tter exclamations of indignation and terror, they see plots
on all sides, imagine invisible cords pulling in an opposite direction,
and they call upon the people to cut them. With the full weight of their
inexperience, incapacity, and improvidence, of their fears, credulity,
and dogmatic obstinacy, they urge on popular attacks, and their
newspaper articles or discourses are all summed up in the following
phrases:

"Fellow-citizens, you, the people of the lower class, you who listen
to me, you have enemies in the Court and the aristocracy. The
Hotel-de-Ville and the National Assembly are your servants. Seize your
enemies with a strong hand, and hang them, and let your servants know
that they must quicken their steps!"

Desmoulins styles himself "District-attorney of the gallows,"[1420] and
if he at all regrets the murders of Foulon and Berthier, it is because
this too expeditious judgment has allowed the proofs of conspiracy to
perish, thereby saving a number of traitors: he himself mentions twenty
of them haphazard, and little does he care whether he makes mistakes.

"We are in the dark, and it is well that faithful dogs should bark, even
at all who pass by, so that there may be no fear of robbers."

From this time forth Marat[1421] denounces the King, the ministers,
the administration, the bench, the bar, the financial system and the
academies, all as "suspicious;" at all events the people only suffer on
their account.

"The Government is monopolizing grain, to make us to pay through the
nose for a poisonous bread."

The Government, again, through a new conspiracy is about to blockade
Paris, so as to starve it with greater ease. Utterances of this kind,
at such a time, are firebrands thrown upon fear and hunger to kindle
the flames of rage and cruelty. To this frightened and fasting crowd the
agitators and newspaper writers continue to repeat that it must act,
and act alongside of the authorities, and, if need be, against them.
In other words, We will do as we please; we are the sole legitimate
masters;

"in a well-constituted government, the people as a body are the real
sovereign: our delegates are appointed only to execute our orders; what
right has the clay to rebel against the potter?"

On the strength of such principles, the tumultuous club which occupies
the Palais-Royal substitutes itself for the Assembly at Versailles.
Has it not all the titles for this office? The Palais-Royal "saved the
nation" on