domains. The deputies on mission in the departments had already incited a great number of communes to seize the moveable property of the churches, which, they said, was not necessary for religion, and which, moreover, like all public property, belonged to the state, and might therefore be applied to its wants. Fouché had sent several chests of plate from the department of the Allier. A greater quantity had arrived from other departments. This example, followed in Paris and the environs, soon brought piles of wealth to the bar of the Convention. All the churches were stripped, and the communes sent deputations with the gold and silver accumulated in the shrines of saints, or in places consecrated by ancient devotion. They went in procession to the Convention, and the rabble, indulging their fondness for the burlesque, caricatured in the most ludicrous manner the ceremonies of religion, and took as much delight in profaning, as they had formerly done in celebrating, them. Men, wearing surplices and copes, came singing Hallelujahs, and dancing the Carmagnole, to the bar of the Convention; there they deposited the host, the boxes in which it was kept, and the statues of gold and silver; they made burlesque speeches, and sometimes addressed the most singular apostrophes to the saints themselves. "O you!" exclaimed a deputation from St. Denis, "O you, instruments of fanaticism, blessed saints of all kinds, be at length patriots, rise en masse, serve the country by going to the Mint to be melted, and give us in this world that felicity which you wanted to obtain for us in the other!" These scenes of merriment were followed all at once by scenes of reverence and devotion. The same persons who trampled under foot the saints of Christianity bore an awning; the curtains were thrown back, and, pointing to the busts of Marat and Lepelletier, "These," said they, "are not gods made by men, but the images of worthy citizens assassinated by the slaves of kings." They then filed off before the Convention, again singing Hallelujahs and dancing the Carmagnole; carried the rich spoils of the altars to the Mint, and placed the revered busts of Marat and Lepelletier in the churches, which thenceforth became the temples of a new worship.

At the requisition of Chaumette, it was resolved that the metropolitan church of Notre-Dame should be converted into a republican edifice, called the Temple of Reason. A festival was instituted for all the Décadis, to supersede the Catholic ceremonies of Sunday. The mayor, the municipal officers, the public functionaries, repaired to the Temple of Reason, where they read the declaration of the rights of man and the constitutional act, analyzed the news from the armies, and related the brilliant actions which had been performed during the decade. A mouth of truth, resembling the mouths of denunciation which formerly existed at Venice, was placed in the Temple of Reason, to receive opinions, censures, advice, that might be useful to the public. These letters were examined and read every Décadi; a moral discourse was delivered, after which pieces of music were performed, and the ceremonies concluded with the singing of republican hymns. There were in the temple two tribunes, one for aged men, the other for pregnant women, with these inscriptions: Respect for old age-Respect aud attention for pregnant women.

The first festival of Reason was held with pomp on the 20th of Brumaire (the 10th of November). It was attended by all the sections, together with the constituted authorities. A young woman represented the goddess of Reason. She was the wife of Momoro, the printer, one of the friends of Vincent, Ronsin, Chaumette, Hebert, and the like. She was dressed in a white drapery; a mantle of azure blue hung from her shoulders; her flowing hair was covered with the cap of liberty. She sat upon an antique seat, intwined with ivy and borne by four citizens. Young girls dressed in white, and crowned with roses, preceded and followed the goddess. Then came the busts of Lepelletier and Marat, musicians, troops, and all the armed sections. Speeches were delivered, and hymns sung in the Temple of Reason ;* they then proceeded to the Convention, and Chaumette spoke in these terms:

"Legislators! Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its bleared eyes could not endure the brilliancy of the light. This day an immense concourse has assembled

* " Beauty without modesty was seen usurping the place of the Holy of Holies."-Beauregard. E. VOL. II.

20

beneath those Gothic vaults, which, for the first time, re-echoed the truth. There the French have celebrated the only true worship, that of liberty, that of reason. There we have formed wishes for the prosperity of the arms of the republic. There we have abandoned inanimate idols for reason, for that animated image, the masterpiece of Nature." As he uttered these words, Chaumette pointed to the living goddess of Reason. The young and beautiful woman descended from her seat and went up to the president, who gave her the fraternal kiss, amidst universal bravoes and shouts of The Republic for ever! Reason for ever! Down with fanaticism! The Convention, which had not yet taken any part in these representations, was hurried away, and obliged to follow the procession, which returned to the Temple of Reason, and there sang a patriotic hymn. An important piece of intelligence, that of the retaking of Noirmoutier from Charette,* increased the general joy, and furnished a more real motive for it than the abolition of fanaticism.

