that they remain exhausted still. Statesmen are obliged to search into the remotest elements of the existence and prosperity of the communities over which they preside. The book of Mr. Malthus has got possession of the public mind, and it is a most fortunate circumstance for mankind that this should be the case. The great cause of the improvement of the condition of our fellow-creatures may now be conducted, I must again say, it is to be hoped, on rational principles, and with some chance of success; and above all, when the times become more serious, and great alterations are meditated or approaching, the influence of this work may be, it may surely be expected, distinctly felt by those who engage in revolutions; of such men many may be actuated by motives the most selfish, ferocious, and detestable, but the majority have been, and will probably always be, persons of warm and sanguine minds, and often of great benevolence.

Books like Mr. Godwin's (and I have therefore called your attention to his work, merely as a specimen of all other revolutionary works and reasonings) have a fatal tendency to animate and exasperate men of sanguine and benevolent minds, with false ideas of the perfectibility of human nature, and erroneous estimates of the evils they see existing; they create in them a hasty, unreasonable impatience and scorn for the more humble and unassuming principles upon which those who would meliorate the condition of their fellow-creatures must proceed; they prepare the way for the appearance and success of daring and bad men; of revolutionists of the worst description; and while they profess to further the great cause of liberty, and the improvement of mankind, they bring into suspicion and contempt some of the noblest and best virtues of the human character; they make patriotism useless, and benevolence ridiculous.

LECTURE XXXVII.

FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS.

I HAVE detained you some time, for the reasons I have mentioned, with what was passing in England. You might be referred in like manner to Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; but you must already have acquired some general impression (it can never, as you lived not at the time, be more than a faint and inadequate one) of the situation of the world at this particular

period; and we must now turn to France. We must turn to the darkest page that is to be found in the records of the human species. What we have to consider, is the history of the reign of Robespierre and the Jacobins. The very sound is a sound of fear to this hour. What must it have been to those who suffered! Observe what we are supposed already to have seen and known of the Jacobins. With Danton at their head, their first great leader, they have perpetrated the massacres of September. Afterwards you have seen them bring to trial and execute the king. You are next to see them attack and destroy the Girondists, the subject of the present lecture. Of these Girondists, I have already spoken. I have already offered you my opinion on the subject of these very distinguished men; but now that you are to behold them perish, I must request you to consider their nature and character once more. There are, perhaps, none, that from their merits and their faults, have created greater interest among the friends of freedom.

There are three different points of view, in which they may be placed. You may think, with Mr. Burke, that they were men of furious ambition, unrestrained by principle, desperate, bad men, whom it is not worth the trouble, and indeed not possible, to distinguish from the Jacobins; as even worse than the Jacobins, from their superior intelligence. On this supposition, we can have little to say to them. We can read their history and their fall, look upon it as of course, and well deserved, and pass on. Again, we may consider them, as I have done, as not without principle; as faulty in the same way with their predecessors the Constitutionalists, but to a far greater extent, to a very criminal extent, and with still more important consequences. Thirdly and lastly, we may consider them, much as they considered themselves; as men of the highest patriotism and exalted virtue; and as chiefly unfortunate, in having to do with ruffians and men of blood, who, on account of their virtues, hated and resolved to destroy them.

Now, I know not whether in any way their example can be made more instructive than in this last; and I shall therefore proceed to consider them not a little in the light in which they would themselves have chosen to be viewed. The better to do this, I shall in this lecture quote largely from their writings and speeches. And while so doing, you are for the present to listen and catch the edification that, as I conceive, may be found by any reflecting mind; the edification, I mean, to be derived from the lesson here held up to men of sanguine temperament,

who engage in public concerns, and are not scrupulous about their means. You will see, upon their own showing, how men of this kind become the victims of those, more lawless than themselves, whom they had employed. The lessons of the French Revolution, as I have often mentioned to you, are of different kinds: on the present occasion the lesson is addressed to the popular party.

But I shall first mention to you the books where our present subject, the fall of the Girondists, may be best found.

The main facts may be described in a very few words; and these facts you can, for the present, keep in mind, until you can consider them more regularly hereafter. You will then, for the present, I say, understand that the Girondists (to sum up their history in a few words, and as they would themselves describe it), though they were heart and part in the insurrection of the 10th of August, shrunk from the massacres of September, and endeavoured to punish the chief contrivers of these horrors; that they therefore became the personal foes of the Jacobins ; that they afterwards endeavoured to save the life of Louis XVI.; that they laboured to restore law and order; that they attempted to protect themselves against the revolutionary tribunals of the Jacobins, by a commission of their own, the Commission of Twelve, as it was called; that they also endeavoured to protect themselves and the Convention, by a guard brought up from all the departments; that all these measures made their enemies, Robespierre and the Jacobins, more and more popular in Paris, and enabled these demagogues to engage the mobs, and the military power of the metropolis, in the work of their destruction; that this destruction was soon effected. A plan was formed to seize, and probably massacre them, while sitting in the Convention on the 10th of March. The Girondists had notice of what was intended, and absented themselves. But they were more regularly attacked in the course of the ensuing 1st of May and 2nd of June; taken out of the Convention, proscribed by a decree, and put under an arrest to the number of twenty-two, until they could be conveniently executed; the rest flying into the interior, and in vain endeavouring to raise the departments in their favour.

