robber's purse along with them, intended to be given up to them in case of an attack. It is here as it was in Lacedemonia, to the vigilance of every individual is left the care of avoiding these little daily losses; besides, it would be apprehended that every well-armed guard, every means of police or of rigour, at first established for the safety of the citizens, would shortly become an instrument of oppression and tyranny." To the Republican-minded Frenchwoman, chafing under the grinding centralization of her own government, this practice of self-help seemed then the paradise of public life. Deeply impressed with the Houses of Parliament, she was present at a debate on the East India Company, when she heard the young Prime Minister Pitt, and Fox, his eloquent antagonist.
Westminster Abbey, with its monuments to great men, the British Museum, the Royal Society—the President of which, Sir Joseph Banks, the Rolands were very intimate with—all gave to Madame Roland the impression of a proud, vigorous national life. Ranelagh, so charmingly described in Miss Burney's Evelina, was then the rendezvous of fashionable society, and Madame Roland was as pleased with the tone of quiet good-breeding pervading these assemblies as with the energy and passion displayed in the public meetings. In fact, in her eyes, as in those of so many of her countrymen, England was then the model nation. Brissot, who, some years afterwards, became the intimate friend of the Rolands, and leader of the Girondin Party, was, about this time, leading a retired yet busy life in the neighbourhood of Brompton, delightedly inhaling its pure country air, and congratulating himself on his happiness in enjoying freedom of thought, instead of living in constant apprehension
