In all civil wars, personal vengeance mixing with public, or taking advantage of it, has directed the dagger of the assassin: and in France it ought particularly to have been dreaded; because, when fear induces a man to smother his just resentment, the festering wound is only to be cured by revenge. It is then highly probable, that most of the barbarities in the towns were the effervescence of private anger, or the sport of depraved, uncultivated minds, who found the same pleasure in tormenting men, as mischievous boys in dismembering insects; for public indignation, directed against aristocratical tyranny, was elsewhere, in general, displayed only in burning the country castles, and the archives of nobility. But, in the country, indeed, men rarely commit such crimes, as lift up their reptile heads in the capital, where the rank atmosphere affords the noxious particles necessary to give virulence to the poison. The vices of villagers are, in fact, rather the rich exuberance of the passions, than the vile dregs of exhausted nature. CHAPTER II. THE DUKE OF LIANCOURT CHOSEN PRESIDENT. THE PEOPLE ARM FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE COUNTRY. THE MUNICIPAL OFFICERS APPOINTED UNDER THE OLD GOVERNMENT SUPERSEDED BY COMMITTEES. SOME PEOPLE TREACHEROUSLY DESTROYED BY SPRINGING A MINE AT A CIVIC FEAST. THE GENEVESE RESIDENT TAKEN UP BY THE PATROL. THE FRENCH SUSPICIOUS OF THE DESIGNS OF BRITAIN. NECKER RETURNS. GENERAL AMNESTY RESOLVED BY THE ELECTORS OF PARIS. DEBATE ON A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS. DECLARATION OF RIGHTS SEPARATE FROM THE CONSTITUTION DETERMINED ON. SACRIFICES MADE BY THE NOBLES, CLERGY, &C. The duke of Liancourt, whose warning voice had made the king look around him, when danger was at his heels, was now chosen president. At this moment the obstacles, which at first clogged the exertions of the assembly, seemed to have been overcome: still fresh ones starting up threw a damp on their exultation; and the apprehensions of a famine, real or factitious, were not the least alarming, though the most frequent.