report on the state of public opinion on the pro- | copies, the Mémorial Antibritannique never, ceedings of the government, and generally on every thing which, in his judgment, it will be interesting to the First Consul to learn.

'He may write with perfect freedom. 'He will deliver his reports under seal into General Duroc's own hand, and General Duroc will deliver them to the First Consul. But it is absolutely necessary that nobody should suspect that this species of communication takes place; and, should any such suspicion get abroad, the First Consul will cease to receive the reports of Citizen Barère.

'It will also be proper that Citizen Barère should frequently insert in the journals articles tending to animate the public mind, particularly against the English.'

During some years Barère continued to discharge the functions assigned to him by his master. Secret reports, filled with the talk of coffeehouses, were carried by him every week to the Tuileries. His friends assure us that he took especial pains to do all the harm in his power to the returned emigrants. It was not his fault if Napoleon was not apprised of every murmur and every sarcasm which old marquesses who had lost their estates, and old clergymen who had lost their benefices, uttered against the imperial system. M. Hyppolyte Carnot, we grieve to say, is so much blinded by party spirit, that he seems to reckon this dirty wickedness among his hero's titles to public

esteem.

in its most prosperous times, had more than fifteen hundred subscribers; and these subscribers were, with scarcely an exception, persons residing far from Paris, probably Gascons, among whom the name of Barère had not yet lost its influence.

A writer who cannot find readers, generally attributes the public neglect to any cause rather than to the true one; and Barère was no exception to the general rule. His old hatred to Paris revived in all its fury. That city, he says, has no sympathy with France. No Parisian cares to subscribe to a journal which dwells on the real wants and interests of the country. To a Parisian nothing is so ridiculous as patriotism. The higher classes of the capital have always been devoted to England. A corporal from London is better received among them than a French general. A journal, therefore, which attacks England has no chance of their support.

A much better explanation of the failure of the Memorial, was given by Bonaparte at St. Helena. Barère,' said he to Barry O'Meara, had the reputation of being a man of talent; but I did not find him so. I employed him to write; but he did not display ability. He used many flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing but coglionerie wrapped up in high-sounding language.'

The truth is, that though Barère was a Barère was, at the same time, an indefati- man of quick parts, and could do with ease gable journalist and pamphleteer. He set what he could do at all, he had never been a up a paper directed against England, and good writer. In the day of his

called the Mémorial Antibritannique. He had been in the habit of haranguing an explanned a work entitled, France made great citable audience on exciting topics. The and illustrious by Napoleon.' When the faults of his style passed uncensured; for it Imperial government was established, the old was a time of literary as well as of civil lawregicide made himself conspicuous even lessness, and a patriot was licensed to violate among the crowd of flatterers by the peculiar fulsomeness of his adulation. He translated into French a contemptible volume of Italian verses, entitled, 'The Poetic Crown, composed on the glorious accession of Napoleon the First, by the Shepherds of Arcadia.' He commenced a new series of Carmagnoles very different from those which had charmed the Mountain. The title of Emperor of the French, he said, was mean; Napoleon ought to be Emperor of Europe. King of Italy was too humble an appellation; Napoleon's style ought be King of Kings.

But Barère labored to small purpose in both his vocations. Neither as a writer nor as a spy was he of much use. He complains bitterly that his paper did not sell. While the Journal des Débats, then flourishing under the able management of Geoffroy, had a circulation of at least twenty thousand

the ordinary rules of composition as well as the ordinary rules of jurisprudence and of social morality. But there had now been a literary as well as a civil reaction. As there was again a throne and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy, so was there a revival of classical taste. Honor was again paid to the prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse of Racine and La Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of the Convention, was not only as much out of date as the language of Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated in the public mind with images of horror. All the peculiarities of the Anacreon of the guillotine, his words unknown to the Dictionary of the Academy, his conceits and his jokes, his Gascon idioms and his Gascon hyperboles, had become as odious as the cant of the Puritans was in England after the Restoration.

fear them.

