here be mentioned that the bookseller Momoro, having hinted at something like agrarian law, and some faint shadow of Socialism, had to go into hiding to avoid hanging.
So far, therefore, we have got no further than the complete triumph of bourgeois republicanism. The possibility, 151 notwithstanding, of its retaining its position depended, as the event showed, on the support of the proletariat, which was only given on the terms that the material condition of the workers should be altered for the better by the new regime. And those terms, in the long run, bourgeois republicanism could not keep, and therefore it fell.
The Girondins or moderate party in the Convention began their assault on the Jacobins on the subject of the September Massacres, and also by attacking Marat personally, which attack, however, failed egregiously. The Girondins, as their name implies, leaned on the support of the provinces, where respectability was stronger than in Paris, and tried to levy a bodyguard for the defence of the Convention against the Paris populace; but though they got the decree for it passed, they could not carry it out. In their character of political economists, also, they resisted the imposing of a maximum price on grain, a measure which the scarcity caused by the general disturbance made imperative, if the proletariat were to have any share in the advantages 182 of the Revolution. In short, the Girondins were obviously out of sympathy with the mass of the people.
The trial of the King now came on, and tested the Girondins in a fresh way; they mostly voted his death, but as if driven to do so from a feeling that opinion was against them, and that they might as well have some credit for it. Louis was beheaded on the 21st January 1793, and as an immediate consequence England and Spain declared war. But this business of the King made a kind of truce between the parties, which, however, soon came to an end. Marat was the great object of attack, and