of the Most High? Innocence on the scaf- | fold, supported by such thoughts, makes the tyrant turn pale on his triumphal car. Could such an ascendant be felt if the tomb levelled alike the oppressor and his victim?

"Observe how, on all former occasions, tyrants have sought to stifle the idea of the immortality of the soul. With what art did Cæsar, when pleading in the Roman Senate in favor of the accomplices of Catiline, endeavor to throw doubts on the belief of its immortality! while Cicero invokes against the traitor the sword of the laws and the vengeance of Heaven. Socrates, on the verge of death, discoursed with his friends on the ennobling theme; Leonidas, at Thermopyla, on the eve of executing the most heroic design ever conceived by man, invited his companions to a banquet in another world. The principles of the Stoics gave birth to Brutus and Cato even in the ages which witnessed the expiry of Roman virtue; they alone saved the honor of human nature, almost obliterated by the vices and the corruption of the empire.

"The Encyclopédists, who introduced the frightful doctrine of atheism, were ever in politics below the dignity of freedom; in morality they went as far beyond the dictates of reason. Their disciples declaimed against despotism and received the pensions of despots; they composed alternately tirades against kings and madrigals for their mistresses; they were fierce with their pens and rampant in antechambers. That sect propagated with infinite care the principles of materialism; we owe to them that selfish philosophy which reduced egotism to a systein, regarded human society as a game of chance where success was the sole distinction

between what was just and unjust, probity as an affair of taste or good breeding, the world as the patrimony of the most dextrous of scoundrels.

"The priests have figured to themselves a God in their own image; they have made him jealous, capricious. cruel, covetous, implacable; they have enthroned him in the heavens as a palace, and called him to the earth only to demand for their behoof tithes, riches, pleashonors and power. The true temple of the Supreme Being is the universe; his worship, virtue; his fêtes, the joy of a great people assembled under his eyes to tighten the bonds of social affection and present to him the homage of pure and grateful hearts.'

ures,

In the midst of the acclamations produced by these eloquent words, the Assembly decreed unanimously that they recognized the existence of the Supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul, and that the worship most worthy of him was the practice of the social virtues.

This speech is not only remarkable as containing the religious views of so memorable an actor in the bloodiest periods of the Revolution, but as involving a moral lesson of perhaps greater moment than any that occurred during its whole progress. For the first time in the annals of mankind a great nation had thrown off all religious principles and openly defied the power of Heaven itself, and from amid the wreck which was occasioned by the unchaining of human passions arose a solemn recognition of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. It seemed as if Providence had permitted human wickedness to run its utmost length in order, amid the frightful scene, to demonstrate the necessity of religious belief and vindicate

the majesty of its moral government. In vain an infidel generation sought to establish the frigid doctrine of materialism. Their principles received their full development: the anarchy they are fitted to induce was experienced, and that recognition was wrung from a suffering which had been denied by a

prosperous age.

Nor is this speech less striking as evincing the fanaticism of that extraordinary period and the manner in which, during revolutionary convulsions, the most atrocious actions are made to flow from the most pure and benevolent expressions. If you consider the actions of Robespierre, he appears the most sanguinary tyrant that ever desolated the earth; if you reflect on his words, they seem dictated only by the noblest and most elevated feelings. There is nothing impossible in such a combination; the history of the world exhibits too many examples of its occurrence it is the nature of fanaticism, whether religious or political, to produce it. The Inquisition of Spain, the autos-da-fé of Castile, arose from the same principles as the daily executions of the French tyrant. It is because revolutions lead to such terrible results by so flowery and seductive a path that they are chiefly dangerous, and because the ruin thus induced is irrecoverable that the seducers of nations are doomed by inexorable justice to the same infamy as the betrayers of individuals.

Two unsuccessful attempts at assassination increased, as is always the case, the power of the tyrant. The first of these was made by an obscure but intrepid man, of the name of L'Admiral, who tried to assassinate Collot d'Herbois; the second, by a young woman named Cecile Renaud. L'Admiral, when

brought before his judges, openly avowed that he had intended to assassinate Robespierre before Collot d'Herbois. When called on to divulge who prompted him to the commission of such a crime, he replied firmly that it was not a crime; that he wished only to render a service to his country; that he had conceived the project without any external suggestion; and that his only regret was that he had not succeeded. The latter called at his house and entreated in the most earnest manner to see Robespierre; the urgency of her manner excited the suspicion of his attendants, and she was arrested. Two knives found in her bundle sufficiently evinced the purpose of her visit. Being asked what was her motive for wishing to see him, she replied, “I wished to see how a tyrant was made. I admit I am a royalist, because I prefer one king to fifty thousand." She behaved on the scaffold with the firmness of Charlotte Corday. Her whole relations, to the number of sixty, were involved in her fate, among whom were a number of young men bravely combating on the frontier in defence of their country.

