino and Borgia; not with hireling scribblers and police runners.

Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance on his own genius, were not only great, but extravagant, looked with scorn on the most effeminate and dependent of human minds. He was quite capable of perpetrating crimes under the influence either of ambition or of revenge; but he had no touch of that accursed monomania, that craving for blood and tears, which raged in some of the Jacobin chiefs. To proscribe the Terrorists would have been wholly inconsistent with his policy; but of all the classes of men whom his comprehensive system included, he liked them the least; and Barère was the worst of them. This wretch had been branded with infamy, first by the Convention, and then by the Council of Five Hundred. The inhabitants of four or five great cities had attempted to tear him limb from limb. Nor were his vices redeemed by eminent talents for administration or legislation. It would be unwise to place in any honorable or important post a man so wicked, so odious, and so little qualified to discharge high political duties. At the same time, there was a way in which it seemed likely that he might be of use to the government. The First Consul, as he afterwards acknowledged, greatly overrated Barère's powers as a writer. The effect which the Reports of the Committee of Public Safety had produced by the camp-fires of the it was proposed to him to publish a Journal

'Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast ;
But shall the dignity of vice be lost?'

His

So sang Pope; and so felt Barère. When

It has been often asserted, we know not

in defence of the Consular government, rage and shame inspired him for the first and last on what grounds, that Barère was employed time with something like courage. He had by the government, not only as a writer, but filled as large a space in the eyes of mankind as a censor of the writings of other men. as Mr. Pitt or General Washington; and he This imputation he vehemently denies in his was coolly invited to descend at once to the Memoirs; but our readers will probably level of Mr. Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, agree with us in thinking, that his denial with agonies of envy, that a wide distinction leaves the question exactly where it was. was made between himself and the other Thus much is certain, that he was not restatesmen of the Revolution who were sum-strained from exercising the office of censor moned to the aid of the government. Those by any scruple of conscience or honor; for statesmen were required, indeed, to make he did accept an office, compared with which large sacrifices of principle; but they were that of censor, odious as it is, may be called not called on to sacrifice what, in the opin- an august and beneficent magistracy. He ion of the vulgar, constitutes personal dig- began to have what are delicately called relanity. They were made tribunes and legislations with the police. We are not sure that tors, ambassadors and counsellors of state, we have formed, or that we can convey, an ministers, senators, and consuls. They exact notion of the nature of Barère's new might reasonably expect to rise with the calling. It is a calling unknown in our counrising fortunes of their master; and, in truth, try It has indeed often happened in Engmany of them were destined to wear the land, that a plot has been revealed to the badge of his Legion of Honor and of his government by one of the conspirators. The order of the Iron Crown; to be arch-chan-informer has sometimes been directed to cellors and arch-treasurers, counts, dukes, carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to and princes. Barère, only six years before, let the evil design come to full maturity. As had been far more powerful, far more widely soon as his work is done, he is generally renowned, than any of them; and now, while snatched from the public gaze, and sent to they were thought worthy to represent the some obscure village, or to some remote majesty of France at foreign courts, while colony. The use of spies, even to this exthey received crowds of suitors in gilded an- tent, is in the highest degree unpopular in techambers, he was to pass his life in mea- England; but a political spy by profession, suring paragraphs, and scolding correctors of is a creature from which our island is as free the press. It was too much. Those lips as it is from wolves. In France the race is which had never before been able to fashion well known, and was never more numerous, themselves to a No, now murmured expostu-more greedy, more cunning, or more savage, lation and refusal. I could not 'these than under the government of Bonaparte. are his own words-'abase myself to such a Our idea of a gentleman in relations with point as to serve the First Consul merely in the Consular and Imperial police may per the capacity of a journalist, while so many haps be incorrect. Such as it is, we will try insignificant, low, and servile people, such to convey it to our readers. We image to as the Treilhards, the Ræderers, the Le- ourselves a well-dressed person, with a soft bruns, the Marets, and others whom it is su-voice and affable manners. His opinions are perfluous to name, held the first place in this those of the society in which he finds himgovernment of upstarts.' self, but a little stronger. He often comThis outbreak of spirit was of short dura- plains, in the language of honest indignation, tion. Napoleon was inexorable. It is said, that what passes in private conversation finds indeed, that he was, for a moment, half in- its way strangely to the government, and clined to admit Barère into the Council of cautions his associates to take care what State; but the members of that body remon- they say when they are not sure of their comstrated in the strongest terms, and declared pany. As for himself, he owns that he is that such a nomination would be a disgrace indiscreet. He can never refrain from speakto them all. This plan was therefore relin- ing his mind; and that is the reason that he quished. Thenceforth Barère's only chance is not prefect of a department. of obtaining the patronage of the government was to subdue his pride, to forget that there had been a time when, with three words, he might have had the heads of the three Consuls, and to betake himself, humbly and industriously, to the task of composing lampoons on England and panegyrics on Bonaparte.

