een superseded in his mayoralty, and
Lafayette had resigned his command of the national guard; and these
important offices had fallen into the hands of the Jacobins, and by
their influence democracy gained the ascendency in the capital, and,
by a natural consequence, throughout the whole kingdom. The monarch was
even compelled to choose his ministers out of the fiery Jacobin party;
for neither royalist nor constitutionalist dared to sit in the council.
At the close of this year it was manifest that the king was on
the high-road to the scaffold. Red-caps were worn in public by the
victorious Jacobins as a party badge, and as a declaration of war
against all the moderate and all the friends of right; and the
guillotine, beneath which thousands of victims were to bleed, was
introduced. France had already assumed the aspect of an arena of wild
beasts: Dan-ton, Robespierre, and Marat were already licking their jaws
in anticipation of the prey.

{GEORGE III. 1791-1792}

STATE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN ENGLAND, ETC.

As every day manifested more and more that the principles of the
revolution in France were fraught with mischief, and as great exertions
were made by Burke and others to enlighten the public mind on their evil
tendency, it might have been expected that Englishmen, who enjoyed a
free constitution, although they had generously sympathised with the
French people at the outset of their work of regeneration, from a
conviction that it would tend to their benefit and happiness, would, by
this year, have seen that they were in error, and would, therefore, have
somewhat abated in their admiration of that work. This might have been
the case to a certain extent; but, nevertheless, those who professed
republican principles in England were still very numerous, and had
become bolder in their advocacy of such principles. A fierce war was
carried on by the newspapers of the day against Burke's "Reflections,"
and pamphlets and volumes of all sizes were published, in order to show
that it was a mere flimsy piece of rhetoric and fine writing. The most
conspicuous of these volumes were the "_Vindictae Gallicae_;" or "Defence
of the French Revolution," written by Sir James Mackintosh; the "Rights
of Man," written by that fierce democrat, Tom Paine; and "Letters to
the Right Honourable Mr. Burke, on his Reflections on the Revolution of
France," written by the celebrated Unitarian preacher, Dr. Priestley.
Perhaps, the most popular o