Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/77

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AT THE BAR OF THE ASSEMBLY.
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nation. Though not a baker, he once contracted to supply the troops at Colchester with bread. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Cambridge in 1780, and in the following year headed the poll at Colchester, but the House of Commons seated his opponent, a naval officer, afterwards made a baronet. Sir Edmund Affleck. Jokes were cut on Potter's polling batches of electors after baking batches of bread. When the Revolution stopped the porcelain works at Chantilly, established by the Condé who succeeded Orleans as Louis XV.'s Prime Minister, Potter reopened them, and turned out 9000 dozen plates a month. He informed the Assembly that he had adopted France, the country of the arts, as his own, and was employing 500 workmen. His petition was referred to a committee, but nothing beyond compliments apparently came of it. Potter, however, prospered, and prosperity made him venturesome. He had invented new colouring processes, and he established other factories at Montereau and Porges. These did not pay, and in 1800 ruined Chantilly. The mayor reopened the works in order to give the villagers employment, but after nine years had to give them up, and it was not till the Restoration that the manufacture revived. Potter was doubtless the man who waited on Lord Malmesbury at Paris in October 1796 with an offer from Barras to conclude peace for a bribe of half a million. Malmesbury suspected a trap, and describes the