hurled like thunderbolts from the Jove-like hand of Mirabeau; he attempted to form an International College in London, with the object of establishing a bond of union between the literary and scientific men of Europe, and, in such works as the Theory of Criminal Laws, he advocated the mitigation of punishments; but never did he reap any reward from his many well-intentioned efforts. One reward only, and that worthy his humane character, was awarded him. Into his hands, to his immortal honour be it said, the people gave the keys of the Bastile. Thenceforth Brissot's best energies were spent in disseminating his political principles through the Patriote Français.
In the meantime signs and portents did not bode speedy subsidence of the high-wrought waves of political passion. The French people resembled a captive who, after languishing a life-time in the clammy darkness of a dungeon, is too suddenly liberated, and, dazed with the plenitude of light and air, staggers as one intoxicated. Violent reprisals for the past, conspiracies and rumours of conspiracies, pangs of hunger and want, drove the artisans in towns, the peasants in the country, to deeds of arson and bloodshed.
Woe to the Seigneurs who had so unmercifully drained the tillers of the soil; woe to the Tax-farmers who had sent the labourers to the galley and to the hangman for defrauding the revenue of some pennyworths of salt; woe to the Regraters who bad greedily stored up vast quantities of grain to sell it at famine prices to the starving poor. The hour of retribution had struck. In the livid smoke of burning châteaux and flaming mansions, the Eumenides seemed to pursue the territorial lords as they
