CT e 
Lol 
HIS OWN TRIAL. 8 
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 
YEcole 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: 
“Tam 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.” 
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 