Such treatment was sufficient, it might have been thought, to move the most abject of mankind to resentment. Still, however, Barère cringed and fawned on. His letters came weekly to the Tuileries till the year 1807. At length, while he was actually writing the two hundred and twenty-third of the series, a note was put into his hands. It was from Duroc, and was much more perspicuous than polite. Barère was requested to send no more of his Reports to the palace, as the Emperor was too busy to read them.

nent among the rulers of a great and victorious state, he had stooped to serve a master in the vilest capacities; and he had been told that, even in those capacities, he was not worthy of the pittance which had been disdainfully flung to him. He was now degraded below the level even of the hirelings whom the government employed in the most infamous offices. He stood idle in the marketplace, not because he thought any office too infamous, but because none would hire him.

Bonaparte, who had never loved the men of the Reign of Terror, had now ceased to He was all-powerful and at the height of glory; they were weak and universally abhorred. He was a sovereign, and it is probable that he already meditated a matrimonial alliance with sovereigns. He was naturally unwilling, in his new position, to hold any intercourse with the worst class of Jacobins. Had Barère's literary assistance been important to the government, personal aversion might have yielded to considerations of policy; but there was no motive for keep- Contempt, says the Indian proverb, pierces. ing terms with a worthless man who had even the shell of the tortoise; and the conalso proved a worthless writer. Bonaparte, tempt of the Court was felt to the quick even therefore, gave loose to his feelings. Barère by the callous heart of Barère. He had was not gently dropped, not sent into an humbled himself to the dust; and he had honorable retirement, but spurned and humbled himself in vain. Having been emi1. scourged away like a troublesome dog. He had been in the habit of sending six copies of his journal on fine paper daily to the Tuileries. Instead of receiving the thanks and praises which he expected, he was dryly told that the great man had ordered five copies to be sent back. Still he toiled on; still he cherished a hope that at last Napoleon would relent, and that at last some share in the honors of the state would reward so much assiduity and so much obsequiousness. He was bitterly undeceived. Under the Impe- Yet he had reason to think himself forturial constitution the electoral colleges of nate; for, had all that is avowed in these Methe departments did not possess the right of moirs been then known, he would have re#choosing senators or deputies, but merely ceived very different tokens of the Imperial that of presenting candidates. From among displeasure. We learn from himself, that these candidates the Emperor named mem- while publishing daily columns of flattery on bers of the senate, and the senate named Bonaparte, and while carrying weekly budgmembers of the legislative body. The in- ets of calumny to the Tuileries, he was in habitants of the Upper Pyrenees were still close connexion with the agents whom the strangely partial to Barère. In the year Emperor Alexander, then by no means favor1805, they were disposed to present him as ably disposed towards France, employed to a candidate for the senate. On this Napo watch all that passed at Paris; was permitted leon expressed the highest displeasure; and to read their secret despatches; was consulted the president of the electoral college was di- by them as to the temper of the public mind and rected to tell the voters, in plain terms, that the character of Napoleon; and did his best such a choice would be disgraceful to the to persuade them that the government was in department. All thought of naming Barère a tottering condition, and that the new sovea candidate for the senate was consequently reign was not, as the world supposed, a great dropped. But the people of Argelès ven- statesman and soldier. Next, Barère, still tured to name him a candidate for the legis- the flatterer and talebearer of the Imperial lative body. That body was altogether des- Court, connected himself in the same manner titute of weight and dignity; it was not per- with the Spanish envoy. He owns that with mitted to debate; its only function was to that envoy he had relations which he took vote in silence for whatever the government the greatest pains to conceal from his own proposed. It is not easy to understand how government; that they met twice a-day, and any man, who had sat in free and powerful that their conversation chiefly turned on the deliberative assemblies, could condescend to vices of Napoleon, on his designs against bear a part in such a mummery. Barère, Spain, and on the best mode of rendering however, was desirous of a place even in those designs abortive. In truth, Barère's this mock legislature; and a place even in baseness was unfathomable. In the lowest this mock legislature was refused to him. deeps of shame he found out lower deeps. It In the whole senate he had not a single vote. is bad to be a sycophant; it is bad to be a spy. JUNE, 1844.

