most questions far beyond the protestations or the policy of the Brissot faction,* yet, as was to be expected, his connection with them excited suspicion. In the close of

*Witness the following:-"No question has arisen within the records of history that pressed with the importance of the present. It is not whether this or that party shall be in or out, whether whig or tory, high or low shall prevail; but whether man shall inherit his right, and universal civilization take place? Whether the fruits of his labors shall be enjoyed by himself or consumed by the profligacy of governments? Whether robbery shall be banished from courts, and wretchedness from countries? "When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the work-house. and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government. I would seem, by the exterior appearance of such countries, that all was happiness; but there lies hidden from the eye of common observation, a mass of wretchedness that has scarcely any other chance than to expire in poverty or infamy.

"Why is it, that scarcely any are executed but the poor? The fact is a proof, among other things, of a wretchedness in their condition. Bred up without morals and cast upon the world without a prospect, they are the exposed sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity.

"It is difficult to discover what is meant by the landed interest, if it does not mean a combination of aristocratical landholders.

"If the Baron merited a monument to be erected in Runnymede, Wat Tyler merits one in Smithfield."- Rights of Man, part 2.

See also, in the same work, Paine's scheme for improving the condition of the poor and abolishing the inhuman poor-laws; also his table of progressive taxation to restrict accumulation within certain limits;- and compare the above with the following, from a Declaration of Rights, proposed by Robespierre. It will then be seen how well Paine and Robespierre accorded; and how little the former was that unprincipled emasculation, self-named a "moderate reformer."

"Art. 1. The end of all political associations is the maintenance of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man, and the development of all his faculties.

64 Art 2. The principal rights of man are those of providing for the preservation of his existence and liberty.

"Art. 3. These rights belong to all men equally.

"Art. 7. The right of property is limited, like all other rights, by the obligation to respect the rights of others.

"Art. 10. Society is under obligation to provide subsistence for all its members, either by procuring employment for them, or by insuring the means of existence to those that are incapable of labor.

"Art. 11.

The relief indispensable to those that are in want of necessaries is a debt due from the possessors of superfluities. It belongs to the law to determine the manner in which the debt should be discharged.

Art. 12. Citizens, where the income does not exceed what is necessary to their subsistence, are dispensed from contributing to the public expenditure. The rest ought to contribute progressively, according to the extent of their fortunes.

Art. 21. All the citizens are equally admissable to all public functions

"Art. 22. All the citizens have an equal right to concur in the nomination of the delegates of the people. "Art. 29. When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people, and for every portion of the people, the most sacred of rights, and the most indispensable of duties.

Art. 30. When the social guarantee, or compact, fails to protect a citizen, he resumes his natural right to defend personally all his rights.

"Art. 31. In either of the two preceding cases, to subject to legal forms the resistance to oppression, is the last refinement of tyranny."— Maximilien Robespierre, given in Buonarroti's History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality.

CONDORCET.

C

MONDORCET, says Lamartine, "was a philosopher, as intrepid in his actions as bold in his speculations. His political creed was a consequence of his philosophy. He believed in the divinity of reason, and in the omnipotence of the human understanding, with liberty as its handmaid. Heaven, the abode of all ideal perfections, and in which man places his most beautiful dreams, was limited by Condorcet to earth his science was his virtue; the human mind his deity. The intellect impregnated by science, and multiplied by time, it appeared to him must triumph necessarily over all the resistance of matter; must lay bare all the creative powers of nature, and renew the face of creation. He had made of this system a line of politics, whose first idea was to adore the future and abhor the past. He had the cool fanaticism of logic, and the reflective anger of conviction. A pupil of Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Helvetius, he, like Bailly, was of that intermediate generation by which philosophy was embodied with the Revolution. More ambitious than Bailly, he had not his impassibility. Aristocrat by birth, he, like Mirabeau, had passed over to the camp of the people. He had become one of the people, in order to convert the people into the army of philosophy. He wanted of the republic no more than was sufficient to overturn its prejudices. Ideas once become victorious, he would willingly have confided it to the control of a constitutional monarchy. He was rather a man for dispute than a man of anarchy. Aristocrats always carry with them, into the popular party, the desire of order and command. They would fain

"Ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm.'

Real anarchists are those who are impatient of having always obeyed, and feel themselves impotent to command.

