The Patriots, in Mountain and Galleries, or taking counsel nightly in Section-house, in Mother Society, amid their shrill Tricoteuses, have to watch lynx-eyed; to give voice when needful; occasionally very loud.  Deputy Thuriot, he who was Advocate Thuriot, who was Elector Thuriot, and from the top of the Bastille, saw Saint-Antoine rising like the ocean; this Thuriot can stretch a Formula as heartily as most men.  Cruel Billaud is not silent, if you incite him.  Nor is cruel Jean-Bon silent; a kind of Jesuit he too;—­write him not, as the Dictionaries too often do, Jambon, which signifies mere Ham.

But, on the whole, let no man conceive it possible that Louis is not guilty.  The only question for a reasonable man is, or was:  Can the Convention judge Louis?  Or must it be the whole People:  in Primary Assembly, and with delay?  Always delay, ye Girondins, false hommes d’etat! so bellows Patriotism, its patience almost failing.—­But indeed, if we consider it, what shall these poor Girondins do?  Speak their convictions that Louis is a Prisoner of War; and cannot be put to death without injustice, solecism, peril?  Speak such conviction; and lose utterly your footing with the decided Patriot?  Nay properly it is not even a conviction, but a conjecture and dim puzzle.  How many poor Girondins are sure of but one thing:  That a man and Girondin ought to have footing somewhere, and to stand firmly on it; keeping well with the Respectable Classes!  This is what conviction and assurance of faith they have.  They must wriggle painfully between their dilemma-horns. (See Extracts from their Newspapers, in Hist.  Parl. xxi. 1-38, &c.)

Nor is France idle, nor Europe.  It is a Heart this Convention, as we said, which sends out influences, and receives them.  A King’s Execution, call it Martyrdom, call it Punishment, were an influence!  Two notable influences this Convention has already sent forth, over all Nations; much to its own detriment.  On the 19th of November, it emitted a Decree, and has since confirmed and unfolded the details of it.  That any Nation which might see good to shake off the fetters of Despotism was thereby, so to speak, the Sister of France, and should have help and countenance.  A Decree much noised of by Diplomatists, Editors, International Lawyers; such a Decree as no living Fetter of Despotism, nor Person in Authority anywhere, can approve of!  It was Deputy Chambon the Girondin who propounded this Decree;—­at bottom perhaps as a flourish of rhetoric.

The second influence we speak of had a still poorer origin:  in the restless loud-rattling slightly-furnished head of one Jacob Dupont from the Loire country.  The Convention is speculating on a plan of National Education:  Deputy Dupont in his speech says, “I am free to avow, M. le President, that I for my part am an Atheist,” (Moniteur, Seance du 14 Decembre 1792.)—­thinking the world might like to know that.  The French world received it without commentary; or with no audible commentary, so loud was France otherwise.  The Foreign world received it with confutation, with horror and astonishment; (Mrs. Hannah More, Letter to Jacob Dupont (London, 1793); &c. &c.) a most miserable influence this!  And now if to these two were added a third influence, and sent pulsing abroad over all the Earth:  that of Regicide?