The present moment is opportune for reviewing the work of the Government to date, and drawing up a political balance-sheet as it were of its successes and failures. We have always been open critics of the present Administration, whenever we thought that national interests demanded such criticism, and our readers will remember that we heartily condemned the ill-fated proposal to change the place of public executions from the Place de la Revolution to the Square de l’Egalité--a far less convenient spot; but apart from a few tactical errors of this sort it must be admitted, and is admitted even by his enemies, that Mr. Robespierre has handled a very difficult situation with admirable patience and with a tremendous grasp of detail. It is sometimes said of Mr. Robespierre that he owes his great position mainly to his mastery over words. To our thinking that judgment is as superficial as it is unjust. True, Mr. Robespierre is a great orator, even (which is higher praise) a great _Parliamentary_ orator, but it is not this one of his many talents which is chiefly responsible for his success. It is rather his minute acquaintance with the whole of his subject which impresses the House. No assembly in the world is a better judge of character than the Convention, and its appreciation of Mr. Robespierre’s character is that it is above all a practical one. His conduct of the war--for in a sense the head of the Government and Leader of the House may be said to conduct any and every national enterprise--has been remarkable. The unhappy struggle is now rapidly drawing to a close and we shall soon emerge into a settlement to which may be peculiarly applied the phrase “Peace with Honour.” The restraint and kindliness of our soldiers has won universal praise, even from the enemy, and it is a gratifying feature in the situation that those of our fellow-citizens in Toulon, Lyons, and elsewhere who could not see eye to eye with us in our foreign and domestic policy are now reconciled to both. One last word upon the Judges Bill. We implore Mr. Robespierre to stand firm and not to increase the present number, which is ample for the work of the Courts even under the somewhat exceptional strain of the last four years. After all it is no more fatigue to condemn sixty people to death than one. The delay in forensic procedure is (or rather was) due to its intolerable intricacy, and the reforms introduced by Mr. Robespierre himself, notably the suppression of so-called “witnesses” and of the old-fashioned rigmarole of “defence,” has done wonders in the way of expedition. We too often forget that Mr. Robespierre is not only a consummate orator and a past master of prose, but a great lawyer as well. We should be the last to hint that the demand for more judges was due to place-hunting: vices of that kind are happily absent in France whatever may be the case in other countries. The real danger is rather that if the new posts were created jealousy