"That, while in despotic states a blind obedience to the caprices of despots is called public order, under a free constitution founded on the national sovereignty, public order is the only safeguard of persons and property, the only support of the constitution.

"That there is no constitution, unless all the citizens are freed from every illegal restraint, and cordially united to bear the yoke of the law a yoke always light when all bear it equally. "That every respectable nation respects itself.

"That every nation which respects itself respects its own laws and magistrates.

"That there is no liberty without law.

"That there is no law if one part of society, be it the majority or not, can forcibly assail and attempt to overthrow the former general wish which has made a law, without waiting for the times and observing the forms indicated by the constitution.

"That, when the constitution gives a legal way of reforming a law which experience has shown to be faulty, insurrection against a law is the greatest crime of which a citizen can be guilty; for he thereby dissolves society so far as in him lies, and this is the real crime of treason.

"That there is no liberty if all do not obey the law, and if any one is obliged to obey anything except the law and its agents.

"That no one ought to be arrested, searched, examined, judged, or punished, except according to law and by the agents of the law. "That the law is only applicable to actions, and that all inquisitions upon opinions and thoughts are no less violations of liberty when exercised in the name of the people, than when exercised in the name of tyrants."

If these brief sentences had been written at the present day; if they had appeared, for instance, in an article of the Courier and Enquirer, or our own Review, against the anti-renters, while it could not be denied that they expressed sound political views in a bold and forcible manner, it might be said that they contained nothing very striking or remarkable, but were only a succinct and vigorous statement of what all honest and sane men believed. But composed, as they were, at a period when of the two great experiments whence we derive most of our political experience, the one was just beginning and the other had not had time to work; a period when the majority of reformers and philosophers thought with Jefferson, that "the old system of government had been tried long enough," and the only escape from it was to rush into the opposite extreme of no

government at all except the temporary will of an occasional majority, they denote uncommon sagacity and foresight, and prove that Chénier had the head of a statesman no less than the heart of a patriot. Most particularly worthy of notice is the clearness of his financial views, and the accuracy with which he traced the connection between private and public wealth. It was then a favorite delusion, that the nation might be bankrupt without affecting the fortunes of individuals. The great hero and apostle of democratic despotism who rose out of the Revolution, fell into the contrary error of supposing that the public treasury might continue to be recruited by the appropriation of private capital, not seeing that, touse an ancient but apposite illustration, he was thus killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. It was reserved for a still more modern democracy to invent a still wiser and honester financial expedient that of repudiating the obligations, while they enjoy the acquisitions, of past generations.

The Avis aur Francais made a great sensation, which was not confined to France. Two circumstances will show the extent and force of its influence. The Polish king Stanislaus Augustus, caused it to be translated into his language, and sent a token of his esteem to the author, who returned a letter of thanks: of course, the friends of the Constitution were still more amiably disposed to him, after this royal correspondence. And Condorcet, finding that he could no longer take the lead in the Society of 1789, broke up that association so far as lay in his power, and went straight over to the Jacobins. Chenier's reputation emboldened him to present himself in the following year, (1791.) as a candidate for the assembly; but, as might have been predicted of a man so independent and so much beyond his age, he was unsuccessful. After this he contnued to attak and expose the Jacobins in the Journal de Paris, a paper professedly neutral, and publishing communications on any side as paid advertisements, but edited by men of a conversative leaning. The Jacobins were not slow to answer their bold assailant. They set upon him his own brother, Marie Joseph, the youngest of the four, who had by some means been inveigled into their ranks. The discussion, which lasted several months and was only broken off at

the urgent entreaties of the rest of the family, displayed at the outset, but did not long preserve, the moderation and delicacy demanded by the uncommon position of the parties. The two brothers all but O'Connellized each other. They applied to each other's writings the epithet of infamous, then a pet word in the vocabulary of the French journalists, and more usually merited than such pet words generally are. How Joseph Chenier came to take sides with the Jacobins, is not perfectly clear. It seems probable that they flattered his vanity, and made him half believe that his brothers' opposition was attributable to envy and jealousy. For when most angry with Andre, his bitterest taunt is to remind him of the election for deputies. A very young man among Democrats may be pardoned for supposing that officie and honor are synonymous, and not reflecting that where merit is no longer the test of advancement, the correlative mentioned by Sallust is unavoidable. *

If, however, the leading Jacobins supposed, that by getting up this personal issue they had succeeded in diverting or weakening Andre Chenier's attacks upon them, they were very much mistaken. In the winter of 1792, an event occurred, which, by eminently exposing them to his ridicule, specially marked him out for their vengeance. Two years before, a Swiss regiment had been condemned to the galleys for mutiny. Their offences were gross and unequivocal: they had refused to swear to the Constitution, plundered the regimental chest, and fired upon the National Guard. But General Bouillé, against whom they then revolted, had now proved a traitor to the popular cause. In a fit of childish spite against him, the Swiss were pardoned; on motion of Collot d'Herbois, the amnesty was changed into a triumph; a fête was given to the liberated culprits, and Pétion, as mayor of Paris, presided at it. The intense absurdity of the affair threw into the shade its injustice and danger; and Chenier was not the man to let any of this absurdity be lost. He satirized and ridiculed the Jacobins in prose and verse. He sketched a plan for the new ovation:

* "Verum ex his magistratus et imperia, postremo omnis cura rerum publicarum minime mihi hac tempestate cupiunda videntur quoniam neque virtuti honos datur, neque illi quibus per fraudem is fuit, utique tuti aut eo magis honesti sunt" - Sallust, Bell. Jug., Cap. 3.

