The Republic which she and her friends dreamed of at this moment and did not hesitate to announce, was not in the public mind, and when they insisted upon it, they were insisting upon an individual opinion of which the country at large had no conception, and for which it had no sympathy. By her own confession both the Assembly and the Jacobins “went into convulsions” at the mere pronunciation of the name _Republic_. There were only two societies which, after the flight of the King, dared declare themselves _tyrannicides_,—the Cordeliers and a group of private individuals. At the Cercle Social they did discuss whether it was suitable or not to conserve kings, but at the Jacobins the very name _Republican_ was hissed. Nevertheless they worked valiantly to spread their ideas. Robert published a pamphlet on the “Advantages of the flight of the King and the necessity of a new government or Republic.” Condorcet published a discussion “Whether a king is necessary to the conservation of liberty”; and Brissot, at the Jacobins, made a hit with a speech in which he showed that the cry that the King was inviolable and could not be tried was false; that even if inviolability were admitted it did not apply in this case; and that according to the constitution the King could and ought to be tried. Thomas Paine was then in Paris, believing as Dumont says, that he had made the American Revolution and was called upon to make another in France. With Condorcet, Brissot, and a few others as sympathizers, Paine formed a republican society. Their first concern was to publish a journal, the prospectus of which was posted by Paine on the morning of the first of July. In it he declared that the King by his flight is “free of us as we are of him. He has no longer any authority; we no longer owe him obedience; we know him now only as an individual in the crowd, as M. Louis de Bourbon”; and he concluded his harangue by the announcement that “A society of republicans had decided to publish in separate sheets a work entitled _The Republican_. Its object is to enlighten people’s minds on this republicanism which is calumniated because it is not understood; on the uselessness, the vices, and the abuses of the royalty that prejudice persists in defending, although they may be known.” This poster made a great noise in the Assembly, where it was denounced as “worthy of all the rigor of the law.” According to Madame Roland, it was only by flattering the Assembly’s love for the monarchy and by abusing republicanism and its partisans, that it was possible to convince the body that however ridiculous the idea might be, still it was necessary to leave it free course. Only two numbers of _The Republican_ appeared, says Madame Roland, in her Memoirs; only one, says Moncure D. Conway, in his life of Paine. As a matter of fact, there were at least four issues, that number being in the collection of Revolutionary pamphlets in the Bibliothèque Nationale.