10 Baron Cuvier's Historical Eloge of Baron Ramond. 



same country, which on this occasion he had visited only from 

 curiosity. 



M. Ramond had experienced in his relation with the Car- 

 dinal de Rohan all that was disagreeable in the favour of the 

 great — he had still to experience that of the favour of the 

 people. The Cardinal, delivered from exile in consequence of 

 the revolution of the 14th July, and sent as a deputy from the 

 clergy of his diocese to the National Assembly, was henceforth 

 free from all his persecutions, and it was no longer a point of 

 honour that his former servants should remain attached to his 

 person. M. Ramond now established himself at Paris. Con- 

 nected as he was with most of those men who had concurred 

 in the new state of things, it was difficult for him to remain 

 a simple spectator, and scarcely had he appeared in a section, 

 when his eloquence and extent of information made him a 

 person of importance. He was placed, as he himself playfully 

 remarks in his memoirs, among thenumber of those small powei's 

 who thought that they could carry through the revolution, but 

 who were soon dragged along by the revolution itself. Con- 

 tinually at the conferences and cabinet meetings, from that of 

 Condorcet to that of Mirabeau, of the Hotel de La Roche- 

 foucault to the Hotel de Ville, or engaged in the clubs, 

 sometimes with the friends of good, and sometimes with the 

 spirits of mischief, he saw the latter continually advancing in 

 spite of the efforts of the former. He was at last chosen a de- 

 puty to the first legislature, and here there were new and more 

 constant combats, — combats in which he had constantly against 

 him the imprudent friends of the throne as well as its blind 

 adversaries. 



From its first sittings he was found to conjure the assembly, 

 though in vain, not to introduce religious discussions into de- 

 bates already sufficiently animated : He called for toleration ; 

 he proposed that the ecclesiastics, whether sworn or not, should 

 be chosen freely by the communes, and that they should all re- 

 ceive salaries. On a later occasion he attempted to adjourn 

 the consideration of the laws against eroigt-ants; he at least 

 resisted the proposal that they should all suffer the same pu- 

 nishment without regard to their conduct to the mother country. 

 On another occasion he endeavoured to prevent the disbanding 



