m "the
intolerable sufferings which our Blessed Saviour must needs undergo
when His body was hanging with all its weight upon the nailes of the
Crosse."

[Footnote 171: The term implied rather an excess than a defect of
nether garment and was applied in scorn by the fashionable wearers of
_culottes_ to the plebeian wearers of trousers.]

Too much prominence has been given by historians to the dramatic and
violent activities of the men of '93 to the exclusion of acts of
peaceful and constructive statesmanship. The 11,210 decrees issued by
the National Convention in Paris from September '92 to October '95,
included a comprehensive and admirable scheme for national education,
with provision for free meals in elementary schools and the moral and
physical training of the young. It fulminated against the degradation
of public monuments, ordered an inventory to be made of all
collections of works of art, and decided that the Republic be charged
with the maintenance of artists sent to Rome.

It decreed the adoption, began the discussion, and voted the most
important articles of the civil code. It inaugurated the telegraph and
the decimal system, established the uniformity of weights and
measures, the bureau of longitudes, reformed the calendar, instituted
the Grand Livre, increased and completed the Museum of Natural
History, opened the Museum of the Louvre, created the Conservatoire of
the Arts and Crafts, the Conservatoire of Music, the Polytechnic
School and the Institute.

The Convention abolished negro slavery in the French colonies, and
Wilberforce reminded a hostile House of Commons that infidel and
anarchic France had given example to Christian England in the work of
emancipation. In 1793 it was reported that the aged Goldoni had been
in receipt of a pension from the _ancien regime_ and was now dependent
on the slender resources of a compassionate nephew: the Convention at
once decreed as an act of justice and beneficence that the pension of
4000 livres should be renewed, and all arrears paid up. This is but
one of many acts of grace and succour among its records.

The closing months of '95 were sped with those whiffs of grape-shot
from the Pont Royal and the Rue St. Honore, that shattered the last
attempt, this time by the Royalists, at government by insurrection.
The Convention closed its stupendous career, and five Directors of
the Republic met in a room furnished with an old table, a sheet of
paper and an ink