mber of the municipality of Roye, but was expelled. In March
1791 he was appointed commissioner to report on the national property
(_biens nationaux_) in the town, and in September 1792 was elected a member
of the council-general of the department of the Somme. Here, as everywhere,
the violence of his attitude made his position intolerable to himself and
others, and he was soon transferred to the post of administrator of the
district of Montdidier. Here he was accused of fraud for having substituted
one name for another in a deed of transfer of national lands. It is
probable that his fault was one of negligence only; but, distrusting the
impartiality of the judges of the Somme, he fled to Paris, and on the 23rd
of August 1793 was condemned _in contumaciam_ to twenty years'
imprisonment. Meanwhile he had been appointed secretary to the relief
committee (_comite des subsistances_) of the commune of Paris. The judges
of Amiens, however, pursued him with a warrant for his arrest, which took
place in Brumaire of the year II. (1794). The court of cassation quashed
the sentence, through defect of form, but sent Babeuf for a new trial
before the Aisne tribunal, by which he was acquitted on the 18th of July.

Babeuf now returned to Paris, and on the 3rd of September 1794 published
the first number of his _Journal de la liberte de la presse_, the title of
which was altered on the 5th of October to _Le Tribun du peuple_. The
execution of Robespierre on the 28th of July had ended the Terror, and
Babeuf--now self-styled "Gracchus" Babeuf--defended the men of Thermidor
and attacked the fallen terrorists with his usual violence. But he also
attacked, from the point of view of his own socialistic theories, the
economic outcome of the Revolution. This was an attitude which had few
supporters, even in the Jacobin club, and in October Babeuf was arrested
and sent to prison at Arras. Here he came under the influence of certain
terrorist prisoners, notably of Lebois, editor of the _Journal de
l'egalite_, afterwards of the _Ami du peuple_, papers which carried on the
traditions of Marat. He emerged from prison a confirmed terrorist and
convinced that his Utopia, fully proclaimed to the world in No. 33 of his
_Tribun_, could only be realized through the restoration of the
constitution of 1793. He was now in open conflict with the whole trend of
public opinion. In February 1795 he was again arrested, and the _Tribun du
peuple_ was solemnly burnt