Many persons very little acquainted with contemporaneous history, fancy that during the whole duration of Bailly’s administration, Paris was quite a cut-throat place.  That is a romance; the following is the truth:—­

Bailly was Mayor during two years and four months.  In that time there occurred four political assassinations; those of Foulon and of Berthier de Sauvigny, his son-in-law, at the Hotel de Ville; that of M. Durocher, a respectable officer of the gendarmerie, killed at Chaillot, by a musket-shot, in August, 1789; and that of a baker massacred in a riot in the month of October of the same year.  I do not speak of the assassination of two unfortunate men on the Champ de Mars in July, 1791, as that deplorable fact must be considered separately.

The individuals guilty of the assassination of the baker were seized, condemned to death, and executed.  The family of the unfortunate victim became the object of the anxious care of all the authorities, and obtained a pension.

The death of M. Durocher was attributed to some Swiss soldiers who had revolted.

The horrible and ever to be deplored assassinations of Foulon and of Berthier, are among those misfortunes which, under certain given circumstances, no human power could prevent.

In times of scarcity, a slight word, either true or unfounded, suffices to create a terrible commotion.

Reveillon is made to say, that a workman can live upon fifteen sous per diem, and behold his manufactory destroyed from top to bottom.

They ascribe to Foulon the barbarous vaunt; “I will force the people to eat hay;” and without any order from the constituted authorities, some peasants, neighbours of the old minister, arrest him, take him to Paris, his son-in-law experiences the same fate, and the famished populace immolates both of them.

In proportion as the multitude appear to me unjust and culpable, in attacking certain men respecting a scarcity of provisions, when it is the manifest consequence of the severity of the seasons, I should be disposed to excuse their rage against the authors of factitious scarcities.  Well, Gentlemen, at the time that Foulon was assassinated, the people, deceived by some impassioned orators of the Assembly, might, or let us rather say, ought to believe, that they were wilfully famished.  Foulon perished the 22d of July, 1789; on the 15th, that is to say, seven days before, Mirabeau had addressed the following incendiary words to the inhabitants of the capital, from the National Tribune:—­

“Henry IV. allowed provisions to be taken into besieged and rebellious Paris; but now, some perverse ministers intercept convoys of provisions destined for famished and obedient Paris.”

Yet people have been so inconsiderate as to be astonished at the assassinations of Foulon and of Berthier.  Going back in thought to the month of July, 1789, I perceive in the imprudent apostrophe of the eloquent tribune, more sanguinary disorders than the contemporary history has had to record.