ere
is he, that new Spartacus who will find no Crassus? Then the Black Code
will vanish; how terrible will the White Code be!" We may easily realise
the effect which vehement words like these had upon Toussaint, and upon
those for whom Toussaint reproduced them.

Men have constantly been asking themselves what the great literary
precursors of the Revolution would have thought, and how they would have
acted, if they could have survived to the days of the Terror. What would
Voltaire have said of Robespierre? How would Rousseau have borne himself
at the Jacobin Club? Would Diderot have followed the procession of the
Goddess of Reason? To ask whether these famous men would have sanctioned
the Terror, is to insult great memories; but there is no reason to
suppose that their strong spirits would have faltered. One or two of the
younger generation of the famous philosophic party did actually see the
break-up of the old order. Condorcet faced the storm with a heroism of
spirit that has never been surpassed: disgust at the violent excesses of
bad men could never make him unfaithful to the beneficence of the
movement which their frenzy distorted.

Raynal was of weaker mould, and showed that there had been a stratum of
cant and borrowed formulas in his eloquence. He lived into the very
darkest days, and watched the succession of events with a keen eye. His
heart began to quail very early. Long before the bloodier times of the
internecine war between the factions, and on the eve of the attempted
flight of the king, he addressed a letter to the National Assembly (May
31, 1791). The letter is not wanting in firm and courageous phrases. "I
have long dared," he began, "to tell kings of their duties. Let me
to-day tell the people of its errors, and the representatives of the
people of the perils that menace us all." He then proceeded to inveigh
in his old manner, but with a new purpose and a changed destination.
This time it was not kings and priests whom he denounced, but a
government enslaved by popular tyranny, soldiers without discipline,
chiefs without authority, ministers without resources, the rudest and
most ignorant of men daring to settle the most difficult political
questions. How comes it, he asks, that after declaring the dogma of the
liberty of religious opinions, you allow priests to be overwhelmed by
persecution and outrage because they do not follow your religious
opinions? In the same energetic vein he protests agains