d agitation; tranquillity by no means suited its designs. It had
ambitious desires as vast as its talents, ardent as its youth, impatient
as its thirst for advancement. The Constituent Assembly, composed of
reflective men of eminence in the state, and in the social hierarchy,
had but the ambition of advancing the ideas of liberty and fame; the new
Assembly had that of tumult, fortune, and power. Formed of obscure,
poor, and unknown men, it aspired to the acquisition of all in which it
was deficient.

This latter party, of which Brissot was the journalist, Petion the
popular member, Vergniaud the genius, the party of the Girondists the
body, entered on the scene with the boldness and unity of a conspiracy.
It was the _bourgeoisie_ triumphant, envious, turbulent, eloquent, the
aristocracy of talent, desiring to acquire and control by itself alone
liberty, power, and the people. The Assembly was made up of unequal
portions of three elements; the constitutionalists, who formed the
aristocratic liberty and moderate monarchy party; the Girondists, the
party of the movement, sustained until the Revolution fell into their
hands; the Jacobins, the party of the people, and of philosophy in
action; the first arrangement and transition, the second boldness and
intrigue, the third fanaticism and devotion. Of these last two parties
the Jacobin was not the most hostile to the king. The aristocracy and
the clergy destroyed, that party had no repugnance to the throne; it
possessed in a high degree the instinct of the unity of power; it was
not the Jacobins who first demanded war, and who first uttered the word
republic, but it was the first who uttered and often repeated the word
_dictatorship_. The word _republic_ appertained to Brissot and the
Girondists. If the Girondists, on their coming in to the Assembly, had
united with the constitutional party in order to save the constitution
by moderate measures, and the Revolution by not urging it into war, they
would have saved their party and controlled the throne. The honesty in
which their leader was deficient was also wanting in their
conduct--they were all intrigue. They made themselves the agitators in
an assembly of which they might have been the statesmen. They had not
confidence in the republic, but feigned it. In revolutions sincere
characters are the only skilful characters. It is glorious to die the
victim of a faith; it is pitiful to die the dupe of one's ambition.

VI.

Th