The Girondins no
longer dared to show their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths at least
of the Jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great
patriarchal Jacobiniere of Paris, to which they were (to use their own
term) _affiliated_. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive,
had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to interfere: and they
chose to interfere in everything, and on every occasion. All hope of
gaining them to the support of property, or to the acknowledgment of any
law but their own will, was evidently vain and hopeless. Nothing but an
armed insurrection against their anarchical authority could answer the
purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured by rebellion, as it
had been caused by it.
As a preliminary to this attempt on the Jacobins and the commons of
Paris, which it was hoped would be supported by all the remaining
property of France, it became absolutely necessary to prepare a
manifesto, laying before the public the whole policy, genius, character,
and conduct of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition
as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same
unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which
all those concerned in this Revolution were, at the several periods of
their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and
under these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of
his party, which he executed with no small ability; and in this manner
the whole mystery of the French Revolution was laid open in all its
parts.
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