Palmerston's father, indeed, was or had been a friend of Wilkes; he was walking with the demagogue in Paris, apparently about 1763, when Forbes, a Scotchman in the French army, challenged Wilkes to a duel as having insulted his country in the North Briton; but Forbes could not find seconds, his fellow Scots disapproving the challenge. In January 1791, moreover, Richard Burke wrote to his father from Coblenz, "Only think of Lord Palmerston being a convert" (to the Revolution), but Palmerston's diary of his visit to Paris in July 1791 is not that of a convert. It is true that he shows no sympathy for the royal family, then virtual prisoners in the Tuileries, but he was disgusted at the plaudits with which the Jacobin Club greeted Brissot's arguments for putting the king on his trial, and he predicts the dispersion of the Assembly by the mob, followed by anarchy and an eventual despotism. This forecast approximates so closely to the reality that, meagre though the diary is, it is a pity Palmerston's father kept, or preserved, no diary in 1792. We consequently know only from his mother's letter to Lady Elliot of the scene at the barrier. The gates and walls erected in 1786 by the farmers of the revenue to prevent evasion of tolls—"le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant"—proved a potent weapon for the Terrorists, for when the gates were shut the "aristocrats" were caught as in a trap; and
