easons_; he did not foresee that in the
course of six months a formal manifesto on the part of himself and his
faction, written by his confederate Brissot, was to represent this
"_effervescence_" as another "_St. Bartholomew_" and speak of it as
"_having made humanity shudder, and sullied the Revolution forever_."[4]

It is very remarkable that he takes upon himself to know the motives of
the assassins, their policy, and even what they "believed." How could
this be, if he had no connection with them? He praises the murderers for
not having taken as yet _all_ the lives of those who had, as he calls
it, "_presented themselves_ as victims to their fury." He paints the
miserable prisoners, who had been forcibly piled upon one another in
the Church of the Carmelites by his faction, as _presenting themselves_
as victims to their fury,--as if death was their choice, or (allowing
the idiom of his language to make this equivocal) as if they were by
some accident _presented_ to the fury of their assassins: whereas he
knew that the leaders of the murderers sought these pure and innocent
victims in the places where they had deposited them and were sure to
find them. The very selection, which he praises as a _sort of justice_
tempering their fury, proves beyond a doubt the foresight, deliberation,
and method with which this massacre was made. He knew that circumstance
on the very day of the commencement of the massacres, when, in all
probability, he had begun this letter,--for he presented it to the
Assembly on the very next.

Whilst, however, he defends these acts, he is conscious that they will
appear in another light to the world. He therefore acquits the executive
power, that is, he acquits himself, (but only by his own assertion,) of
those acts of "_vengeance mixed with a sort of justice_," as an
"_excess_ which he could neither foresee nor prevent." He could not, he
says, foresee these acts, when he tells us the people of Paris had
sagacity so well to foresee the designs of the court on the 10th of
August,--to foresee them so well as to mark the precise epoch on which
they were to be executed, and to contrive to anticipate them on the very
day: he could not foresee these events, though he declares in this very
letter that victory _must_ bring with it some _excess_,--that "the sea
roars _long_ after the tempest." So far as to his foresight. As to his
disposition to prevent, if he had foreseen, the massacres of that
day,--this