18

But even among sycophants and spies there are degrees of meanness. The vilest sycophant is he who privily slanders the master on whom he fawns; the vilest spy is he who serves foreigners against the government of his native land.

could be conciliated only by the restoration of Louis, and vanquished only by means of a dictatorial power entrusted to Napoleon.— They would not hear of Louis; yet they would not hear of the only measures which could keep him out. They incurred the enmity of

their head; yet they shackled him, thwarted him, quarreled with him about every trifle, abandoned him on the first reverse. They then opposed declamations and disquisitions to eight hundred thousand bayonets; played at making a constitution for their country, when it depended on the indulgence of the victor whether they should have a country; and were at last interrupted in the midst of their babble about the rights of man and the sovereignty of the people, by the soldiers of Wellington and Blucher.

From 1807 to 1814 Barère lived in obscu- all foreign powers by putting Napoleon at rity, railing as bitterly as his craven cowardice would permit against the Imperial administration, and coming sometimes unpleasantly across the police. When the Bourbons returned, he, as might be expected, became a royalist, and wrote a pamphlet setting forth the horrors of the system from which the Restoration had delivered France, and magnifying the wisdom and goodness which had dictated the charter. He who had voted for the death of Louis, he who had moved the decree for the trial of Marie Antoinette, he whose hatred of monarchy had led him to make war A new Chamber of Deputies was elected, even upon the sepulchres of ancient monarchs, so bitterly hostile to the Revolution, that there assures us with great complacency, that in was no small risk of a new Reign of Terror. this work monarchical principles and attach- It is just, however, to say that the King, his ment to the House of Bourbon are nobly ex-ministers, and his allies, exerted themselves pressed.' By this apostacy he got nothing, to restrain the violence of the fanatical roynot even any additional infamy; for his char- alists, and that the punishments inflicted, acter was already too black to be blackened.

though in our opinion unjustifiable, were few and lenient when compared with those which During the hundred days he again emerged were demanded by M. de Labourdonnaye and for a very short time into public life; he was M. Hyde de Neuville. We have always chosen by his native district a member of the heard, and are inclined to believe, that the Chamber of Representatives. But though government was not disposed to treat even that assembly was composed in a great mea- the regicides with severity. But on this point sure of men who regarded the excesses of the the feeling of the Chamber of Deputies was Jacobins with indulgence, he found himself so strong, that it was thought necessary to an object of general aversion. When the make some concession. It was enacted, President first informed the Chamber that M. Barère requested a hearing, a deep and indignant murmur ran round the benches. After the battle of Waterloo, Barère proposed that the Chamber should save France from the victorious enemy, by putting forth a proclamation about the pass of Thermopyla, and the Lacedæmonian custom of wearing flowers in times of extreme danger. Whether this composition, if it had then appeared, would have stopped the English and Prussian armies, is a question respecting which we are left to conjecture. The Chamber refused to adopt this last of the Carmagnoles.

therefore, that whoever, having voted in January 1793 for the death of Louis the Sixteenth, had in any manner given in an adhesion to the government of Bonaparte during the hundred days, should be banished for life from France. Barère fell within this description. He had voted for the death of Louis; and he had sat in the Chamber of Representatives during the hundred days.

He accordingly retired to Belgium, and resided there, forgotten by all mankind, till the year 1830. After the revolution of July he was at liberty to return to France, and he fixed his residence in his native province. But The Emperor had abdicated. The Bour- he was soon involved in a succession of lawbons returned. The Chamber of Repre- suits with his nearest relations-" three fatal sentatives, after burlesquing during a few sisters and an ungrateful brother," to use his weeks the proceedings of the National Con- own words. Who was in the right is a quesvention, retired with the well-earned charac- tion about which we have no means of judgter of having been the silliest political as- ing, and certainly shall not take Barère's sembly that had met in France. Those word. The Courts appear to have decided dreaming pedants and praters never for a mo- some points in his favor and some against ment comprehended their position. They him. The natural inference is, that there could never understand that Europe must be were faults on all sides. The result of this either conciliated or vanquished; that Europe litigation was, that the old man was reduced

to extreme poverty, and was forced to sell his of France, Merovingian, Carlovingian, and paternal house.

