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Brissot is plotting in his journal, which is simply a tocsin of civil war; we know of his going to England, and why he went; we know all about his intimacy with that Lebrun, minister of foreign affairs, a Liegois and creature of the Austrian house. Brissot's best friend is Claviere, and Claviere has plotted wherever he could breathe.
He, of course, was no longer trusted as a spy, and therefore turned a Jacobin, and announced himself to Brissot as a persecuted patriot. All the calumnies against this Minister in Brissot's daily paper, Le Patriote Francois, during January, February, and March, 1792, were the productions of Mehee's malicious heart and able pen.
Cries of angry feeling burst from the ranks of Brissot's friends, who clamoured for Camille Desmoulins' expulsion. A censor of the chamber declared that the remarks of the pamphleteer were disgraceful, and order was restored. Brissot proceeded. "Denunciation is the weapon of the people: I do not complain of this. Do you know who are its bitterest enemies? Those who prostitute denunciation.
That which he reprobates begins precisely at the period when the Jacobins disputed the claims of himself and his party to the exclusive direction of the government. See Brissot's Address to his Constituents. We learn therefore, not from the abuses alone, but from the praises bestowed on the Jacobins, how much such combinations are to be dreaded.
Ah! would to heaven that all the places were filled by Jacobins!" At these words Camille Desmoulins, Brissot's enemy, concealed in the chamber, bowing towards his neighbour, said aloud with a sneering laugh, "What a cunning rogue! Cicero and Demosthenes never uttered more eloquent insinuations."
Others, like Tallien or Joseph Chénier, were touched in their family, a brother, a wife, a sister, awaiting judgment and the guillotine. Others feared; others hoped; and yet others had vengeance to satisfy, especially the remnants of Danton's, of Brissot's and of Hébert's party. St. Just saw the danger of the situation and attempted to cow opposition.
In several, and those very important particulars, Brissot's observations apply to the whole of the preceding period before the great schism, and whilst the Jacobins acted as one body; insomuch that the far greater part of the proceedings of the ruling powers since the commencement of the Revolution in France, so strikingly painted, so strongly and so justly reprobated by Brissot, were the acts of Brissot himself and his associates.
He, of course, was no longer trusted as a spy, and therefore turned a Jacobin, and announced himself to Brissot as a persecuted patriot. All the calumnies against this Minister in Brissot's daily paper, Le Patriote Francois, during January, February, and March, 1792, were the productions of Mehee's malicious heart and able pen.
It seemed a fatality which came to smite me, and of which I must undergo the consequences, however serious they might be. I counted much on the solicitations of Brissot's mother, already so cruelly tried during the revolution. I went to her home, in the Rue de Condé, and implored her earnestly to coöperate with me in preventing her son from carrying out his sanguinary resolution.
Brissot's text was the weakness and division of other countries; the first man who divined the prodigious resources and invincible energy of France was the declamatory Provençal Isnard.
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