ins and Loustallot,
inveighed against what they described as iniquitous class legislation
that would have excluded from the councils of the French nation Jean
Jacques Rousseau and even that _pauvre sans culotte_ Jesus Christ. But
the assembly was obdurate, and, in fact, remained middle class in its
point of view all through the Revolution except when irresistible
pressure was brought to bear against it.

The journalists, however, tended far more rapidly towards democracy
than the deputies. Journalism had sprung from the events of July. The
pamphlets of Camille Desmoulins had, by a natural metamorphosis, become
journals after that date. Their popularity did not, however, attain
that of Loustallot's {92} _Revolutions de Paris_, of which one number
is said to have reached a circulation of 200,000. Marat's _Ami du
peuple_, first published in September, soon became the most formidable
organ of opinion, and remained so until the rise of Hebert and his
atrocious _Pere Duchesne_, at a later period. These papers and their
editors played a great part, and will often be noticed, but for the
present all that need be said is that their rise at this period is one
of the symptoms of the tremendous change that had come over the city of
Paris.

Paris before 1789 was, in a sense, mediaeval, provincial. Although the
largest city of France, its capital, the centre of thought and art, the
resort of many French and foreign visitors, the city was still in a way
a local centre, and isolated, unrelated with the rest of France. The
Court did not reside there, the administration, especially of justice,
was in large measure decentralized, and Paris was the abode of the
Parisian almost in the same narrow sense that the province was the
abode of the provincial. But now all this was rapidly changing. The
arrival of the Court and of the National Assembly suddenly made of
Paris the heart of France. The fever of revolution made that heart
beat faster, and a rapid {93} current of the best life blood of the
nation began circulating from the provinces to Paris and from Paris
back again to the provinces, bringing energy and a broadening of
sympathy with it. And if a glance is taken at Europe during the same
period, during the twenty-five years that follow the outbreak of the
French Revolution, the same process may be seen at work, but on a
larger scale. The old stagnation, the feudal congestion of Germany and
Italy, the immobility of the popu