Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/119

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OUTLAWS AND CONSPIRATORS.
99

Paine, Frost, Rayment, Sayer, Joyce, Henry Redhead Yorke, and Robert Merry, husband of the actress Miss Brunton. Dissensions soon broke out. Frost and Paine quarrelled, the latter being intolerably arrogant, and on December 31st, Monro reported:—

"Our countrymen here who have been endeavouring to ruin their country are now really beneath the notice of any one, struggling for consequence among themselves, jealous of one another, differing in opinion, and even insignificant in a body; they are, excepting a few, heartily tired of politics and addresses [to the Convention]. . . . They are now dwindling into nothing."

A second address, advocated by Paine and Merry, but opposed by Frost and Macdonald of the Morning Post, was near causing blows. The Convention, too, was tired of the nonsense of British addresses, perceiving the insignificance of the persons who presented them. Monro's despatches end in January 1793, for he had been denounced as a spy by Thompson, a bookseller, who recollected seeing him in London, and he deemed it prudent to quit Paris; but we learn from other sources that in February the club was dissolved, the majority, after a warm discussion, deciding to take no further part in politics. The two Sheares, "men of desperate designs, capable of setting fire to the dockyards," had previously gone back. Young Daniel O'Connell crossed over in the same packet, when their exultations over