HIS OWN TRIAL. 237 



order ; that he made every effort to stop the firing, to 

 stop the pursuit, and make the soldiers resume their 

 ranks ; that he congratulated the troops of the line, who 

 under the command of Hulin, entered by the gate of 

 1 Ecole Militaire, and not only did not fire, but tore many 

 of the unfortunate people from the hands of the National 

 Guard, whose exasperation amounted to delirium. In 

 short, it might be asked, relative to any want of exact 

 ness attributable to Bailly in that unfortunate affair, 

 whether it was just to impute it to him who, in his let 

 ters to Voltaire on the origin of the sciences, wrote as 

 follows in 1776: 



&quot; I am unfortunately short-sighted. I am often humi 

 liated in the open country. Whilst I with difficulty can 

 distinguish a house at the distance of a hundred paces, my 

 friends relate to me what they see at the distance of five 

 or six hundred. I open my eyes, I fatigue myself with 

 out seeing any thing, and I am sometimes inclined to think 

 that they amuse themselves at my expense.&quot; 



You begin to see, Gentlemen, the advantage that a 

 firm and able lawyer might have drawn from the authen 

 tic facts that I have just been relating. But Bailly knew 

 the pretended jury before whom he had to appear. This 

 jury was not a collection of drunken cobblers, whatever 

 some passionate writers may have asserted ; it was worse 

 than that, Gentlemen, notwithstanding the deservedly 

 celebrated names that were occasionally interspersed 

 among them: it was let us cut the subject short an 

 odious commission. 



The very circumscribed list from which chance in 1793 

 and 1794 drew the juries of the Revolutionary Tribunals, 

 did not embrace, as the sacred word jury seems to imply, 

 all one class of citizens. The authorities formed it, after 



