In this manner (that is, in mutual suspicions and interrogatories) this virtuous Minister of the Home Department, and all the magistracy of Paris, spent the first day of the massacre, the atrocity of which has spread horror and alarm throughout Europe. It does not appear that the putting a stop to the massacre had any part in the object of their meeting, or in their consultations when they were met. Here was a minister tremblingly alive to his own safety, dead to that of his fellow-citizens, eager to preserve his place, and worse than indifferent about its most important duties. Speaking of the people, he says "that their hidden enemies may make use of this _agitation_" (the tender appellation which he gives to horrid massacre) "to hurt _their best friends and their most able defenders. Already the example begins_: let it restrain and arrest a _just_ rage. Indignation carried to its height commences proscriptions which fall only on the _guilty_, but in which error and particular passions may shortly involve the _honest man_." He saw that the able artificers in the trade and mystery of murder did not choose that their skill should be unemployed after their first work, and that they were full as ready to cut off their rivals as their enemies. This gave him _one_ alarm that was serious. This letter of Roland, in every part of it, lets out the secret of all the parties in this Revolution. _Plena rimarum est; hoc atque illac perfluit_. We see that none of them condemn the occasional practice of murder,--provided it is properly applied,--provided it is kept within the bounds which each of those parties think proper to prescribe. In this case Roland feared, that, if what was occasionally useful should become habitual, the practice might go further than was convenient. It might involve the best friends of the last Revolution, as it had done the heroes of the first Revolution: he feared that it would not be confined to the La Fayettes and Clermont-Tonnerres, the Duponts and Barnaves, but that it might extend to the Brissots and Vergniauds, to the Condorcets, the Pétions, and to himself. Under this apprehension there is no doubt that his humane feelings were altogether unaffected.