As far as we can judge from the few facts which remain to be mentioned, Barère continued Barère to the last. After his exile he turned Jacobin again, and, when he came back to France, joined the party of the extreme left in railing at Louis Philippe, and at all Louis Philippe's ministers. M. Casimir Périer, M. de Broglie, M. Guizot, and M. Thiers, in particular, are honored with his abuse; and the king himself is held up to execration as a hypocritical tyrant. Nevertheless, Barére had no scruple about accepting a charitable donation of a thousand francs a year from the privy purse of the sovereign whom he hated and reviled. This pension, together with some small sums occasionally doled out to him by the department of the Interior, on the ground that he was a distressed man of letters, and by the department of Justice, on the ground that he had formerly held a high judicial office, saved him from the necessity of begging his bread. Having survived all his colleagues of the renowned Committee of Public Safety, and almost all his colleagues of the Convention, he died in January 1841. He had attained his eighty-sixth year.

Capetian, had perpetrated in twelve centuries. Freedom was regarded as a great delusion. Men were willing to submit to the government of hereditary princes, of fortunate soldiers, of nobles, of priests; to any government but that of philosophers and philanthropists. Hence the imperial despotism, with its enslaved press and its silent tribune, its dungeons stronger than the old Bastile, and its tribunals more obsequious than the old parliaments. Hence the restoration of the Bourbons and of the Jesuits, the Chamber of 1815 with its categories of proscription, the revival of the feudal spirit, the encroachments of the clergy, the persecution of the Protestants, the appearance of a new breed of De Montforts and Dominics in the full light of the nineteenth century. Hence the admission of France into the Holy Alliance, and the war waged by the old soldiers of the tricolor against the liberties of Spain. Hence, too, the apprehensions with which, even at the present day, the most temperate plans for widening the narrow basis of the French representation are regarded by those who are especially interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order. Half a century has not sufficed to obliterate the stain which one year of depravity and madness has left on the noblest of causes.

We have now laid before our readers what we believe to be a just account of this man's life. Can it be necessary for us to add any Nothing is more ridiculous than the manthing for the purpose of assisting their judg-ner in which writers like M. Hippolyte Carment of his character? If we were writing not defend or excuse the Jacobin administraabout any of his colleagues in the Committee tion, while they declaim against the reaction of Public Safety, about Carnot, about Robe- which followed. That the reaction has prospierre, or St. Just, nay, even about Couthon, duced and is still producing much evil, is Collot, or Billaud, we might feel it necessary perfectly true. But what produced the reto go into a full examination of the arguments action? The spring flies up with a force which have been employed to vindicate or to proportioned to that with which it has been excuse the system of Terror. We could, pressed down. The pendulum which is we think, show that France was saved from drawn far in one direction swings as far in her foreign enemies, not by the system of the other. The joyous madness of intoxicaTerror, but in spite of it; and that the perils tion in the evening is followed by languor which were made the plea for the violent and nausea on the morrow. And so, in polpolicy of the Mountain, were to a great ex-itics, it is the sure law that every excess tent created by that very policy. We could, shall generate its opposite; nor does he dewe think, also show that the evils produced serve the name of a statesman who strikes a by the Jacobin administration did not ter- great blow without fully calculating the effect minate when it fell; that it bequeathed a long of the rebound. But such calculation was series of calamities to France and to Europe; infinitely beyond the reach of the authors of that public opinion, which had during two the Reign of Terror. Violence, and more generations been constantly becoming more violence, blood, and more blood, made up and more favorable to civil and religious free-their whole policy. In a few months these dom, underwent, during the days of Terror, poor creatures succeeded in bringing about a a change of which the traces are still to be distinctly perceived. It was natural that there should be such a change, when men saw that those who called themselves the champions of popular rights had compressed into the space of twelve months more crimes than the Kings

reaction, of which none of them saw, and of which none of us may see, the close; and, having brought it about, they marvelled at it; they bewailed it; they execrated it; they ascribed it to every thing but the real cause their own immorality and their own

profound incapacity for the conduct of great affairs.

