says, in an examination of the objects to which the prince might apply his immense fortune.

This flagitious aud despicable individual, who had just arrived at his fortune by the death of his father, was at this moment the rallying point of the opposition to the King, and the Ministry, headed by the inefficient Brienne. Brissot entered fully into the views of his principal; and attacking the schemes of the government in several pamphlets, (among which we believe were the Lettre d'un Citoyen à un frondeur sur les affaires présentes and the Moniteur, a periodical circulated with great secrecy and circumspection, and attributed to the joint labors of Brissot, Condorcet, and Clavière,) he was offered the customary remedy for excessive freedom of opinion, a lettre-de-cachet. This he hastily rejected, and once more took refuge in England.

Here, unfortunately, just at the point where it grows most interesting, this first part of the memoir ends; below this period, it is however comparatively easy to detail the principal events of Brissot's life.

Before his leaving France, we find him among the most prominent in laying the foundation of the society of the Amis des Noirs, the first association of French philanthropists for that object, the comprehensive wisdom and benevolence of which we of this age, who are witnesses of the perilous position of our gallant brethren of the South, can best appreciate. When we take a view of the whole of Brissot's life, we must not forget to offset this constant devotion to a wise humanity against the errors and the madness of his subsequent course. When shall we learn to discriminate between the unfortunate and the vicious, the unwise and the wicked?

Brissot's sojourn in England appears to have been but short, and in June 1788, he sailed from Havre for Boston, to make the tour of the United States, the government and institutions of which, for several years previous, appear to have attracted much of his attention. The object of these Travels was not to study antiques or to search for unknown plants, but to study men who had just acquired their liberty, my principal design was to examine the effects of liberty upon man, society and government.' These travels, which were published in France in 1791, and republished in English soon after, although highly complimentary to this country, never met with any great favor, we believe, on this side of the Atlantic. They were rather

too radical, in their tone, for our fathers of that day and generation, and perhaps the unhappy fate of their author assisted to create a prejudice against them. This work, although sometimes superficial, shows nevertheless much observation, and is filled with that love of republican institutions and that bumane desire for the intellectual advancement of his fellow beings, which so strongly characterised the author's mind.

Deep and accurate thinking never appears to have been an attribute of Brissot; active and indefatigable, he labored more than he reflected. He was essentially a working-man, but his virtuous efforts and his unwearied benevolence have not saved his name from being added to that long list of misguided persons, which proves so conclusively that neither industry nor humanity can avail any thing, if unassisted by a knowledge of our own nature, by that worldly wisdom which is the compass and the chart to the mariner through the shoals and breakers of this life, and last and greatest, by that wisdom which cometh from on high, and which alone can lead us to the safe haven of another world.

Late in the year 1788, or in one of the first months of 1789, hastened, as he says, by the approaching Revolution in France, he returned thither, and from this time dates his political career. He almost immediately commenced his Patriote Français, one of the most popular of those gazettes which, upon the first dawn of the revolutionary day, sprang into existence. like the ephemera, which the sun warms into being. This paper he maintained until his arrest in 1793, at one period assisted by Girey Duprey, who shared his fate, but the greater part of the time without any aid whatever.

To the first meeting of the States General, L'Assemblée Constituante, Brissot was not deputed, but early in 1789 we find him a member of the Commune of Paris, a prominent agent of that municipal authority, so powerful to rouse, so impotent to allay the passions of the populace. In this capacity, he had the honor in July of receiving the keys of the Bastille.

During the two subsequent years, Brissot distinguished himself in this office, and more especially in the club of Jacobins, of which he was an early and active member. The celebrated petition, drawn up after the arrest of the King at Varennes, declaring Louis dethroned, and demanding a successor, which was to have been signed upon the Champ de Mars by the assembled people, is said to have been the production

of Brissot, who was at this time Président du Comité des Recherches de la Ville de Paris. This, it may be remembered, was the day when La Fayette attacked and dispersed the organs of the turbulent faction, and when, for once during the struggle, the strong arm of the law exercised a legitimate sway.

The second national assembly, La Législative, met at Paris, in October 1791; Brissot was deputed to it; and was immediately appointed one of its Secretaries. It now became apparent that the contest, which had so long existed between the Constitutionalists and the Jacobins, must end in the overthrow of the former. Brissot had long been a member of the party called by the general appellation of Jacobin, which looked to an ulterior and more levelling change, but comprised within itself two factions, wholly disagreeing as to the nature of that change and the means by which it was to be effected. These two parties, as yet engaged with the common foe, had not leisure, or did not think it safe to defy each other.

