But composed, as they were, at a period when of the two great experiments whence we derive most of our political experience, the one was just beginning and the other had not had time to work; a period when the majority of reformers and philosophers thought with Jefferson, that "the old system of government had been tried long enough," and the only escape from it was to rush into the opposite extreme of no government at all except the temporary will of an occasional majority, they denote uncommon sagacity and foresight, and prove that Chénier had the head of a statesman no less than the heart of a patriot. Most particularly worthy of notice is the clearness of his financial views, and the accuracy with which he traced the connection between private and public wealth. It was then a favorite delusion, that the nation might be bankrupt without affecting the fortunes of individuals. The great hero and apostle of democratic despotism who rose out of the Revolution, fell into the contrary error of supposing that the public treasury might continue to be recruited by the appropriation of private capital, not seeing that, to use an ancient but apposite illustration, he was thus killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. It was reserved for a still more modern democracy to invent a still wiser and honester financial expedient-that of repudiating the obligations, while they enjoy the acquisitions, of past generations.

The Aris au Francais made a great sensation, which was not confined to France. Two circumstances will show the extent and force of its influence. The Polish king Stanislaus Augustus, caused it to be translated into his language, and sent a token of his esteem to the author, who returned a letter of thanks: of course, the friends of the Constitution were still more amiably disposed to him, after this royal correspondence. And Condorcet, finding that he could no longer take the lead in the Society of 1789, broke up that association so far as lay in his power, and went straight over to the Jacobins. Chenier's reputation emboldened him to present himself in the following year, (1791,) as a candidate for the assembly; but, as might have been predicted of a man so independent and so much beyond his age, he was unsuccessful. After this he continued to attack and

| expose the Jacobins in the Journal de Paris, a paper professedly neutral, and publishing communications on any side as paid advertisements, but edited by men of a conservative leaning. The Jacobins were not slow to answer their bold assailant. They set upon him his own brother, Maril Joseph, the youngest of the four, who had by some means been inveigled into their ranks. The discussion, which lasted several months and was only broken off at the urgent entreaties of the rest of the family, displayed at the outset, but did not long preserve, the moderation and delicacy demanded by the uncommon position of the parties. The two brothers all but O'Connellized each other. They applied to each other's writings the epithet of infamous, then a pet word in the vocabulary of the French journalists, and more usually merited than such pet words generally are. How Joseph Chenier came to take sides with the Jacobins, is not perfectly clear. It seems probable that they flattered his vanity, and made him half believe that his brother's opposition was attributable to envy and jealousy. For when most angry with Andre, his bitterest taunt is to remind him of the election for deputies. A very young man among Democrats may be pardoned for supposing that office and honor are synonymous, and not reflecting that where merit is no longer the test of advancement, the correlative mentioned by Sallust is unavoidable.*

If, however, the leading Jacobins supposed, that by getting up this personal issue they had succeeded in diverting or weakening Andre Chenier's attacks upon them, they were very much mistaken. In the winter of 1792, an event occurred, which, by eminently exposing them to his ridicule, specially marked him out for their vengeance. Two years before, a Swiss regiment had been condemned to the galleys for mutiny. Their offences were gross and unequivocal: they had refused to swear to the Constitution, plundered the regimental chest, and fired upon the National Guard. But General Bouillé, against whom they then revolted, had now proved a traitor to

"Verum ex his magistratus et imperia, postremo omnis cura rerum publicarum minime mihi hac tempestate capiunda videntur quoniam neque virtuti honos datur, neque illi quibus per fraudem is fuit, utique tuti aut eo magis honesti sunt."-Sallust, Bell. Jug., Cap. 3.

the popular cause. In a fit of childish spite against him, the Swiss were pardoned; on motion of Collot d'Herbois, the amnesty was changed into a triumph; a fête was given to the liberated culprits, and Pétion, as mayor of Paris, presided at it. The intense absurdity of the affair threw into the shade its injustice and danger; and Chenier was not the man to let any of this absurdity be lost. He satirized and ridiculed the Jacobins in prose and verse. He sketched a plan for the new ovation :

"The Romans used to engrave on brass the names of those generals to whom they granted a triumph, and their titles to so great an honor. I suppose the city of Paris will follow this example, and the happy witnesses of the triumphal entry will read inscribed on the car of victory:

For having revolted with arms in their hands, and replied to the reading of the National Assembly's decree which recalled them to their duty, that they persisted in their revolt;' "For having been declared guilty of high treason by a decree of the National Assembly, Aug.

16, 1790;

For having plundered the regimental chest; For having spoken these memorable words: We are not Frenchmen; we are Swiss; we must have money;

666

For having fired upon the National Guards of Metz and other places, who marched to Nancy in accordance with the decrees of the National Assembly.'"

and to threaten him with assassination-two excellent radical arguments.

