people to arms.[2379] This is the second wave of the Revolution, fast swelling and roaring, less general than the first, since it bears along with it but little more than the lower class, but higher and much more destructive. Not only, indeed, is the mass now launched forth coarse and crude, but a new sentiment animates it, the force of which is incalculable, that of plebeian pride, that of the poor man, the subject, who, suddenly erect after ages of debasement, relishes, far beyond his hopes and unstintedly, the delights of equality, independence, and dominion. "Fifteen millions white Negroes," says Mallet du Pan,[2380] worse fed, more miserable than those of St. Domingo, like them rebelled and freed from all authority by their revolt, accustomed like them, through thirty months of license, to ruling over all that is left of their former masters, proud like them of the restoration of their caste and exulting in their horny hands. One may imagine their transports of rage on hearing the trumpet-blast which awakens them, showing them on the horizon the returning planters, bringing with them new whips and heavier manacles?--Nothing is more distrustful than such a sentiment in such breasts--quickly alarmed, ready to strike, ready for any act of violence, blindly credulous, headlong and easily impelled, not merely against real enemies on the outside, but at first against imaginary enemies on the inside,[2381] but also against the King, the ministers, the gentry, priests, parliamentarians, orthodox Catholics; against all administrators and magistrates imprudent enough to have appealed to the law; all manufacturers, merchants, and owners of property who condemn disorder;the wealthy whose egotism keeps them at home; all those who are well-off, well-bred and well-dressed. They are all under suspicion because they have lost by the new regime, or because they have not adopted its ways.--Such is the colossal brute which the Girondins introduce into the political arena.[2382] For six months they shake red flags before its eyes, goad it on, work it up into a rage and drive it forward by decrees and proclamations, * against their adversaries and against its keepers, * against the nobles and the clergy, * against aristocrats inside France in complicity with those of Coblentz, * against "the Austrian committee" the accomplice of Austria, * against the King, whose caution they transform into treachery, * against the whole government to which they impute the anarchy they excite, and the war of which they themselves are the instigators.[2383]