one, was formerly an advocate of some practice, but attended more to
politics than to the business of his clients, and was, therefore, at the
end of the session of the first assembly (of which he was a member),
forced, for subsistence, to become the editor of an insignificant
journal. Here he preached licentiousness, under the name of Liberty, and
the agrarian law in recommending Equality. A prudent courtier of all
systems in fashion, and of all factions in power, he escaped
proscription, though not accusation of having shared in the national
robberies. A short time in the summer of 1797, after the dismissal of
Cochon, he acted as a Minister of Police; and in 1798 the Jacobins
elected him a member of the Council of Ancients, where he, with other
deputies, sold himself to Bonaparte, and was, in return, rewarded with a
place in the Senate. Under monarchy he was a republican, and under a
Republic he extolled monarchical institutions. He wished to be singular,
and to be rich. Among so many shocking originals, however, he was not
distinguished; and among so many philosophical marauders, he had no
opportunity to pillage above two millions of livres. This friend of
liberty is now one of the most despotic Senators, and this lover of
equality never answers when spoken to, if not addressed as "His
Excellency," or "Monseigneur."

Boissy d' Anglas, another member of this commission, was before the
Revolution a steward to Louis XVIII. when Monsieur; and, in 1789, was
chosen a deputy of the first assembly, where he joined the factions, and
in his speeches and writings defended all the enormities that dishonoured
the beginning as well as the end of the Revolution. A member afterwards
of the National Convention, he was sent in mission to Lyons, where,
instead of healing the wounds of the inhabitants, he inflicted new ones.
When, on the 15th of March, 1796, in the Council of Five Hundred, he
pronounced the oath of hatred to royalty, he added, that this oath was in