It is impossible to view with any other feeling than disgust these scenes without devotion, without sincerity, exhibited by a nation which changed its worship, without comprehending either the old system, or that which they substituted for it. When is the populace sincere? When is it capable of comprehending the dogmas which are given to it to believe? What does it in general want? Large assemblages, which gratify its fondness for public meetings, symbolic spectacles, which incessantly remind it of a power superior to its own; lastly, festivals in which homage is paid to those who have made the nearest approach to the good, the fair, the great-in short, temples, ceremonies, and saints. Here were temples, Reason, Marat, and Lepelletier ! It was assembled, it adored a mysterious power, it celebrated those two men. All its wants were satisfied, and it gave way to them on this occasion no otherwise than it always gives way.

If then we survey the state of France at this period, we shall see that never were more restraints imposed at once on that inert and patient part of the population on which political experiments are made. People dared no longer express any opinion. They were afraid to visit their friends, lest they might be compromised with them, and lose liberty and even life. A hundred thousand arrests and some hundreds of condemnations, rendered imprisonment and the scaffold ever present to the minds of twenty-five millions of French. They had to bear heavy taxes. If, by a perfectly arbitrary classification, they were placed on the list of the rich, they lost for that year a portion of their income. Sometimes, at the requisition of a representative or of some agent or other, they were obliged to give up their crops, or their most valuable effects in gold and silver. They durst no longer display any luxury, or indulge in noisy pleasures. They were no longer permitted to use metallic money, but obliged to take and give a depreciated paper, with which it was difficult to procure such things as they needed. They were forced, if shopkeepers, to sell at a fictitious price, if buyers, to put up with the worst commodities, because the best shunned the naximum and the assignats; sometimes, indeed, they had to do without either, because good and bad were alike concealed. They had but one

* "When the republicans retook Noirmoutier, they found M. d'Elbée at death's door from his wounds. His wife might have got away, but she would not leave him. When the republicans entered his chamber, they said, So, this is d'Elbée !' Yes,' replied he, 'you see your greatest enemy, and, had I strength to fight, you should not have taken Noirmoutier; or at least you should have purchased it dearly. They kept him five days, and loaded him with insults. At length, exhausted by suffering, he said, Gentlemen, it is time to conclude your examination-let me die.' As he was unable to stand, they placed him in an arm-chair, where he was shot. His wife, on seeing him carried to execution, fainted away. A republican officer showing some pity, supported her, but he also was threatened to be shot if he did not leave her. She was put to death the next day. The republicans then filled a street with fugitives and suspected inhabitants, and massacred the whole." -Memoirs of the Marchioness de Larochejaquelein. E.

t

"Every tenth day a

revolutionary leader ascended the pulpit, and preached atheism to the be wildered audience. Marat was universally deified, and even the instrument of death was sanctified by the name of the Holy Guillotine! On all the public cerneteries this inscription was placedDeath is an eternal sleep. The comedian Monert, in the church of St. Roche, carried impiety to its you exist,' said he, avenge your injured name! I bid you defiance. You remain silent. You dare not launch your thunders. Who after this will believe in your existence?""

height.

'God, if

Alison. E.

sort of black bread, common to the rich as to the poor, for which they were obliged to contend at the doors of the bakers, after waiting for several hours. Lastly, the names of the weights and measures, the names of the months and days, were changed; there were but three Sundays instead of four; and the women and the aged men were deprived of those religious ceremonies which they had been accustomed to attend all their lives.*

Never had power overthrown with greater violence the habits of a people. To threaten all lives, to decimate all fortunes, to fix compulsorily the standard of the exchanges, to give new names to all things, to abolish the ceremonies of religion, is indisputably the most atrocious of tyrannies, if we do not take into account the danger of the state, the inevitable crisis of commerce, and the spirit of system inseparable from the spirit of innovation.

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.

RETURN OF DANTON-PART OF THE MOUNTAINEERS TAKE PITY ON THE PROSCRIBED, AND DECLARE AGAINST THE NEW WORSHIP-DANTONISTS AND HEBERTISTS-POLICY OF THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC WELFAREROBESPIERRE DEFENDS DANTON, AND CARRIES A MOTION FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE NEW WORSHIP-LAST IMPROVEMENTS MADE IN THE DICTATORIAL GOVERNMENT-ENERGY OF THE COMMITTEE AGAINST ALL THE PARTIES-ARREST OF RONSIN, HEBERT, THE FOUR DEPUTIES WHO FABRICATED THE SPURIOUS DECREE, AND THE ALLEGED AGENTS OF THE FOREIGN POWERS.

