not their ends, it was the Reaction again that was the cause of all. The Reaction, for its own vile reactionary purposes, it was, that treacherously induced them to revolt, when they themselves were naturally inclined to be the most peaceable, contented, and the least exorbitant people on the earth. See how perfidious, Machiavelic, and Jesuitical, is this horrible monster Reaction! Pity it is that, in order to establish the fact of its real existence, it should not as yet have made itself visible to mortal eyes in any incarnate form! The Reaction is, however, no less, men are told, the enemy of the republic, the adversary of all true republican principles, labouring ever to overthrow it; above all, the enemy of the people and the people's interests, their undermining serpent, their secret assassin. It is already sapping, unseen, the foundations of the republic, and it intends to pull down the ruins of that august structure upon the heads of the people, and crush it for ever beneath them. In spite of the infinite harm worked upon the spirit of the lower classes by the establishment of the belief in this phantom, there would, perhaps, be no real danger in the effect produced by the clamours of insensate ultra journals, the preachings of agitating demagogues, and the insidious insinuations of anarchist _meneurs_ among the crowd, did not certain members of the government itself, and some of those in authority, render themselves parties concerned to the propagation of the belief, either genuinely, from having been themselves carefully inoculated with the _virus_ of false fear, until they have really taken the disease, or designedly, for the advancement of their own purposes--did they not, in fact, throw a sop continually to mob-lecturers, by insinuating their own conviction in the existence of "bogie" by their decrees, edicts, and proclamations, and, when they are called to put down anarchy, never obey without crying "Reaction" at the same time, and vainly giving the phantom a slap on the face. As it is--and herein lies the evil--the people are taught that the National Assembly, as it is now constituted, is the concentrated essence of the spirit of Reaction--that the representatives of the people, with but few exceptions, are the ministering imps in a visible form of the invisible demon. If a word of reason is spoken in the Assembly against the clamours of unreasonable demand--"Look ye there! reaction!" is the cry; if it prepares safe measures of repression against the open efforts of anarchy--"reaction;" if it defends its own existence against the subversive attempts of conspirators--"reaction;" if it attempts to establish the republic upon a firm and solid, but moderate basis--"reaction;" if it does any thing--"reaction;" if it does nothing--"reaction;" if it cannot perform impossible wonders for the amelioration and prosperity of the lower working-classes,--at which, however, it labours most hard,--"reaction--reaction--reaction; the