The party of the Gironde, containing in its ranks great talent, but, as it proved, no very active courage or comprehensive wisdom, and bearing in its front the names of Condorcet, Brissot, Vergniaud, Louvet, Barbaroux, Petion, whom the royalist Ferrières calls une machine à ressort montée par Brissot,' and many others of almost equal celebrity, were the first to profit by the defeat of the Constitutionnels, and when these were driven from the helm, the Girondists assumed the perilous post. It was then that the boudoir of Madame Roland became the council chamber, and that this extraordinary woman, to whom Sir Walter Scott should have forgiven an imperfect education and the defective manners of the age,* as she represents herself knitting or sewing at her little table, in the corner of the room, by turns listened to and influenced the decisions of the ministers.

From the moment of the formation of this party, Brissot was its principal leader in the assembly. The ultra-democracy of his opinions, his incessant activity, which brought him before the public in his Patriote Français, at the tribune, and in the Jacobin club, together with his accurate knowledge of the situation of the continental powers, all combined to give him great influence.

* Vide the remarks in the Life of Napoleon on her Memoirs. + Mignet, Vol. I. p. 218.

His name will be found constantly recurring in the debates. In the fall of 1791, he was one of the most forward in denouncing and enforcing the severest penalties against the emigrants, and in the early part of July, 1792, when a question connected with the declaration of war was under discussion, Brissot thus spoke of the King.*

The peril in which we are is of the most singular nature that can be imagined. The country is in danger, not because our troops are few, nor that they are wanting in courage,-not that our frontiers are unfortified or our resources exhausted. The country is in danger because its strength is paralyzed; and by whom is it paralyzed? By a single man,-by him whom the Constitution declares its head, and whom perfidious ministers have made our enemy. You are told to fear the Kings of Hungary and Prussia, but I tell you that the main strength of these monarchs is in Paris, and that it is at home we must conquer them. You are advised to arrest the refractory priests throughout the kingdom,—but I tell you to strike at the Court of the Tuileries, if you would reach all these priests with a single blow. You are advised to seize all seditious persons, all intriguers, all conspirators. But I tell you that they will all disappear if you strike at the Court of the Tuileries. This Cabinet is thecentre to which all their plots tend, here all their schemes are concerted, hence they all issue. The nation is the tool of the Cabinet. This is the secret of our situation. Here is the source of the evil; here must the remedy be applied.'

With regard to this speech, it may be remarked that, according to Louvet, this question of declaring war against Austria gave rise to the first division between the Cordeliers and the Jacobins purs, or the parti Robespierre and the parti Brissot. The former, whom this inveterate partisan uniformly terms Orleanists, were opposed to the war, as it increased the influence of La Fayette, the greatest enemy of Orleans, while the latter were in favor of it, as the readiest and surest means of hastening the overthrow of the monarchy, and the formation of a Republic.

The party of the Brissotins were too scrupulous of means to resist such men as Danton, Robespierre and Marat; the 20th of June was followed by the frightful tenth of August, and the sceptre passed from the Girondists; after this they maintained a feeble struggle for existence only. In the train * Mignet, Vol. I., p. 263.

VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 82.

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of measures which led to the bloody insurrection of the tenth of August, the party to which Brissot belonged appear to have taken a very irresolute and subordinate share. The memoirs of Barbaroux are very curious in showing with what insanity he planned the insurrection, blind enough not to foresee that the tocsin, which ushered in that morning, tolled the knell of himself and his friends, not less surely than that of Louis. Barbaroux, one of the most honorable and lamented sufferers of the Revolution, was, strange as it may appear, almost the only one of his party, who was active in promoting the rising of the tenth of August. Brissot and Gensonné, together with Louvet, according to the accounts of the latter, succeeded during the day in saving many of the brave Swiss from butchery.

The remarks of Mignet on the parties which followed each other so rapidly in the first years of the Revolution, are distinguished by their clearness and accuracy. The Constitutionalists trusted to the virtue and the courage of the upper and middling classes;-the factions of Danton, Marat, and Robespierre relied upon the passions and vices of the mob. The former yielded only after a severe and desperate contest; but the Girondists, not commanding the confidence of the middling classes and too scrupulous to call in the multitude to their aid, had no foundation whatever, and the event showed it.

The Assemblée Legislative was dissolved, and the Convention summoned to decide the fate of the king. Of this body, Brissot was a member from the department of Eure et Loire. It had hardly met, before the radical dissensions, existing between the Girondists and the faction of Danton and Robespierre, burst into open and violent invective. The punishment of Louis was the Shibboleth, and here Brissot was among the most prominent of those who supported the opinion that, though guilty of high treason and deserving of death, the monarch should have an appeal from the sentence of the Convention to the primary assemblies of the people. A majority of voices decided against the delay; and indeed it is difficult to understand, why a body elected with an express reference to this question should not have pronounced the final sentence, if indeed the Monarch were deserving of death and expediency did not demand the mitigation of the penalty.

But this vote was in accordance with the whole policy of the Girondists. Avoiding an absolute issue with their antagonists, they hoped apparently to conquer, after restoring the tone of