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16 first Legislature; and was considered as a passionate, hot-headed young man, whose chief merit consisted in his being warmly and sincerely attached to the cause of liberty. It was he who first brought the term Aristocrat into common use. This occurred on Thursday, Nov. 19, 1790; when a deputation from a corporation in the Cambresis having complained at the bar of some abuses, the deputy for Arras ascended the tribune, and exclaimed, that the petitioners deserved no favour, being themselves (un corps aristocratique) an aristocratical body. The Assembly burst into a fit of laughter on the mention of this word: it, however, soon produced far different sensations!

It was about this time that he became the editor of a journal entitled L'Union, ou Journal de la LiberteLiberté [sic]. The royalists, who accuse him of gross ignorance, enumerate, with exultation, the geographical, political, and even grammatical blunders daily exhibited in this newspaper. It is allowed by every one that it was conducted with extreme violence, and displayed but little taste or genius. Indeed, the exaggerating disposition of the editor had brought him into some degree of contempt; and it was at that time customary to remark, with a kind of satirical eulogium—que Mirabeau etoit le flambeau de la Provence, and Robespierre la chandelle d'Arras!—that Mirabeau was the flambeau of Provence, and Robespierre the candle of Arras! This much is certain, that he never was elected into any of the committees, or honoured with the president's chair in the first Assembly.

To the Society of the Jacobins, Robespierre is indebted for all his celebrity and all his power. He became their chief; and it was the