The avowal of these projects created an immediate alarm among those on whom the massacre of Ferraud, and the dangers to which the Assembly was exposed, had made no impression.  The dismay became general; and in a few hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to liberate the Assembly,* and wrest the government from the hands of the Jacobins.—­

* This is stated as a ground of reproach by the Jacobins, and is admitted by the Convention.  Andre Dumont, who had taken so active a part in supporting Robespierre’s government, was yet on this occasion defended and protected the whole day by a young man whose father had been guillotined.

—­This defeat ended in the arrest of all who had taken a part against the now triumphant majority; and there are, I believe, near fifty of them in custody, besides numbers who contrived to escape.*

* Among those implicated in this attempt to revive the revolutionary government was Carnot, and the decree of arrest would have been carried against him, had it not been suggested that his talents were necessary in the military department.  All that remained of Robespierre’s Committees, Jean Bon St. Andre, Robert Lindet, and Prieur, were arrested.  Carnot alone was excepted; and it was not disguised that his utility, more than any supposed integrity, procured him the exemption.

That the efforts of this more sanguinary faction have been checked, is doubtless a temporary advantage; yet those who calculate beyond the moment see only the perpetuation of anarchy, in a habit of expelling one part of the legislature to secure the government of the other; nor can it be denied, that the freedom of the representative body has been as much violated by the Moderates in the recent transactions, as by the Jacobins on the thirty-first of May 1793.  The Deputies of the Mountain have been proscribed and imprisoned, rather as partizans than criminals; and it is the opinion of many, that these measures, which deprive the Convention of such a portion of its members, attach as much illegality to the proceedings of the rest, as the former violences of Robespierre and his faction.*

* The decrees passed by the Jacobin members during their few hours triumph cannot be defended; but the whole Convention had long acquiesced in them, and the precise time when they were to cease was certainly a matter of opinion.  The greater part of these members were accused of no active violence, nor could they have been arrested on any principles but that of being rivals to a faction stronger than themselves.

—­It is true, the reigning party may plead in their justification that they only inflict what they would themselves have suffered, had the Jacobins prevailed; and this is an additional proof of the weakness and instability of a form of government which is incapable of resisting opposition, and which knows no medium between yielding to its adversaries, and destroying them.