let them
forge gun-barrels, in sight of Heaven and Earth.

Nor with heroic daring against the Foreign foe, can black vengeance
against the Domestic be wanting. Life-circulation of the Revolutionary
Committees being quickened by that Law of the Forty Sous, Deputy Merlin,
not the Thionviller, whom we saw ride out of Mentz, but Merlin of Douai,
named subsequently Merlin Suspect,--comes, about a week after, with
his world-famous Law of the Suspect: ordering all Sections, by their
Committees, instantly to arrest all Persons Suspect; and explaining
withal who the Arrestable and Suspect specially are. "Are Suspect," says
he, "all who by their actions, by their connexions, speakings, writings
have"--in short become Suspect. (Moniteur, Seance du 17 Septembre 1793.)
Nay Chaumette, illuminating the matter still further, in his Municipal
Placards and Proclamations, will bring it about that you may almost
recognise a Suspect on the streets, and clutch him there,--off to
Committee, and Prison. Watch well your words, watch well your looks: if
Suspect of nothing else, you may grow, as came to be a saying, 'Suspect
of being Suspect!' For are we not in a State of Revolution?

No frightfuller Law ever ruled in a Nation of men. All Prisons and
Houses of Arrest in French land are getting crowded to the ridge-tile:
Forty-four thousand Committees, like as many companies of reapers or
gleaners, gleaning France, are gathering their harvest, and storing it
in these Houses. Harvest of Aristocrat tares! Nay, lest the Forty-four
thousand, each on its own harvest-field, prove insufficient, we are to
have an ambulant 'Revolutionary Army:' six thousand strong, under right
captains, this shall perambulate the country at large, and strike in
wherever it finds such harvest-work slack. So have Municipality and
Mother Society petitioned; so has Convention decreed. (Ibid. Seances du
5, 9, 11 Septembre.) Let Aristocrats, Federalists, Monsieurs vanish,
and all men tremble: 'The Soil of Liberty shall be purged,'--with a
vengeance!

Neither hitherto has the Revolutionary Tribunal been keeping holyday.
Blanchelande, for losing Saint-Domingo; 'Conspirators of Orleans,' for
'assassinating,' for assaulting the sacred Deputy Leonard-Bourdon: these
with many Nameless, to whom life was sweet, have died. Daily the great
Guillotine has its due. Like a black Spectre, daily at eventide,
glides the Death-tumbril through the variegated throng of things. The
variegated s