Such is in a few words the history of the fall of the Girondists. When they had acquired power by the 10th of August, they could not introduce that order and law which were necessary for the exercise of it; their republic, or their intended new dynasty, was taken from them.

I will now mention the books where you will find the facts properly detailed.

You will naturally turn in the first place to the work of Thiers; but his fourth volume is not written with his usual success: it does not offer the same perspicuous narrative, particularly with respect to the Girondists, that is found in his former volumes: his observations are often important, but I thought the whole somewhat fatiguing to read, and perplexing, as I went along, to comprehend. You must judge for yourselves. I consider it as far too favourable to the Girondists.

There is an account of these transactions, and one less favourable, in the Abbé Montgaillard.

There is a full and very unfavourable account given by the historians, the Two Friends of Liberty. These writers resolve the whole of these dreadful contentions between the Girondists and Jacobins into a struggle for power.

The Historical Sketches, by Dulaure, is a work that now becomes well worth reading. He was himself proscribed, and numbered at last among the Girondists, was an eye-witness of what passed, and he enters into a detail of the scenes that took place in the Convention.

There is an account by Toulongeon, which is, as usual, of a calm and neutral nature, after the manner of regular history, and interspersed with sensible remarks.

The shortest and most able account is by Mignet; but it appears to me far too favourable to the Girondists. You will, of course, read his sixth and seventh books. The historian in these books gives the detail; the main facts are in every writer the same; and his summary of the whole is the following: " So fell the party of the Gironde; a party illustrious by its great talents and its daring efforts; a party which did honour to the infant republic by its horror of blood, its hatred of crime, the disgust it felt at anarchy, its love of order, of justice, and of liberty." A noble panegyric, little deserved, however, by the Girondists, until after the 10th of August, when it was too late, if even then deserved, which it certainly was not to the extent here stated.

The panegyric of the historian will be, however, abundantly confirmed by the panegyrics, if these be thought sufficient, which the Girondists continually pronounced upon themselves. And after you have well considered the facts of the history from the opening of the Legislative Assembly to the execution of the king, so as to prevent your being deceived by the eloquent effu

sions of men who take for granted everything that is necessary to their own case, and who have the advantage of continually contrasting themselves with their enemies the Jacobins, then the most cruel and unprincipled of mankind; after so preparing yourselves, you may turn, and to minds so prepared, I know nothing more instructive than to turn, to the memoirs and writings that we have received from the Girondists themselves, and again to their speeches in the Convention. We shall thus, as I have proposed to do, see them not a little in the point of view in which they would have themselves have chosen to be presented; and after having before mentioned the general histories, I shall now proceed to allude to works of this particular

nature.

There was an address published by Brissot to his constituents, which is now valuable, as an animated and able description of the Jacobins and Anarchists, that overthrew Brissot and his friend; that is, overthrow the Girondists. It is valuable on this account; and again, on another; for in several places it confirms, undesignedly, the unfavourable opinion which I think ought to be entertained of the Girondists, such as I have offered to your consideration, in a former lecture. This work was translated by Mr. Burke's son, and a spirited and powerful preface, after his manner, furnished by Mr. Burke himself, which now appears in his works, and in which he exhibits the crimes of the Girondists, and the culpable conduct of Roland. Both the preface and translation are intended for the English public.

I have already pointed out to your attention the Memoirs of Barbaroux and M: Roland; to the latter I shall again immediately refer. But the most interesting and valuable work, with reference to our present subject, is the Memoirs of Buzot; to these Memoirs is prefixed by Gaudet (their editor) a sort of dissertation, "Recherches distingués sur les Girondins," which you must by all means read, for it is the best account of their rise and fall, to which I can refer you. You can then look at the account given by Buzot himself, and afterwards you should by all means turn to the different pieces given in the notes; lastly, as I have mentioned, to the debates of the Convention, the better to appreciate the situation and the talents of these celebrated men. It is chiefly from these Memoirs of Buzot, that Walter Scott has drawn his account of the Girondists in his sixth chapter of the Life of Buonaparte. And I may now mention that this account by Walter Scott, seems to me extremely well done; and will enable you, in a short time, to understand