manners, and history, is the less excusable, because, according to his own account, he These, however, are considerations to consorted much, during the peace of Amiens, which, on the present occasion, it is hardly with Englishmen of note, such as that eminent necessary for us to advert; for, be the de- nobleman Lord Greaten, and that not less fence which has been set up for the Jacobin eminent philosopher Mr. Mackensie Cofhis. policy good or bad, it is a defence which In spite, however, of his connection with cannot avail Barère. From his own life, these well-known ornaments of our country, from his own pen, from his own mouth, we he was so ill informed about us as to fancy can prove that the part which he took in the that our government was always laying plans work of blood is to be attributed, not even to torment him. If he was hooted at Saintes, to sincere fanaticism, nor even to misdirected probably by people whose relations he had and ill-regulated patriotism, but either to murdered, it was because the cabinet of St. cowardice, or to delight in human misery. James's had hired the mob. If nobody would Will it be pretended that it was from public read his bad books, it was because the cabispirit that he murdered the Girondists? In net of St. James's had secured the Reviewthese very Memoirs he tells us that he al-ers. His accounts of Mr. Fox, of Mr. Pitt, ways regarded their death as the greatest of the Duke of Wellington, of Mr. Canning, calamity that could befall France. Will swarm with blunders, surpassing even the it be pretended that it was from public ordinary blunders committed by Frenchmen spirit that he raved for the head of the Aus- who write about England. Mr. Fox and Mr. trian woman? In these very Memoirs he Pitt, he tells us, were ministers in two differtells us that the time spent in attacking her ent reigns. Mr. Pitt's sinking fund was inwas ill spent, and ought to have been em- stituted in order to enable England to pay ployed in concerting measures of national subsidies to the powers allied against the defence. Will it be pretended that he was French republic. The Duke of Wellinginduced by sincere and earnest abhorrence ton's house in Hyde Park was built by the naof kingly government to butcher the living tion, which twice voted the sum of 200,0007. and to outrage the dead; he who invited for the purpose. This, however, is exclusive Napoleon to take the title of King of Kings, of the cost of the frescoes, which were also he who assures us, that after the Restoration paid for out of the public purse. Mr. Canhe expressed in noble language his attachment ning was the first Englishman whose death to monarchy, and to the house of Bourbon? Europe had reason to lament; for the death Had he been less mean, something might of Lord Ward, a relation, we presume, of have been said in extenuation of his cruelty. Lord Greaten and Mr. Cofhis, had been an Had he been less cruel, something might immense benefit to mankind. have been said in extenuation of his meanness. But for him, regicide and court-spy, for him who patronized Lebon and betrayed Demerville, for him who wantoned alternately in gasconades of Jacobinism, and gasconades of servility, what excuse has the largest charity to offer?

We cannot conclude, without saying something about two parts of his character, which his biographer appears to consider as deserving of high admiration. Barère, it is admitted, was somewhat fickle; but in two things he was consistent, in his love of Christianity, and in his hatred to England. If this were so, we must say that England is much more beholden to him than Christianity.

It is possible that our inclinations may bias our judgment; but we think that we do not flatter ourselves when we say, that Barère's aversion to our country was a sentiment as deep and constant as his mind was capable of entertaining. The value of this compliment is indeed somewhat diminished by the circumstance, that he knew very little about us. His ignorance of our institutions,

Ignorant, however, as Barère was, he knew enough of us to hate us; and we persuade ourselves that, had he known us better, he would have hated us more. The nation which has combined, beyond all example and all hope, the blessings of liberty with those of order, might well be an object of aversion to one who had been false alike to the cause of order and to the cause of liberty. We have had amongst us intemperate zeal for popular rights; we have had amongst us also the intemperance of loyalty. But we have never been shocked by such a spectacle as the Barère of 1794, or as the Barère of 1804. Compared with him, our fiercest demagogues have been gentle; compared with him, our meanest courtiers have been manly. Mix together Thistlewood and Bubb Dodington, and you are still far from having Barère. The antipathy between him and us is such, that neither for the crimes of his earlier, nor for those of his later life, does our language, rich as it is, furnish us with adequate names. We have found it difficult to relate his history without having perpetual recourse to