e
Bastille, he returned to Paris, established a journal, and from its very
beginning left far behind him, even those who, in the hope of making
themselves remarkable, thought they must push exaggeration to its very
farthest limits. The former connection of Marat with M. de Calonne was
perfectly well known; they remembered these words of Pitt's: "The French
must go through liberty, and then be brought back to their old
government by licence;" the avowed adversaries of revolution testified
by their conduct, by their votes, and even by their imprudent words,
that according to them, _the worst_ was the only means of returning to
what they call _the good_; and yet these instructive comparisons struck
only eight or ten members of our great assemblies, so small a share has
suspicion in the national character, so painful is distrust to French
sincerity. The historians of our troubles themselves have but skimmed
the question that I have just raised--assuredly a very important and
very curious one. In such matters, the part of a prophet is tolerably
hazardous; yet I do not hesitate to predict, that a minute study of the
conduct and of the discourses of Marat, would lead the mind more and
more to those chapters in a treatise on the chase, wherein we see
depicted bad species of falcons and hawks, at first only pursuing the
game by a sign from the master, and for his advantage; but by degrees
taking pleasure in these bloody struggles, and entering on the sport at
last with passion and for their own profit.

Marat took good care not to forget that during a revolution, men,
naturally suspicious, act in their more immediate affairs so as to
render those persons suspected whose duty it is to watch over them. The
Mayor of Paris, the General Commandant of the National Guard, were the
first objects, therefore, at which the pamphleteer aimed. As an
academician, Bailly had an extra claim to his hate.

Among men of Marat's disposition, the wounds of self-love never heal.
Without the hateful passions derived from this source, who would believe
that an individual, whose time was divided between the superintendence
of a daily journal, the drawing up of innumerable placards with which he
covered the walls of Paris, together with the struggles of the
Convention, the disputes not less fierce of the clubs; that an
individual who, besides, had given himself the task of imposing an
Agrarian law on the country, could find time to write the very long