ralists appears
excessive, those faults into which gentle and noble spirits are
sometimes hurried by the excitement of conflict, by the maddening
influence of sympathy, and by ill-regulated zeal for a public cause.

With such feelings we read this book, and compared it with other
accounts of the events in which Barere bore a part. It is now our duty
to express the opinion to which this investigation has led us.

Our opinion, then, is this: that Barere approached nearer than any
person mentioned in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the
idea of consummate and universal depravity. In him the qualities which
are the proper objects of hatred, and the qualities which are the proper
objects of contempt, preserve an exquisite and absolute harmony. In
almost every particular sort of wickedness he has had rivals. His
sensuality was immoderate; but this was a failing common to him with
many great and amiable men. There have been many men as cowardly as he,
some as cruel, a few as mean, a few as impudent. There may also have
been as great liars, though we never met with them or read of them. But
when we put everything together, sensuality, poltroonery, baseness,
effrontery, mendacity, barbarity, the result is something which in a
novel we should condemn as caricature, and to which, we venture to say,
no parallel can be found in history.

It would be grossly unjust, we acknowledge, to try a man situated as
Barere was by a severe standard. Nor have we done so. We have formed our
opinion of him by comparing him, not with politicians of stainless
character, not with Chancellor D'Aguesseau, or General Washington, or
Mr. Wilberforce, or Earl Grey, but with his own colleagues of the
Mountain. That party included a considerable number of the worst men
that ever lived; but we see in it nothing like Barere. Compared with him
Fouche seems honest; Billaud seems humane; Hebert seems to rise into
dignity. Every other chief of a party, says M. Hippolyte Carnot, has
found apologists: one set of men exalts the Girondists; another set
justifies Danton; a third deifies Robespierre; but Barere has remained
without a defender. We venture to suggest a very simple solution of this
phenomenon. All the other chiefs of parties had some good qualities; and
Barere had none. The genius, courage, patriotism, and humanity of the
Girondist statesmen more than atoned for what was culpable in their
conduct, and should have protected them from the insul