Dispatches of September
19 and 23.)--Mallet-Dupan, "Mercure Britannique." (No. for October 25,
1799. Letter from Paris. September 15. Exposition of the situation and
tableau of the parties.) "I will add that the war waged with success
by the Directory against the Jacobins, (for, although the Directory is
itself a Jacobin production, it wants no more of its masters), that this
war, I say, has rallied people somewhat to the government without having
converted anyone to the Revolution or really frightened the Jacobins who
will pay them back if they have time to do it."]

[Footnote 51143: Gohier, "Memoires," conversation with Sieyes on his
entry into the Directory. "Here we are," says Sieyes to him, "members of
a government which, as we cannot conceal from ourselves, is threatened
with a coming fall. But when the ice melts skilful pilots can escape in
the breaking up. A falling government does not always imperil those at
the head of it."]

[Footnote 51144: Tacitus, "Annales," book VI., P 50. "Macro, intrepidus,
opprimi senem injectu multoe vestis discedique a limine."]

[Footnote 51145: Mallet-Dupan," Mercure Britannique." (Nos. for December
25, 1798 and December 1799.) "From the very beginning of the Revolution,
there never was, in the uproar of patriotic protestations, amidst so
many popular effusions of devotion to the popular cause to Liberty in
the different parties, but one fundamental conception, that of grasping
power after having instituted it, of using every means of strengthening
themselves, and of excluding the largest number from it, in order to
center themselves in a privileged committee. As soon as they had hurried
through the articles of their constitution and seized the reins of
government, the dominant party conjured the nation to trust to it,
notwithstanding that the farce of their reasoning would not bring about
obedience,... Power and money and money and power, all projects
for guaranteeing their own heads and disposing of those of their
competitors, end in that. From the agitators of 1789 to the tyrants of
1798, from Mirabeau to Barras, each labors only to forcibly open the
gates of riches and authority and to close them behind them."]

[Footnote 51146: Mallet-Dupan, ibid., No. for April 10, 1799. On the
Jacobins. "The sources of their enmities, the prime motive of their
fury, their coup-d'etat lay in their constant mistrust of each other....
Systematic, immoral factionists, cruel through necessity