sat the Commune, a crew of blood-thirsty villains, headed by Hebert;
and this miscreant, with his armed sections, accompanied by paid
female furies, beset the Convention, and carried measures of severity
by sheer intimidation. Let it further be remembered that, in 1793,
France was kept in apprehension of invasion by the Allies under the
Duke of Brunswick, and the army of emigrant noblesse under the command
of Condé. The hovering of these forces on the frontiers, and their
occasional successes, produced a constant alarm of counter-revolution,
which was believed to be instigated by secret intriguers in the very
heart of the Convention. It was alleged by Robespierre in his greatest
orations, that the safety of the Republic depended on keeping up a
wholesome state of terror; and that all who, in the slightest degree,
leaned towards clemency, sanctioned the work of intriguers, and ought,
accordingly, to be proscribed. By such harangues--in the main,
miserable sophistry--he acquired prodigious popularity, and was in
fact irresistible.

Thus was legalised the Reign of Terror, which, founded in false
reasoning and insane fears, we must, nevertheless, look back upon as a
thing, at least to a certain extent, reconcilable with a sense of
duty; inasmuch as even while signing warrants for transferring
hundreds of people to the Revolutionary Tribunal--which was equivalent
to sending them to the scaffold--Robespierre imagined that he was
acting throughout under a clear, an imperious necessity: only ridding
society of the elements that disturbed its purity and tranquillity.
Stupendous hallucination! And did this fanatic really feel no pang of
conscience? That will afterwards engage our consideration. Frequently,
he was called on to proscribe and execute his most intimate friends;
but it does not appear that any personal consideration ever stayed his
proceedings. First, he swept away Royalists and aristocrats; next, he