river, the appellation of Girondists was given to the whole party.  These, and some other towns, declared strongly against the principles of anarchy, and against the despotism of Paris.  Numerous addresses were sent to the Convention, promising to maintain its authority, which the addressers were pleased to consider as legal and constitutional, though chosen, not to compose an executive government, but to form a plan for a Constitution.  In the Convention measures were taken to obtain an armed force from the several departments to maintain the freedom of that body, and to provide for the personal safety of the members:  neither of which, from the 14th of July, 1789, to this hour, have been really enjoyed by their assemblies sitting under any denomination.

This scheme, which was well conceived, had not the desired success.  Paris, from which the Convention did not dare to move, though some threats of such a departure were from time to time thrown out, was too powerful for the party of the Gironde.  Some of the proposed guards, but neither with regularity nor in force, did indeed arrive:  they were debauched as fast as they came, or were sent to the frontiers.  The game played by the revolutionists in 1789, with respect to the French guards of the unhappy king, was now played against the departmental guards, called together for the protection of the revolutionists.  Every part of their own policy comes round, and strikes at their own power and their own lives.

The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in taking the alarm.  They had just reason to apprehend, that, if they permitted the smallest delay, they should see themselves besieged by an army collected from all parts of France.  Violent threats were thrown out against that city in the Assembly.  Its total destruction was menaced.  A very remarkable expression was used in these debates,—­“that in future times it might be inquired on what part of the Seine Paris had stood.”  The faction which ruled in Paris, too bold to be intimidated and too vigilant to be surprised, instantly armed themselves.  In their turn, they accused the Girondists of a treasonable design to break the republic one and indivisible (whose unity they contended could only be preserved by the supremacy of Paris) into a number of confederate commonwealths.  The Girondin faction on this account received also the name of Federalists.

Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities.  Paris, the mother of equality, was herself to be equalized.  Matters were come to this alternative:  either that city must be reduced to a mere member of the federative republic, or the Convention, chosen, as they said, by all France, was to be brought regularly and systematically under the dominion of the Common Hall, and even of any one of the sections of Paris.