Meanwhile, a magnificent fête was prepared by the Convention in honor of the Supreme Being. Two days before it took place Robespierre was appointed president and entrusted with the duty of supreme pontiff on the occasion. He marched fifteen feet in advance of his colleagues, in a brilliant costume, bearing flowers and fruits in his hands. His address, which followed, to the people was both powerful and eloquent; the sentigenerous ments which it contained revived hopes long dormant in their breasts, but were all dashed by the concluding words: "People, to-day

let us give ourselves up to the transports of pure happiness; to-morrow we will with increased energy combat vice and the tyrants." The ceremony on this occasion, which was arranged under the direction of the painter David, was very magnificent. An amphitheatre was placed in the gardens of the Tuileries, opposite to which were statues representing Atheism, Discord and Selfishness, which were destined to be burned by the hand of Robespierre. Beautiful music opened the ceremony, and the president, after an eloquent speech, seized a torch and set fire to the figures, which were soon consumed; and when the smoke cleared away, an effigy of Wisdom was seen in their place, but it was remarked that it was blackened by the smoke of those that had been consumed. Thence they proceeded to the Champs de Mars, where patriotic songs were sung, oaths taken by the young and homage offered to the Supreme Being.

The Committee of Public Safety being now avowedly in possession of supreme power, their adulators in the Convention and Jacobin Club offered them the ensigns of sovereignty. But they had the good sense to perceive that the people were not yet prepared for this change, and that the sight of guards or a throne might shake a power which five hundred thousand captives in chains could not expose to obloquy. "The members of the committee," said Couthon, have no desire to be assimilated to despots; they have no need of guards for their defence. Their own virtue, the love of the people, Providence, watch over their days; they have no occasion for any other protection. When necessary, they will know how to die at their post in defence of freedom."

The bloody intentions announced by Robespierre were too effectually carried into effect on the day following the fête of the Supreme Being by the decree of the 22d Prairial, passed on the motion of Couthon. By this sanguinary law every form, privilege or usage calculated to protect the accused were swept away. "Every postponement of justice," says Couthon, "is a crime: every formality indulgent to the accused is a crime. The delay in punishing the enemies of the country should not be greater than the time requisite for identifying them.' tifying them." The right of insisting for an individual investigation and of being defended by counsel were withdrawn. In addition to those struck at by former laws, there were included in this new decree "all those who have seconded the projects of the enemies of France either by favoring the retreat of or shielding from punishment the aristocracy or conspirators, or by persecuting and calumniating the patriots, or by corrupting the mandatories of the people, or by abusing the principles of the Revolution, of the laws or of the government by false or perfidious applications, or by deceiving the representatives of the people, or by spreading discouragement or false intelligence, or by misleading the public by false instruction or depraved example." The proof requisite to convict of these multifarious offences was declared to be "every piece of evidence, material, moral, verbal or written, which is sufficient to convince a reasonable understanding." The Revolutionary Tribunal was divided into four separate courts, each possessing the same powers as the original, and a public accuser and sufficient number of judges and jurymen awarded to each to enable them to proceed with rapidity in the work of extermination.

long," said he, "the Assembly has argued and decided on the same day, because for long it has been liberated from the empire of faction. I demand that, instead of pausing on the proposal for adjournment, we sit till eight at night, if necessary, to discuss the project of the law which has now been submitted to it." The Assembly felt its weakness, and in thirty minutes the decree was unanimously adopted.

On the following day some members, chiefly adherents of the old party of Danton, endeavored to overthrow this sanguinary decree of the Assembly. Bourdon de l'Oise proposed that the safety of the members of the Assembly should be provided for by a special enactment. He was ably supported by Merlin, and the legislature seemed inclined to adopt the proposal. Couthon attacked the Mountain, from which the opposition seemed chiefly to emanate. Bourdon replied. "Let the members of the committee know," said he, "that if they are patriots, so are we. I esteem Couthon, I esteem the committee, but more than all I esteem the unconquerable Mountain, which has saved the public freedom."" The Convention, the committee," said Robespierre, "the Mountain, are the same thing. Every representative who loves liberty, every representative who is resolved to die for his country, is part of the Mountain. Woe to those who would assassinate the people by permitting some miserable intriguers to divide the patriots

ruin!" The imperious tone of Robespierre, the menaces of his colleagues, again overawed the Assembly, and the law passed without the protecting clause proposed by Bourdon. Every individual in the Convention was now at the mercy of the dictators, and the daily spectacle of fifty persons executed was enough to subdue more undaunted spirits.

Armed by this accession of power, the proscriptions proceeded during the next two months with redoubled violence. The power of Robespierre was prodigious and wielded with an energy to which there is nothing comparable in the history of modern Europe. The ruling principle of his government was to destroy the whole aristocracy, both of rank and talent. It was on this foundation that his authority rested; the mass of the people ardently supported a government which was rapidly destroying everything which was above them in station or superior in ability. Every man felt his own consequence increased and his own prospects improved by the destruction of his more fortunate rivals. Inexorable toward individuals or leaders, Robespierre was careful of protecting the masses of the community; and the lower orders, who always have a secret pleasure in the depression of their superiors, beheld with satisfaction the thunder which rolled innocuous over their heads striking every one who could by any possibility stand in their way. The whole physical force of the Republic, which must always be drawn from the laboring classes, was thus devoted to his will. The armed force of Paris, under the orders of Henriot and formed of the lowest of the rabble, was