ir
perdu les qualites qui distinguent l'homme de l'animal domestique:
ils semblaient meme n'avoir de vie que ce que le gouvernement
voulait bien leur en accorder.--Le moi humain n'existoit plus;
chaque individu n'etait qu'une machine, allant, venant, pensant ou
ne pensant pas, felon que la tyrannie le pressait ou l'animait."_

Discours de Bailleul, 19 March 1795.

"The minds of all were subdued by terror, and every heart was
compressed beneath its influence.--In this consisted the strength of
the government; and that government was such, that the immense
population of a vast territory, seemed to have lost all the
qualities which distinguish man from the animals attached to him.--
They appeared to exhibit no signs of life but such as their rulers
condescended to permit--the very sense of existence seemed doubtful
or extinct, and each individual was reduced to a mere machine, going
or coming, thinking or not thinking, according as the impulse of
tyranny gave him force or animation."
Speech of Bailleul, 19 March 1795.

On the twenty-second of Prairial, (June 10,) a law, consisting of a
variety of articles for the regulation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was
introduced to the convention by Couthon, a member of the government; and,
as usual adopted with very little previous discussion.--Though there was
no clause of this act but ought to have given the alarm to humanity,
"knocked at the heart, and bid it not be quiet;" yet the whole appeared
perfectly unexceptionable to the Assembly in general: till, on farther
examination, they found it contained an implied repeal of the law
hitherto observed, according to which, no representative could be
arrested without a preliminary decree for that purpose.--This discovery
awakened their suspicions, and the next day Bourdon de l'Oise, a man of
unsteady principles, (even as a revolutionist,) was spirited up to demand
an explicit renunciation of any power in the Committee to attack the
legislative inviolability except in the accustomed forms.--The clauses
which elected a jury of murderers, that bereft all but guilt of hope, and
offered no prospect to innocence but death, were passed with no other
comment than the usual one of applause.*--

* The baseness, cruelty, and cowardice of the Convention are neither
to be denied, nor palliated. For several months they not only