SINCE the fall of the Girondins, the Mountaineer party, left alone and victorious, had begun to be disunited. The daily increasing excesses of the Revolution tended to complete this division, and an absolute rupture was near at hand. Mahy deputies had been moved by the fate of the Girondins, of Bailly, of Brunet, and of Houchard. Others censured the violence committed in regard to religion, and deemed it impolitic and dangerous. They said that new superstitions would start up in the place of those which people were anxious to destroy; that the pretended worship of reason was no better than atheism; that atheism could not be adapted to a nation; and that these extravagances must be instigated and rewarded by the foreign enemy. On the contrary, the party which held sway at the Cordeliers and at the commune, which had Hebert for its writer, Ronsin and Vincent for its leaders, Chaumette and Clootz for its apostles, insisted that its adversaries meant to resuscitate a moderate faction, and to produce fresh dissensions in the republic.

Danton had returned from his retirement. He did not express his sentiments, but the leader of a party would in vain attempt to conceal them. They pass from mouth to mouth, and soon become manifest to all minds. It was well known that he would fain have prevented the execution of the Girondins, and that he had been

"The services of religion were now universally abandoned. The pulpits were deserted throughout the revolutionary districts; baptisms ceased; the burial service was no longer heard; the sick received no communion, the dying no consolation. The village bells were silent. Sunday was obliterated. Infancy entered the world without a blessing; age quitted it without a hope."Alison. E.

deeply moved by their tragic end. It was well known that, though a partisan and an inventor of revolutionary means, he began to condemn the blind and ferocious employment of them; that he was of opinion that violence ought not to be prolonged beyond the existence of danger; and that, at the close of the current campaign, and after the entire expulsion of the enemy, it was his intention to endeavour to re-establish the reign of mild and equitable laws. None dared yet attack him in the tribunes of the clubs. Hebert dared not insult him in his paper of Père Duchesne; but the most insidious rumours were orally circulated; insinuations were thrown out against his integrity; the peculations in Belgium were referred to with more boldness than ever; and some had even gone so far as to assert, during his seclusion at Arcis-sur-Aube, that he had emigrated and carried his wealth along with him. With him were associated, as no better than himself, his friend CamilleDesmoulins, who had participated in his pity for the Girondins, and defended Dillon and Philippeaux, who had just returned from La Vendée, enraged against the disorganizers, and quite ready to denounce Ronsin and Rossignol. In his party were likewise classed all those who had in any way displeased the ardent revolutionists, and their number began to be very considerable.

Julien of Toulouse, who was already strongly suspected on account of his connexion with d'Espagnac and the contractors, had completely committed himself by a report on the federalist administrations, in which he strove to palliate the faults of most of them. No sooner was it delivered, than the indignant Cordeliers and Jacobins obliged him to retract it. They made inquiries concerning his private life; they discovered that he lived with stockjobbers, and cohabited with a ci-devant countess, and they declared him to be at once dissolute and a moderate. Fabre d'Eglantine had all at once changed his situation, and lived in a higher style than he had ever before been known to do. The capuchin Chabot, who, on espousing the cause of the Revolution, had nothing but his ecclesiastical pension, had also lately begun to display expensive furniture, and married the young sister of the two Freys, with a dower of two hundred thousand livres. This sudden change of fortune excited suspicions against these recently enriched deputies, and it was not long before a proposition which they made to the Convention completed their ruin. Osselin, a deputy, had just been arrested, on a charge of having concealed a female emigrant. Fabre, Chabot, Julien, and Delaunay, who were not easy on their own account; Bazire and Thuriot, who had nothing wherewith to reproach themselves, but who perceived with alarm that even members of the Convention were not spared, proposed a decree purporting that no deputy could be arrested till he had been first heard at the bar. This decree was adopted; but all the clubs and the Jacobins inveighed against it, and alleged that it was an attempt to renew the inviolability. They caused a report to be made upon it, and commenced the strictest inquiry concerning those who had proposed it, their conduct, and the origin of their sudden wealth. Julien, Fabre, Chabot, Delaunay, Bazire, Thuriot, stripped of their popularity in a few days, were classed among the party of equivocal and moderate men. Hebert loaded them with the grossest abuse in his paper, and delivered them up to the lowest of the populace.

