Note 23 — Chapter I · A DEPUTATION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ARRIVES AT PARIS. BAILLIE CHOSEN MAYOR, AND LA FAYETTE COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE NATIONAL GUARDS. RESIGNATION OF THE MINISTRY. NECKER RECALLED. THE KING VISITS PARIS. CHARACTER OF THE PARISIANS. THE REVOLUTION URGED ON PREMATURELY. EMIGRATIONS OF SEVERAL OF THE NOBILITY AND OTHERS. CALONNE ADVISES THE FRENCH PRINCES TO STIR UP FOREIGN POWERS AGAINST FRANCE. FOULON KILLED.

‘Let us compare,’ he further adds, ‘the number of innocents sacrificed by mistake, by the sanguinary maxims of the courts of criminal judicature, and the ministerial vengeance exercised secretly in the dungeons of Vincennes, and in the cells of the Bastille, with the sudden and impetuous vengeance of the multitude, and then decide on which side barbarity appears. At the moment when the hell created by tyranny for the torment of it’s victims opens itself to the public eye; at the moment when all the citizens have been permitted to descend into those gloomy caves, to poize the chains of their friends, of their defenders; at the moment when the registers of those iniquitous archives are fallen into all hands; it is necessary, that the people should be essentially good, or this manifestation of the atrocities of ministers would have rendered them as cruel as themselves!’