"Condorcet had edited the Chronique de Paris from 1789. It was a journal of constitutional doctrines, but in which the throbbings of anger were perceivable beneath the cool and polished hand of the philosopher. Had Condorcet been endowed with warmth and command of language, he might have been the Mirabeau of another assembly. He had his earnestness and constancy, but had not the resounding and energetic tone which made his own soul and feelings felt by another."-E.

1793, he lost his seat in the Convention, in consequence of a successful motion, made by Bourdon de L'Oise, for expelling foreigners from that body; and immediately afterwards, he was arrested and conveyed to the Luxembourg, by order of the Committees of Public Safety and General Surety (of which Barrere and Vadier were presidents, and Robespierre not "dictator",) in pursuance of a former decree for imprisoning natives of England, from which Paine had been excepted in virtue of his seat in the Convention.

The following, from Rickman, gives us a tolerable insight into his private life in Paris:-"His company was now coveted universally-by many who for some reasons never chose to avow it. With the Earl of Lauderdale, and Dr. Moore, whose company he was fond of, he dined every Friday, till Lord Gower's departure made it necessary for them to quit France, which was early in 1793. About this period he removed from White's Hotel to one near the Rue Richelieu, where he was so plagued and interrupted by numerous visitors, and sometimes by adventurers, that, in order to have some time to himself, he appropriated two mornings in a week for his levee days. To this indeed he was extremely averse, from the fuss and formality attending it, but he was nevertheless obliged to adopt it. Annoyed and disconcerted with a life so contrary to his wishes and habits, he retired to the Fauxbourg St. Dennis,* where

* He himself says, "In 1793, I had lodgings in the Rue Fauxbourg St. Dennis. No 63. They were the most agreeable for situation of any I ever had in Paris, except that they were too remote from the Convention, of which I was then a member. The house, which was enclosed by a wall and gateway from the street, was a good deal like an old mansion farmhouse, and the court-yard, was like a farm-yard, stocked with fowls, ducks, turkeys, and geese; which, for amusement, we used to feed out of the window of the parlor on the ground floor. There were some huts for rabbits, and a stye with two pigs. Beyond was a garden of more than an acre of ground, well laid out, and stocked with excellent fruit trees. The orange, apricot, and the greengage plum were the best I ever tasted; and it is the only place where I saw the wild cucumber, which they told me is poisonous. My apartments consisted of three rooms. The first for wood, water, &c., with an old fashioned closet chest, high enough to hang up clothes in. The next was the bedroom, and beyond that the sitting-room. At the end of the sitting-room, which looked into the garden, was a

he occupied part of the hotel that Madame de Pompadour once resided in. Here was a good garden, well laid out ; and here too our mutual friend Mr. Choppin occupied apartments. At this residence, which for a town one was very quiet, he lived a life of retirement and philosophical ease, while it was believed he was gone into the country for his health, which by this time indeed was much impaired by intense application to business, and by the anxious solicitude he felt for the welfare of public affairs. Here with a chosen few he unbent himself; among whom were Brissot, the Marquis de Chatelet le Roi of the gallerie de honore,* and an old friend of Dr. Franklin, Bancal, and sometimes General Miranda. His English associates were Christie and family, Mrs. Wollstonecraft, Mr. and Mrs. Stone, &c. Among his American friends were Capt. Imlay, Joel Barlow, &c., &c. To these parties the French inmates were generally invited. He usually rose about seven, breakfasted with his friend Choppin, Johnson, and two or three other Englishmen, and a Monsieur La Borde, who had been an officer in the ci-devant garde-du-corps, an intolerable aristocrat, but whose skill in mechanics and geometry brought on a friendship between him and Paine. — After breakfast he usually strayed an hour or two in the garden, where he one morning pointed out the kind of spider whose web furnished him with the first idea of constructing his iron bridge.—The little happy circle who lived with him here will ever remember these days with delight: with these select friends he would talk of his boyish days, play at chess, whist, piquet, or cribbage, and enliven the moments by many interesting anecdotes: with these he

glass door, and on the outside a small landing-place railed in, and a flight of narrow stairs almost hidden by the vines that grew over it, by which I could descend into the garden, without going down stairs through the house. I used to find some relief by walking alone in the garden after it was dark, and cursing with hearty good will the authors of that terrible system, that had turned the character of the revolution I had been proud to defend."- Yorke's Letters from France.

* Possibly du Chatelet du Roi of the galerie d'honneur.