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 Petions, and to himself.  Under this apprehension there is no doubt that his humane feelings were altogether unaffected.

His observations on the massacre of the preceding day are such as cannot be passed over.  “Yesterday,” said he, “was a day upon the events of which it is perhaps necessary to leave a veil.  I know that the people with their vengeance mingled a sort of justice:  they did not take for victims all who presented themselves to their fury; they directed it to them who had for a long time been spared by the sword of the law, and who they believed, from the peril of circumstances, should be sacrificed without delay.  But I know that it is easy to villains and traitors to misrepresent this effervescence, and that it must be checked; I know that we owe to all France the declaration, that the executive power could not foresee or prevent this excess; I know that it is due to the constituted authorities to place a limit to it, or consider themselves as abolished.”