the proceeding against the Girondists, Barere speaks with just
severity. He calls it an atrocious injustice perpetrated against the
legislators of the Republic. He complains that distinguished deputies,
who ought to have been readmitted to their seats in the Convention, were
sent to the scaffold as conspirators. The day, he exclaims, was a day of
mourning for France. It mutilated the national representation; it
weakened the sacred principle that the delegates of the people were
inviolable. He protests that he had no share in the guilt. "I have had,"
he says, "the patience to go through the Moniteur, extracting all the
charges brought against deputies, and all the decrees for arresting and
impeaching deputies. Nowhere will you find my name. I never brought a
charge against any of my colleagues, or made a report against any, or
drew up an impeachment against any."[17]

Now, we affirm that this is a lie. We affirm that Barere himself took
the lead in the proceedings of the Convention against the Girondists. We
affirm that he, on the twenty-eighth of July, 1793, proposed a decree
for bringing nine Girondist deputies to trial, and for putting to death
sixteen other Girondist deputies without any trial at all. We affirm
that when the accused deputies had been brought to trial, and when some
apprehension arose that their eloquence might produce an effect even on
the Revolutionary Tribunal, Barere did, on the eighth of Brumaire,
second a motion for a decree authorizing the tribunal to decide without
hearing out the defence; and, for the truth of every one of these things
so affirmed by us, we appeal to that very Moniteur to which Barere has
dared to appeal.[18]

What M. Hippolyte Carnot, knowing, as he must know, that this book
contains such falsehoods as those which we have exposed, can have meant,
when he described it as a valuable addition to our stock of historical
information, passes our comprehension. When a man is not ashamed to tell
lies about events which took place before hundreds of witnesses, and
which are recorded in well-known and accessible books, what credit can
we give to his account of things done in corners? No historian who does
not wish to be laughed at will ever cite the unsupported authority of
Barere as sufficient to prove any fact whatever. The only thing, as far
as we can see, on which these volumes throw any light, is the exceeding
baseness of the author.

So much for the veracity of the Memoirs. I