About the same time that this law was adopted, Desmoulins, encouraged by Robespierre, began the publication of a paper, the _Old Cordelier_, in which he first confined himself to denouncing the Hébertists, but went on to denounce the Terror itself as a great deception, and to compare the state of things in France to that which prevailed under the worst of the Roman emperors. The law of treason, he said, was extended to words; the inhabitants of towns were killed in masses. Grief, pity, looks of disapprobation, silence itself, constituted State crimes. It was a crime to be rich; a crime to give shelter to a friend. Is it possible, he asked, that the state of things which constituted despotism and the worst of governments when Tacitus wrote, constitutes to-day liberty and the best of possible worlds? You wish to exterminate your enemies by the guillotine. What folly! For every man you kill you make ten new enemies. If we do not understand by liberty the carrying out of principles, never was there an idolatry so stupid as ours, nor one that costs more. Liberty is no operatic singer promenading in a red cap. Liberty is happiness, equality, justice, the Declaration of Rights itself. If I am to recognise her presence, open the prison doors to those 200,000 citizens whom you call ‘suspected.’ Thus was the Commune attacked on three sides at once--by Montagnards, who desired the independence of the Convention; by the Committee of Public Safety, which sought the extension of its own authority; and by Dantonists, who sought to hold in check the Terror. Hébert was afraid to enter into contention with Robespierre. By the atheistic movement he had sought and attained notoriety, but its active supporters were few, and there was no probability that any considerable body of men would rally round him in its defence. Chaumette, at the Commune, made a speech on the folly of attempting to suppress religious opinions by force. Hébert went further, and made a formal denial of atheism at the Jacobins. But while seeking to curry favour with Robespierre, Hébert and his followers opened the more vehement attack on the Dantonists. Here they were surer of their ground, for all who had been actively engaged in the work of destruction dreaded the first step of reaction, lest vengeance should overtake themselves. The Cordeliers erased the names of Danton and Desmoulins from their list of members. Collot, the director of the atrocities committed at Lyons, who had returned to Paris in December, expressed amazement that the first who spoke of clemency had not been sent to the scaffold. Amongst the twelve men who formed the Committee of Public Safety no good understanding existed. Six concerned themselves with special branches of administration, but took no part in directing the general action of the Government. The remaining six were not all of one mind. Couthon and St. Just were devoted adherents of Robespierre. Barère, originally a deputy of the