His competence is undoubted. He knows
everything which concerns this Revolution to the bottom. He is a chief
actor in all the scenes which he presents. No man can object to him as a
royalist: the royal party, and the Christian religion, never had a more
determined enemy. In a word, it is BRISSOT. It is Brissot, the
republican, the Jacobin, and the philosopher, who is brought to give an
account of Jacobinism, and of republicanism, and of philosophy.
It is worthy of observation, that this his account of the genius of
Jacobinism and its effects is not confined to the period in which that
faction came to be divided within itself. In several, and those very
important particulars, Brissot's observations apply to the whole of the
preceding period before the great schism, and whilst the Jacobins acted
as one body; insomuch that the far greater part of the proceedings of
the ruling powers since the commencement of the Revolution in France, so
strikingly painted, so strongly and so justly reprobated by Brissot,
were the acts of Brissot himself and his associates. All the members of
the Girondin subdivision were as deeply concerned as any of the Mountain
could possibly be, and some of them much more deeply, in those horrid
transactions which have filled all the thinking part of Europe with the
greatest detestation, and with the most serious apprehensions for the
common liberty and safety.
A question will very naturally be asked,--What could induce Brissot to
draw such a picture? He must have been sensible it was his own.
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