But these discussions confined to the interior of the Manege, occupied less public attention than the fierce controversies of the periodical press. Journalism, that universal and daily _forum_ of the people's passions, had expanded with the progress of liberty. All ardent minds had eagerly embraced it, Mirabeau himself having set the example when he descended from the tribune. He wrote his letters to his constituents in the _Courrier de Provence_. Camille Desmoulins, a young man of great talent but weak reasoning powers, threw into his lucubrations for the press the feverish tumult of his thoughts. Brissot, Gorsas, Carra, Prudhomme, Freron, Danton, Fauchet, Condorcet, edited democratic journals: they began by demanding the abolition of royalty, "the greatest scourge," said the _Revolutions de Paris_, "which has ever dishonoured the human species." Marat seemed to have concentrated in himself all the evil passions which ferment in a society in a state of decomposition: he constituted himself the permanent representative of popular hate. By pretending this, he kept it up, writing all the while with bitterness and ferocity. He became a cynic in order the more intimately to know the masses. He assumed the language of the lowest reprobates. Like the elder Brutus, he feigned idiocy, but it was not to save his country, it was to urge it to the uttermost bounds of madness, and then control it by its very insanity. All his pamphlets, echoes of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, daily excited the uneasiness, suspicions, and terrors of the people.