rt; and many false
manoeuvres, to which the people were urged, arose from no other
source. There was a ministry of corruption, over which perfidy
presided. Many obtained from this source, under pretence of aiding the
court, the power of moderating or betraying the people; then fearing
lest their treachery should be discovered, they hid it by a second
betrayal, and turned against the king his own motions. Danton was of
this number. Sometimes, through motives of charity or peace, the king
gave a monthly sum to be distributed amongst the national guard, and the
_quartiers_ in which insurrection was most to be apprehended. M. de La
Fayette, and Petion himself, often drew money from this source. Thus the
king could, by employing those means, ensure the election, and by
joining the constitutionalist party determine the choice of Paris in
favour of M. de La Fayette. M. de La Fayette was one of the first
originators of this revolution which humbled the throne; his name was
associated with every humiliation of the court, with all the resentment
of the queen, all the terrors of the king; he had been first their
dread, then their protector, and, lastly, their guardian: could he be
now their hope? Would not this post of mayor of Paris, this vast, civil,
and popular dignity, after this long-armed dictatorship in the capital,
be to La Fayette but a second stepping-stone that would raise him higher
than the throne, and cast the king and constitution into the shade? This
man, with his theoretically liberal ideas, was well-intentioned, and
wished rather to dominate than to reign; but could any reliance be
placed on these good intentions that had been so often overcome? Was it
not full of these good intentions that he had usurped the command of the
civic force--captured the Bastille with the insurgent Gardes
Francaises--marched to Versailles at the head of the populace of
Paris--suffered the chateau to be forced on the 6th of October--arrested
the royal family at Varennes, and retained the king a prisoner in his
own palace? Would he now resist should the people again command him?
Would he abandon the _role_ of the French Washington when he had half
fulfilled it? The human heart is so constituted that we rather prefer to
cast ourselves into the power of those who would destroy us than seek
safety from those who humiliate us. La Fayette humiliated the king, and
more especially the queen.

A respectful independence was the habitual expressi