why the Convention, coming as it did fresh from the
electoral bodies, who must have had the question what was to be done
with the imprisoned king foremost in their minds, why the members of the
Convention should not form as legitimate a tribunal as any body whose
composition and authority they had themselves defined and created, and
which would be chosen by the very same persons who less than a month
before had invested them with their own offices. Reading this most
scrupulous and juristic composition, we might believe the writer to have
forgotten that France lay mad and frenzied outside the hall where he
stood, and that in political action the question what is possible is at
least as important as what is compatible with the maxims of scientific
jurisprudence. It was to Condorcet's honour as a jurisconsult that he
should have had so many scruples; it is as much to his credit as a
politician that he laid them aside and tried the king after all.

It is highly characteristic of Condorcet's tenacity of his own view of
the Revolution and of its methods, that on the Saturday (January 19,
1793) when the king's fate was decided against Condorcet's conviction
and against his vote--the execution taking place on the Monday
morning--he should have appealed to the Convention, at all events to do
their best to neutralise the effect of their verdict upon Europe, by
instantly initiating a series of humane reforms in the law among them,
including the abolition of the punishment of death. 'The English
ministers,' he cried, 'are now seeking to excite that nation against us.
Do you suppose that they will venture to continue their calumnious
declamations, when you can say to them: "We have abolished the penalty
of death, while you still preserve it for the theft of a few shillings?
You hand over debtors to the greed or spite of their creditors; our
laws, wiser and more humane, know how to respect poverty and misfortune.
Judge between us and you, and see to which of the two peoples the
reproach of inhumanity may be addressed with most justice."'[35] This
was the eve of the Terror. Well may Comte distinguish Condorcet as the
one philosopher who pursued in the midst of the tempest his regenerating
meditations.

But let us banish the notion that the history of the Convention is only
the history of the guillotine. No chamber in the whole annals of
governing assemblies ever displayed so much alertness, energy, and
capacity, in the face of diffic