eir turn, they accused the
Girondists of a treasonable design to break _the republic one and
indivisible_ (whose unity they contended could only be preserved by the
supremacy of Paris) into a number of _confederate_ commonwealths. The
Girondin faction on this account received also the name of
_Federalists_.

Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities. Paris, the mother of
equality, was herself to be equalized. Matters were come to this
alternative: either that city must be reduced to a mere member of the
federative republic, or the Convention, chosen, as they said, by all
France, was to be brought regularly and systematically under the
dominion of the Common Hall, and even of any one of the sections of
Paris.

In this awful contest, thus brought to issue, the great mother club of
the Jacobins was entirely in the Parisian interest. The Girondins no
longer dared to show their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths at least
of the Jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great
patriarchal Jacobiniere of Paris, to which they were (to use their own
term) _affiliated_. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive,
had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to interfere: and they
chose to interfere in everything, and on every occasion. All hope of
gaining them to the support of property, or to the acknowledgment of any
law but their own will, was evidently vain and hopeless. Nothing but an
armed insurrection against their anarchical authority could answer the
purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured by rebellion, as it
had been caused by it.

As a preliminary to this attempt on the Jacobins and the commons of
Paris, which it was hoped would be supported by all the remaining
property of France, it became absolutely necessary to prepare a
manifesto, laying before the public the whole policy, genius, character,
and conduct of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition
as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same
unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which
all those concerned in this Revolution were, at the several periods of
their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and
under these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of
his party, which he executed with no small ability; and in this manner
the whole mystery of the French Revolution was laid open in all its
parts.

It is almost needless to m