n
to death, was, that it would make the army and people decisive, by
banishing all hope of peace or accommodation. See the _Moniteur_ of
that time, which, as I have elsewhere observed, may be always
considered as official.

--These services being too great for adequate reward, were not rewarded
at all; and the municipality, tired of the odium of crime, without the
participation of power, has seized on its portion of tyranny; while the
convention, at once jealous and timid, exasperated and doubtful, yet
menaces with the trepidation of a rival, rather than with the security of
a conqueror.

Hebert, the Deputy-solicitor for the commune of Paris, appears on this
occasion as the opponent of the whole legislature; and all the
temporizing eloquence of Barrere, and the mysterious phraseology of
Robespierre, are employed to decry his morals, and to reproach the
ministers with the sums which have been the price of his labours.--*

* Five thousand pounds, two thousand pounds, and other considerable
sums, were paid to Hebert for supplying the army with his paper,
called "La Pere Duchene." Let whoever has read one of them,
conceive the nature of a government to which such support was
necessary, which supposed its interests promoted by a total
extinction of morals, decency, and religion. I could almost wish,
for the sake of exhibiting vice under its most odious colours, that
my sex and my country permitted me to quote one.

--Virtuous republicans! the morals of Hebert were pure when he outraged
humanity in his accusations of the Queen--they were pure when he
prostrated the stupid multitude at the feet of a Goddess of Reason;* they
were pure while his execrable paper served to corrupt the army, and to
eradicate every principle which yet distinguished the French as a
civilized people.

* Madame Momoro, the unfortunate woman who exposed herself in this
pageant, was guillotined as an accomplice of Hebert, together with
the wives of Hebert and Camille Desmoulins.

--Yet, atrocious as his crimes are, they form half the Magna Charta of
the republic,* and the authority of the Convention is still supported by
them.

* What are the death of the King, and the murders of August and
September, 1792, but the Magna Charta of the republicans?

--It is his person, not his guilt, that is proscribed; and if the one be
threatened with the scaffold, the frui