Chénier had already drawn a portrait of the Jacobin Club, too faithful not to provoke their fiercest indignation. This sketch was published in the supplement to the Journal de Paris, February 26, 1792, just a month before the letter from which we have been quoting :

"There exists in the midst of Paris a numerous association, holding frequent meetings, open to all who are, or pretend to be, patriots, always governed by leaders visible or invisible, who are continually changing and mutually destroying one another, but who have always the same object-the supreme power; and the same intention-to get that power by whatever means. This society, formed at a moment when liberal principles, though sure to triumph, were not yet completely established, necessarily attracted a great number of citizens who were filled with alarm and warmly attached to the good cause. Many of these had more zeal than knowledge. With them glided in many hypocrites; so did many people who were in debt, without industry, poor through their own indolence, and seeing something to hope for in any change. Many wise and just men who know that in a well regulated State all the citizens do not attend to public affairs, while all ought to attend to their private affairs, have since retired from it; whence it follows that this association must be chiefly composed of some skilful players, who arrange the cards

"General Bouillé deceived all France and its representatives. None but these Swiss soldiers penetrated his bad designs. They saw that he would take the first opportunity to be

come

a perjured traitor. Accordingly they took up arms against him, and made sure of the regimental chest, for fear this money, falling into his less patriotic hands, should serve the purposes of the counter-revolutionists.

"Since General Bouillé has shown himself a

cowardly and treacherous enemy of his country, it is clear that those who fired on him, and on the French citizens marching under his orders by virtue of a decree of the National Assembly,

cannot but be excellent patriots.

"In every criminal case there can be but one culpable party. For example, when a murdered man is proved to have been a rogue, it is evident that his murderer must be an honest man."

The only reply Collot d'Herbois and his myrmidons could make, was to charge Chénier with being hired by the Court,

triguers with whom an habitual eagerness for mischief takes the place of talent, and a large number of idlers, honest, but ignorant and short-sighted, incapable of any bad intention themselves, but very capable of forwarding the bad intentions of others without knowing it.

"This society has generated an infinity of others; towns, boroughs, and villages are full of the parent society, with which they keep up of them. They are almost all under the orders a most active correspondence. It is a body in Paris and the head of a larger body extending of Rome plant the faith, and govern the world over France. In the same way did the Church by its congregations of monks.

years ago by men of great popularity, who saw "This system was imagined and expected two very well that it was a means of increasing did not see how perilous an instrument it was. their power and preserving their popularity, but So long as they ruled these societies, all the errors there committed met their warmest

approbation; but since they have been blown up by this mine of their own kindling, they detest the excesses which are no longer to their profit, and, talking more truth without possess

ing more wisdom, combine with honest men in cursing their old master-piece.

"The audience before which these societies deliberate, constitutes their strength; and when one considers that men of business do not neglect their affairs to listen at the debates of a club, and that men of intelligence prefer the silence of the closet, or the peaceable conversation, to the tumult and clamors of these noisy crowds, it is easy to see what must be the ordinary composition of the audience, and further, what sort of language is the best recommendation to them. One simple fallacy is all-sufficient: the constitution being founded on that eternal truth, the sovereignty of the people, it is only necessary to persuade the listeners at the club that they are the people.

"Lecturers and journal-mongers have generally adopted this definition. Some hundred vagabonds collected in a garden or at a play, or some gangs of robbers and shop-lifters, are impudently denominated the people; and never did the most wanton despot receive from the most eagre courtier adoration so vile and disgusting, as the base flattery with which two or three thousand usurpers of the national sovereignty are every day intoxicated--thanks to the writers and speakers of these societies!

"As the semblance of patriotism is the only profitable virtue, some men who have been stigmatized by their disgraceful lives run to the club to get a reputation for patriotism, by the violence of their discourses, founding on their riotous declamations, and the passions of the multitude, oblivion of the past and hope for the

future, and redeeming themselves from disgrace by impudence. At the clubs are daily proclaimed, sentiments and even principles which threaten the fortunes and the property of all. Under the names of forestalling and monopoly, industry aud commerce are represented as crimes. Every rich man passes for a public enemy. Neither honor nor reputation is spared; odious suspicions and unbridled slander are called liberty of opinion. He who demands proof of an accusation, is a suspected man, an enemy of the people. At the clubs, every absurdity is admired, if it be only murderous-every falsehood cherished, if it be only atrocious. * * * * * Sometimes, indeed, guilty parties are assailed, but they are assailed with a violence, a ferocity, and an unfairness that make them appear innocent."

About the same time, (its exact date and the medium of its publication are uncertain,) Chénier wrote The Altars of Fear, a sort of last appeal to the lovers of good order. Its title alludes to the practice of the ancients, who made fear a divinity, and erected altars to him.

"To be sure, we have not yet imitated them

to the letter, but, as in all ages profoundly religious men have observed that the heart is the true altar where the Deity chooses to be honored, and that internal adoration is a thousand times more valuable than all the pomp of a magnificent worship intrusted to a small number of persons, and confined to certain places by express consecration, we may say that fear had never more truly altars erected to it, than now in Paris; that it was never honored with a more general worship; that this whole city is its temple; that all respectable people have become its pontiffs, offering to it the daily sacrifice of their opinions and their conscience."

The mob commit excesses; personal privacy and personal liberty are invaded; the respectable people say nothing against it or about it, "for fear of being called aristocrats."

