Madame Roland did not approve of the first party. It attempted nothing but reforms. She wanted every vestige of the old régime wiped out. She suspected it, hated it. It had proved itself unworthy and must be abolished. The real sovereign must be allowed to prepare a government. She had no particular idea of what this government should be; certainly she did not suggest a republic. She was convinced, however, that it would be a simple matter to arrange something where happiness and justice and prosperity should be the lot of all. To obtain this ideal condition she believed riot and civil war justifiable; indeed she believed them necessary now that the fall of the Bastille had not been enough. They were necessary to keep the usurper in terror and the people suspicious. For her part, even if she were a woman and for that reason excluded from public activities, she meant to keep her friends aroused to the necessity of insurrection. There is no doubt that the policy of Roland in the Revolution and the relations which he formed and which shaped his course of action were due to this determination of Madame Roland to use her influence in agitation. All their contemporaries remark her ascendency over her husband. But she did not content herself with inspiring Roland. The two friends with whom she had been so long in regular correspondence, Bosc and Lanthenas, she strove, with all her eloquence, to urge to action. “I write you now but little of personal affairs. Who is the traitor who has other interest to-day than that of the nation?” Once Bosc wrote her a story of an interesting adventure; she replied: “I do not know whether you are in love or not; but I do know this, that in the situation where we now are, no honest man can follow the torch of love without having first lit it at the sacred fire of country.” She formed new political relations—the first, with Brissot de Warville, was of particular importance to them. The Rolands had had a slight correspondence with Brissot before the Revolution; for he, having been attracted by Roland’s writings, had sent him certain of his manuscripts as a mark of his esteem. This had led to an exchange of courteous letters, and, through one of their common friends in Paris, the relation was still further cemented, and a regular correspondence had grown up. When the Revolution came, Brissot started _Le patriote français_ and the Rolands sent him “all,” said Madame Roland, “which, under the circumstances, seemed to us to be useful to publish.” A large number of these letters were published in the _Patriote français_. It was not only in Paris that her letters inspired by their ardent patriotism. They were in relation with a young man at Lyons, called Champagneux. The 1st of September, 1789, he started the _Courrier de Lyon_, a journal something in the style of Brissot’s, intended to preach the principles of 1789, and to show what was passing in the National Assembly. Madame Roland wrote often to this journal.