e Revolution found him. By his
dissimulation and assumed modesty, he continued to dupe his benefactors;
who, by their influence, obtained for him the nomination as
representative of the people to our First National Assembly. They soon,
however, had reason to repent of their generosity. He joined the Orleans
faction and became one of the most persevering, violent, and cruel
persecutors of the privileged classes, particularly of the clergy, to
whom he was indebted for everything. In 1792 he was elected a member of
the National Convention, where he voted for the death of his King. It was
he who proposed a law (justly called, by Prudhomme, the production of the
deliberate homicide Merlin) against suspected persons; which was decreed
on the 17th of September, 1793, and caused the imprisonment or
proscription of two hundred thousand families. This decree procured him
the appellation of Merlin Suspects and of Merlin Potence. In 1795 he was
appointed a Minister of Police, and soon afterwards a Minister of
Justice. After the revolution in favour of the Jacobins of the 4th of
September, 1797, he was made a director, a place which he was obliged by
the same Jacobins to resign, in June, 1799. Bonaparte expressed, at
first, the most sovereign contempt for this Merlin, but on account of one
of his sons, who was his aide-de-camp, he was appointed by him, when
First Consul, his attorney-general.

As nothing paints better the true features of a Government than the
morality or vices of its functionaries, I will finish this man's portrait
with the following characteristic touches.

Merlin de Douai has been successively the counsel of the late Duc d'
Orleans, the friend of Danton, of Chabot, and of Hebert, the admirer of
Murat, and the servant of Robespierre. An accomplice of Rewbell, Barras,
and la Reveilliere, an author of the law of suspected persons, an
advocate of the Septembrizers, and an ardent apostle of the St.
Guillotine. Cunning as a fog and ferocious as a tiger, he has outlived
all the factions with which he has been connected. It has been his
policy to keep in continual fermentation rivalships, jealousies,
inquietudes, revenge and all other odious passions; establishing, by such
means, his influence on the terror of some, the ambition of others, and
the credulity of them all. Had I, when Merlin proposed his law
concerning suspected persons, in the name of liberty and equality, been
free and his equal, I should hav