ould have been madness to trust a hostile or even a
half hearted leader.

Thus far they went along with the revolutionary movement. At this point
they stopped; and, in our judgment, they were right in stopping, as
they had been right in moving. For great ends, and under extraordinary
circumstances, they had concurred in measures which, together with much
good, had necessarily produced much evil; which had unsettled the public
mind; which had taken away from government the sanction of prescription;
which had loosened the very foundations of property and law. They
thought that it was now their duty to prop what it had recently been
their duty to batter. They loved liberty, but liberty associated with
order, with justice, with mercy, and with civilisation. They were
republicans; but they were desirous to adorn their republic with all
that had given grace and dignity to the fallen monarchy. They hoped that
the humanity, the courtesy, the taste, which had done much in old times
to mitigate the slavery of France, would now lend additional charms to
her freedom. They saw with horror crimes exceeding in atrocity those
which had disgraced the infuriated religious factions of the sixteenth
century, perpetrated in the name of reason and philanthropy. They
demanded, with eloquent vehemence, that the authors of the lawless
massacre, which, just before the meeting of the Convention, had
been committed in the prisons of Paris, should be brought to condign
punishment. They treated with just contempt the pleas which have been
set up for that great crime. They admitted that the public danger
was pressing; but they denied that it justified a violation of those
principles of morality on which all society rests. The independence and
honour of France were indeed to be vindicated, but to be vindicated by
triumphs and not by murders.

Opposed to the Girondists was a party which, having been long execrated
throughout the civilised world, has of late--such is the ebb and flow
of opinion--found not only apologists, but even eulogists. We are not
disposed to deny that some members of the Mountain were sincere and
public spirited men. But even the best of them, Carnot, for example, and
Cambon, were far too unscrupulous as to the means which they employed
for the purpose of attaining great ends. In the train of these
enthusiasts followed a crowd, composed of all who, from sensual, sordid,
or malignant motives, wished for a period of boundless licen