that he stood a chance of being sent to Botany Bay, he became alarmed, and determined at once to put himself out of the reach of such a contingency.
Before the month of March 1792 was out he had accordingly crossed the Channel. The place to which he fled was a little village called Tilq, near St Omer's, where he and his wife lodged in the house of the maire of the commune, a certain M. Le Grand. When Cobbett arrived in France, its unhappy King was just entering the vortex of the Revolution. On the 20th of June the Tuileries was attacked by the mob, and Louis XVI. was compelled to wear the cap of liberty. In July a number of republicans arrived from the south singing the Marseillaise. Suddenly, like a bomb in the midst of a powder magazine, fell the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation, announcing that the German armies would shortly be in Paris to restore order, and threatening the people with wholesale military execution and the total overthrow of their city if the slightest insult was offered to the royal family. The explosion was terrific. The Tuileries was again attacked, the King and the royal family fled for their lives. The blood which trickled down the stairs and under the door-sills of the Tuileries on that fatal August the 9th announced the coming flood.
News travelled slowly in those days, but the tremor of such portentous events soon penetrated the obscurest villages, and made the dullest hearts beat more rapidly. Cobbett felt the fascination; he must go to Paris. But he had no idea of the fearful character of the storm raging there. When he reached Abbeville he learnt that the very day he left Tilq the King had been put in prison and his Swiss guard slaughtered; upon which he determined to make the best of his way to Havre, and set sail without delay for America. On the voyage a French vessel overtook them, bringing news of the September massacres. He disembarked at Philadelphia, his mind filled with horror at what he had seen and heard of the character and results of democratic principles. He found a residence for a time at Wilmington, where a number of emigrants from France and from St Domingo were living, and he was welcomed into their society as one who shared their political opinions, and could teach them English. His