"The Romans used to engrave on brass the names of those generals to whom they granted a triumph, and their titles to so great an honor. I suppose the city of Paris will follow this example, and the happy witnesses of the triumphal entry will read inscribed on the car of victory:

"For having revolted with arms in their hands, and replied to the reading of the National Assembly's decree which recalled them to their duty, 'that they persisted in their revolt;'

"For having been declared guilty of high treason by a decree of the National Assembly, Aug. 16, 1790;

"For having plundered the regimental chest:

"For having spoken these memorable words: We are not Frenchmen; we are Swiss; we must have money;

"For having fired upon the National Guards of Metz and other places, who marched to Nancy in accordance with the decrees of the National Assembly.""

And he proceeds, with unanswerable irony:

"General Bouillé deceived all France and its representatives. None but these Swiss soldiers penetrated his bad designs. They saw that he would take the first opportunity to become a perjured traitor, Accordingly they took up arms against him, and made sure of the regimental chest, for fear this money, falling into his less patriotic hands, should serve the purposes of the counter-revolutionists.

"Since General Bouillé has shown himself a cowardly and treacherous enemy of his country, it is clear that those who fired on him, and on the French citizens marching under his orders by virtue of a decree of the National Assembly, cannot but be excellent patriots. "In every criminal case there can be but one culpable party. For example, when a murdered man is proved to have been a rogue, it is evident that his murderer must be an honest man."

The only reply Collot d'Herbois and his myrmidons could make, was to charge Chénier with being hired by the Court, and to threaten him with assassination excellent radical arguments.

two

Chénier had already drawn a portrait of the Jacobin Club, too faithful not to provoke their fiercest indignation. This sketch was published in the supplement to the Journal de Paris, February 26, 1792, just a month before the letter from which we have been quoting:

"There exists in the midst of Paris a numerous association, holding frequent meetings, open to all who are, or pretend to be, patriots, always governed by leaders visible or invisible, who are continually changing and mutually destroying one another, but who have always the same object-the supreme power; and the same in

tention to get that power by whatever means. This society, formed at a moment when liberal principles, though sure to triumph, were not yet completely established, necessarily attracted a great number of citizens who were filled with alarm and warmly attached to the good cause. Many of these had more zeal than knowledge. With them glided in many hypocrites; so did many people who were in debt, without industry, poor through their own indolence, and seeing something to hope for in any change. Many wise and just men who know that in a well regulated State all the citizens do not attend to public affairs, while all ought to attend to their private affairs, have since retired from it; whence it follows that this association must be chiefly composed of some skilful players, who arrange the cards and profit by them, of some subordinate intriguers with whom an habitual eagerness for mischief takes the place of talent, and a large number of idlers, honest, but ignorant and short-sighted, incapable of any bad intention themselves, but very capable of forwarding the bad intentions of others without knowing it.

"This society has generated an infinity of others; towns, boroughs, and villages are full of them. They are almost all under the orders of the parent society, with which they keep up a most active correspondence. It is a body in Paris and the head of a larger body extending over France. In the same way did the Church of Rome plant the faith, and govern the world by its congregations of monks.

"This system was imagined and executed two years ago by men of great popularity, who saw very well that it was means of increasing their power and preserving their popularity, but did not see how perilous an instrument it was. So long as they ruled these societies, all the errors there committed met their warmest approbation; but since they have been blown up by this mine of their own kindling, they detest the excesses which are no longer to their profit, and, talking more truth without possessing more wisdom, combine with honest men in cursing their old master-piece.

"The audience before which these societies deliberate, constitutes, their strength; and when one considers that men of business do not neglect their affairs to listen at the debates of a club, and that men of intelligence prefer the silence of the closet, or the peaceable conversation, to the tumult and clamors of these noisy crowds, it is easy to see what must be the ordinary composition of the audience, and further, what sort of language is the best recommendation to them. One simple fallacy is all-sufficient: the constitution being founded on that eternal truth, the sovereignty of the people, it is only necessary to persuade the listeners at the club that they are the people.

"Lecturers and journal - mongers have generally adopted this definition. Some hundred vagabonds collected in a garden or at a play, or some gangs of robbers and shop-lifters, are impudently de