In a gallery of the Palais Royal he overhears two friends talking earnestly about the King and the Count of Artois. He follows them into a coffee-house, sits at the table next to them, calls for his half-dish and his small glass of cognac, takes up a Journal, and seems occupied with the news. His neighbors go on talking without restraint,

and he proceeded to atone for his republican heresies by sending republican throats to the guillotine.

Among his most intimate associates was a Gascon named Demerville, who had been employed in an office of high trust under the

and in the style of persons warmly attached to the exiled family. They depart, and he follows them half round the boulevards till he fairly tracks them to their apartments, and learns their names from the porters. From that day every letter addressed to either of them is sent from the post-office to the police, Committee of Public Safety. This man was and opened. Their correspondents become fanatically attached to the Jacobin system of known to the government, and are carefully politics, and, in conjunction with other enwatched. Six or eight honest families, in thusiasts of the same class, formed a design different parts of France, find themselves at against the First Consul. A hint of this once under the frown of power, without design escaped him in conversation with being able to guess what offence they have Barère. Barère carried the intelligence to given. One person is dismissed from a pub- Lannes, who commanded the Consular lic office; another learns with dismay that Guards. Demerville was arrested, tried, and his promising son has been turned out of the beheaded; and among the witnesses who Polytechnic school. appeared against him was his friend Barère.

Next, the indefatigable servant of the state falls in with an old republican, who has not changed with the times, who regrets the red cap and the tree of liberty, who has not unlearned the Thee and Thou, and who still subscribes his letters with Health and Fraternity.' Into the ears of this sturdy politician our friend pours forth a long series of complaints. What evil times! What a change since the days when the Mountain governed France! What is the First Consul but a King under a new name? What is this Legion of Honor but a new aristocracy? The old superstition is reviving with the old tyranny. There is a treaty with the Pope, and a provision for the clergy. Emigrant nobles are returning in crowds, and are better received at the Tuileries than the men of the tenth of August. This cannot last. What is life without liberty? What terrors has death to the true patriot? The old Jacobin catches fire, bestows and receives the fraternal hug, and hints that there will soon be great news, and that the breed of Harmodius and Brutus is not quite extinct. The next day he is a close prisoner, and all his papers are in the hands of the government.

The account which Barère has given of these transactions is studiously confused and grossly dishonest. We think, however, that we can discern, through much falsehood and much artful obscurity, some truths which he labors to conceal. It is clear to us that the government suspected him of what the Italians call a double treason. It was natural that such a suspicion should attach to him. He had, in times not very remote, zealously preached the Jacobin doctrine, that he who smites a tyrant deserves higher praise than he who saves a citizen. Was it possible that the member of the Committee of Public Safety, the king-killer, the queen-killer, could in earnest mean to deliver his old confederates, his bosom friends, to the executioner, solely because they had planned an act which, if there were any truth in his own Carmagnoles, was in the highest degree virtuous and glorious? Was it not more probable that he was really concerned in the plot, and that the information which he gave was merely intended to lull or to mislead the police? Accordingly spies were set on the He was ordered to quit Paris, and not to come within twenty leagues till he received further orders. Nay, he ran no small risk of being sent, with some of his old friends,

spy.

government so far, that he was not only permitted, during some years, to live unmolested, but was employed in the lowest sort of political drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while he was preparing to visit the south of France, he received a letter which deserves to be inserted. It was from Duroc, who is well known to have enjoyed a large share of Napoleon's confidence and favor.

To this vocation, a vocation compared with which the life of a beggar, of a pick-to Madagascar. pocket, of a pimp, is honorable, did Barère He made his peace, however, with the now descend. It was his constant practice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new party, to pay his footing with the heads of old friends. He was at first a Royalist; and he made atonement by watering the tree of liberty with the blood of Louis. He was then a Girondist; and he made atonement by murdering Vergniaud and Gensonné. He fawned on Robespierre up to the eighth of Thermidor; and he made atonement by moving, on the ninth, that Robespierre should be beheaded without a trial. He was now enlisted in the service of the new monarchy;

'The First Consul, having been informed that Citizen Barère is about to get out for the country, desires that he will stay at Paris.

Citizen Barère will every week draw up a