despair often supplies the want of weapons, and that God and men were for the people. He thought, moreover, that if it was the duty of France to propagate the advantages and the light of reason and liberty, the natural and peaceful extension of the French Revolution in the world would prove far more infallible than our arms,--that the Revolution should be a doctrine and not an universal monarchy realised by the sword, and that the patriotism of nations should not coalesce against his dogmata. Their strength was in their minds, for in his eyes the power of the Revolution lay in its enlightenment. But he understood more: he understood that an offensive war would inevitably ruin the Revolution, and annihilate that premature republic of which the Girondists had already spoken to him, but which he himself could not as yet define. Should the war be unfortunate, thought he, Europe will crush without difficulty beneath the tread of its armies the earliest germs of this new government, to the truth of which perhaps a few martyrs might testify, but which would find no soil from whence to spring anew. If fortunate, military feeling, the invariable companion of aristocratic feeling, honour, that religion that binds the soldier to the throne; discipline, that despotism of glory, would usurp the place of those stern virtues to which the exercise of the constitution would have accustomed the people,--then they would forgive every thing, even despotism, in those who had saved them. The gratitude of a nation to those who have led its children to victory is a pitfall in which the people will ever be ensnared,--nay, they even offer their necks to the yoke; civil virtues must ever fade before the brilliancy of military exploits. Either the army would return to surround the ancient royalty with all its strength, and France would have her Monk, or the army would crown the most successful of its generals, and liberty would have her Cromwell. In either case the Revolution escaped from the people, and lay at the mercy of the soldiery, and thus to save it from war was to save it from a snare. These reflections decided him; as yet he meditated no violence; he but saw into the future, and read it aright. This was the original cause of his rupture with the Girondists; their justice was but policy, and war appeared to them politic. Just or unjust, they wished for it as a means of destruction to the throne, of aggrandisement for themselves. Posterity must decide, if in this great quarrel the first blame lies on the side of the democrat, or the ambitious Girondists. This fierce contest, destined to terminate in the death of both parties, began on the 12th of December at a meeting of the Jacobin Club. V.