Four or five other persons shared the same fate, though hitherto acknowledged to be excellent patriots. They were Proly, Pereyra, Gusman, Dubuisson, and Desfieux. Natives almost all of them of foreign countries, they had come, like the two Freys and Clootz, and thrown themselves into the French Revolution, out of enthusiasm, and probably, also, from a desire to make their fortune. Nobody cared who or what they were, so long as they appeared to be zealous votaries of the Revolution. Proly, who was a native of Brussels, had been sent with Pereyra and Desfieux to Dumouriez, to discover his intentions. They drew from him an explanation of them, and then went, as we have related, and denounced him to the Convention and to the Jacobins. So far all was right; but they had also been employed by Lebrun, because, being foreigners and well-informed men, they were capable of rendering good service in the foreign department. In their intercourse with Lebrun they had learned to esteem him, and they had defended him. Proly had been well acquainted with Dumouriez, and, notwithstanding the defection of that general, he

had persisted in extolling his talents, and asserting that he might have been retained for the republic. Lastly, almost all of them, possessing a better knowledge of the neighbouring countries, had censured the application of the Jacobin system to Belgium and to the provinces united with France. Their expressions were noted, and when a general distrust led to the notion of the secret interference of a foreign faction, people began to suspect them, and to call to mind the language which they had held. It was known that Proly was a natural son of Kaunitz; he was supposed to be the principal leader, and they were all metamorphosed into spies of Pitt and Coburg. Rage soon knew no bounds, and the very exaggeration of their patriotism, which they deemed likely to justify them, only served to compromise them still more. They were confounded with the party of the equivocal men, the moderates. Whenever Danton or his friends had any remark to make on the faults of the ministerial agents, or on the violence exercised against religion, the party of Hebert, Vincent, and Ronsin, replied by crying out against moderation, corruption, and the foreign faction.

As usual, the moderates flung back this accusation to their adversaries, saying, "It is you who are the accomplices of these foreigners; your connexion with them is proved, as well by the common violence of your language, as by the determination to overturn everything, and to carry matters to extremities. Look," added they, "at that commune, which arrogates to itself a legislative authority, and passes laws under the modest title of resolutions; which regulates everything, the police, the markets, and public worship; which, at its own good pleasure, substitutes one religion for another, supersedes ancient superstitions by new superstitions, preaches up atheism, and causes its example to be followed by all the muncipalities of the republic; look at those offices of the war department, whence issue a multitude of agents, who spread themselves over the provinces, to vie with the representatives, to practise the greatest oppressions, and to decry the Revolution by their conduct; look at that commune, at those offices-what do they mean but to usurp the legislative and executive authority, to dispossess the Convention and the committees, and to dissolve the government? Who can urge them on to this goal but the foreign enemy?"

Amidst these agitations and these quarrels, it behoved authority to pursue a vigorous course. Robespierre thought, with the whole committee, that these reciprocal accusations were extremely dangerous. His policy, as we have already seen, had consisted, ever since the 31st of May, in preventing a new revolutionary outbreak, in rallying opinion around the Convention, and the Convention around the committee, in order to create an energetic power; and, to this end, he had made use of the Jacobins, who were all-powerful upon public opinion. These new charges against accredited patriots, such as Danton and Camille-Desmoulins, appeared to him very dangerous. He was afraid that no reputation would be able to stand against men's imaginations when once let loose; he was apprehensive lest the violence done to religion might alienate part of France, and cause the Revolution to be regarded as atheistical; lastly, he fancied that he beheld the hand of the foreign foe in this vast confusion. He therefore took good care to seize the opportunity which Hebert soon afforded him, to explain his sentiments on this subject to the Jacobins.

The intentions of Robespierre had transpired. It was whispered about that he was going to attack Pache,* Hebert, Chaumette, and Clootz, the author of the movement against religion. Proly, Desfieux, and Pereyra, already compromised and threatened, resolved to unite their cause with that of Pache, Chaumette, and Hebert. They called upon them, and told them that there was a conspiracy against the best patriots; that they were all equally in danger, that they ought to support and reciprocally defend each other. Hebert then went to the Jacobins, on the 1st of Frimaire (November 21, 1793), and complained of a plan of disunion tending to divide the patriots. "Wherever I go," said he, " I meet with people who congratulate me on not being yet arrested. It is reported that Robespierre intends to

" Pache was a man who was more fatal to France than even a hostile army." - Mercier. E.