"The simple sound of this word aristocrat stupefies the public man, and attacks the very principle of motion in him. He wishes the success of the good, with all his heart; he is making zealous exertions that way, and would sacrifice all his fortune to it; in the midst of his action, let him hear those four fatal syllables pronounced against him, and he trembles,

he

grows pale, the sword of the law falls from his grasp. Now it is clear enough, that Cicero will never be anything better than an aristocrat, to take Clodius or Cataline's word for it: if, then, Cicero is afraid, what will become of us?"

these respectable people who said nothing It must be plead, however, in excuse for for fear of being called aristocrats, that they had pretty urgent motives for silence. To be unpopular at that day, was to have your head cut off: the terms were convertible. There are many among us, to whom such reproaches are infinitely more applicable, men who will not lift up their voices against some popular abuse or injustice or prejudice, for fear of being called federalist or aristocrat; although, thank God! to call a man federalist or aristocrat neither knocks him on the head nor even takes a cent out of his pocket. And when we hear a man complaining of the tyranny of the majority and popular intimidation because his independent conduct has caused his fellow-townsmen to

refuse him their voices at an election, or made some honest editor afraid to publish his communications, we would just refer him to Chenier, who was putting his neck under the axe every time he took pen hand.

in

The momentous tenth of August came,

and that notorious popular potentate whom our saucy friends over the water have facetiously denominated "the Yankee Justinian," had the supreme jurisdiction in Paris. The Journal de Paris was put down vi et armis, and its conductors and contributors precipitately scattered. Chénier was in imminent danger; many thought that he must have fallen a victim to the popular fury, and Wieland, the German poet, wrote to inquire if he were yet alive. But he was not dead yet, nor even silent; only his writings were now anonymous or pseudonymous. Owing to this fact, nearly all that he published in the autumn and winter of 1792-3 has been lost. It is certain, however, that he was the author of the letter in which Louis after his condemnation vainly appealed to the French people. After the king's death his friends persuaded him to quit Paris for Versailles, where he remained a whole year. By that time most of his personal enemies had disappeared, some torn to pieces by wolves, and some by their fellow Jacobins. But Collot d'Herbois still lived, and his power nearly equalled Robespierre's.

On the 6th of January, 1794, Chénier was arrested. The immediate and ostensible cause of his arrest was a visit to a suspected lady at Passy. The proceeding was utterly illegal, even according to such scanty remains of law as the Terrorists had preserved for themselves, for Chenier was not under the local jurisdiction of the man who seized him, and had a safe conduct and certificate of good citizenship from the authorities of his quartier. Indeed the gaoler of the Luxemburg prison refused to receive him, but the functionary at St. Lazare was less scrupulous.

As Joseph Chénier had been an influ

ential Jacobin and a member of the Convention, there were not wanting persons afterwards to assert that he had neglected to save his brother's life when it was in his power to do so; nay, some even charged him with having contributed to his condemnation. This imputation his friends have indignantly repelled. They maintain that, on the contrary, it was chiefly through his influence that André had remained unmolested for the sixteen months preceding. They affirm, moreover, that Joseph had been for some time virtually disconnected with the Jaco

bins, having grown wiser as they grew more frantic; that he was then a suspected if not a denounced man, and would himself have shared the fate of André, had the rule of Robespierre lasted a fortnight longer. The two pleas are not perfectly consistent, and we think that generally the editors and biographers of the brothers have erred in trying to prove too much, and in giving to the accusation a greater importance than it deserved.* For our own part, we do not believe one syllable of it. The Chéniers had that strong family attachment which all families ought to have, and it is absurd to suppose that if Joseph regarded the wishes of his relatives, when the question was only about breaking off a paper war with his brother, he would have disregarded them when that brother's life was at stake. The advice he gave his father, who wished him to agitate openly for his brothers, “Rather try to let them be forgotten," was the very best that could have been given, as the event too truly showed. Had nothing been said about André, he might have remained unnoticed for two days longer, which would have been enough to save his life, and actually did save the life of Sauveur; but the memorial which his father addressed to that body called with a mournful irony the Committee of Public Safety, was his death-warrant. *

And now comes a characteristic specimen of radical inaccuracy. Another of the Cheniers, Sauveur, formerly an officer in the army of the north, had been arrested and imprisoned at Beauvais. In such haste was the indictment against Andre drawn up, that it confounded him with Sauveur; attributed to one brother the acts and writings of both, and designated

Especially do we think M. Arnault to blame, for seriously confuting, in a narration of two pages, a scandalous story of Madame de Genlis, about Mademoiselle Dunesnil's reception of Joseph Chenier; as if a French actress would trouble herself about truth, when there was a chance of saying a mot, or making a scene.

And yet, after all, must we not say that, in a

higher sense, Joseph Chenier was morally guilty of

his brother's death? He had encouraged the Jacobins in their earlier attempts; he had defended or apologized for their excesses; he had given them his pen, his voice, and his influence. In so far, then, as he had contributed to their triumph, must he be deemed answerable for the consequences of that triumph. Alas! it is not too well remembered even at the present day, that they who help to open the flood-gates, are responsible for the inundation.