t Terror. The number of persons put to death by the Revolutionary
Tribunal before the Law of Prairial had been comparatively moderate.
From the creation of the tribunal in April 1793, down to the execution
of the Hebertists in March 1794, the number of persons condemned to
death was 505. From the death of the Hebertists down to the death of
Robespierre, the number of the condemned was 2158. One half of the
entire number of victims, namely, 1356, were guillotined after the Law
of Prairial. No deadlier instrument was ever invented by the cruelty of
man. Innocent women no less than innocent men, poor no less than rich,
those in whom life was almost spent, no less than those in whom its
pulse was strongest, virtuous no less than vicious, were sent off in
woe-stricken batches all those summer days. A man was informed against;
he was seized in his bed at five in the morning; at seven he was taken
to the Conciergerie; at nine he received information of the charge
against him; at ten he went into the dock; by two in the afternoon he
was condemned; by four his head lay in the executioner's basket.

What stamps the system of the Terror at this date with a wickedness
that cannot be effaced, is that at no moment was the danger from foreign
or domestic foe less serious. We may always forgive something to
well-grounded panic. The proscriptions of an earlier date in Paris were
not excessively sanguinary, if we remember that the city abounded in
royalists and other reactionists, who were really dangerous in fomenting
discouragement and spreading confusion. If there ever is an excuse for
martial law, and it must be rare, the French government were warranted
in resorting to it in 1793. Paris in those days was like a city
beleaguered, and the world does not use very harsh words about the
commandant of a besieged town who puts to death traitors found within
his walls. Opinion in England at this very epoch encouraged the Tory
government to pass a Treason Bill, which introduced as vague a
definition of treasonable offence as even the Law of Prairial itself.
Windham did not shrink from declaring in parliament that he and his
colleagues were determined to exact 'a rigour beyond the law.' And they
were as good as their word. The Jacobins had no monopoly either of cruel
law or cruel breach of law in the eighteenth century. Only thirty years
before, opinion in Pennsylvania had prompted a hideous massacre of
harmless Indians as a deed acceptable to