irecting a military crisis. If there
are any historic examples that at first seem to contradict such a
proposition, it will be found that the bodies in question were close
aristocracies, like the Great Council of Venice, or the Senate of Rome
in the strong days of the Commonwealth; they were never the creatures of
popular election, with varying aims and a diversified political spirit.
Modern publicists have substituted the divine right of assemblies for
the old divine right of monarchies. Those who condone the violence done
to the King on the Tenth of August, and even acquiesce in his execution
five months afterwards, are relentless against the violence done to the
Convention on the Thirty-first of May. We confess ourselves unable to
follow this transfer of the superstition of sacrosanctity from a king to
a chamber. No doubt, the sooner a nation acquires a settled government,
the better for it, provided the government be efficient. But if it be
not efficient, the mischief of actively suppressing it may well be fully
outweighed by the mischief of retaining it. We have no wish to smooth
over the perversities of a revolutionary time; they cost a nation very
dear; but if all the elements of the state are in furious convulsion and
uncontrollable effervescence, then it is childish to measure the march
of events by the standard of happier days of social peace and political
order. The prospect before France at the violent close of Girondin
supremacy was as formidable as any nation has ever yet had to confront
in the history of the world. Rome was not more critically placed when
the defeat of Varro on the plain of Cannae had broken up her alliances
and ruined her army. The brave patriots of the Netherlands had no
gloomier outlook at that dolorous moment when the Prince of Orange had
left them, and Alva had been appointed to bring them back by rapine,
conflagration, and murder, under the loathed yoke of the Spanish tyrant.

Let us realise the conditions that Robespierre and Danton and the other
Jacobin leaders had now to face. In the north-west one division of the
fugitive Girondins was forming an army at Caen; in the south-west
another division was doing the same at Bordeaux. Marseilles and Lyons
were rallying all the disaffected and reactionary elements in the
south-east. La Vendee had flamed out in wild rebellion for Church and
King. The strong places on the north frontier, and the strong places on
the east, were in the hands o