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Updated: June 7, 2025
On the right of the Convention sat nearly two hundred Girondists, including Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet, and the interesting Thomas Paine. These men represented largely the well-to-do bourgeoisie who were more radical in thought than in deed, who ardently desired a democratic republic, but who at the same time distrusted Paris and the proletariat.
Its chief leader was Brissot, who, a member of the corporation of Paris during the last session, had subsequently become a member of the assembly.
The leaders of the extreme Left were driven to this course by several motives: they did not want the Girondists, and the moderate members of the Plain, who directed the committee of the constitution, the former by Petion, Condorcet, Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonne, the others by Barrere, Sieyes, and Thomas Paine, to organize the republic.
" I know not if we are yet arrived at the climax of woe and iniquity, but Brissot, Condorcet, Rolland, &c. and all those whose principles you have reprobated as violent and dangerous, will now form the moderate side of the Assembly. Perhaps even those who are now the party most dreaded, may one day give place to yet more desperate leaders, and become in their turn our best alternative.
Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Condorcet, Gensonné, Pétion, their friends in the Assembly, the council-chamber of Madame Roland, their Seids amongst the Jacobins balanced between two ambitions equally open to their abilities to destroy power or seize on it. Brissot counselled this latter measure.
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.
There will be sufficient time for me to receive your answer, as I have prevailed on the Reporter, M. Brissot, to delay a few days. I have given him my reasons for wishing the suspension, to which he has assented. Mr. O'Brien also prompted me to this deed, and, if I have done wrong, he must take half the punishment.
I wish that the culpable chief of these factions, La Fayette, was here with all his army; I would say to his soldiers, whilst I presented my breast, Strike! Fauchet excused himself for having said that Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Brissot might be, advantageously for the country, placed at the head of the government.
Tyrants have never wanted sophists: on the other hand, men of right feeling towards their fellows, who had, like Grégoire, Raynal, Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, La Fayette, embraced the cause of humanity, and formed the "Society of the Friends of the Blacks" had circulated their principles in the colonies, like a vengeance rather than as justice.
Luckily he had his American blood and practical education to restrain him, or he might have been as foolish as Brissot and as rabid as Marat. As it was, he could not help perceiving in his calmer moments that this new path to the glorious future which the philosophes were pointing out to their countrymen, had been for many years in America the well-worn high road of the nation.
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