Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1865-06-09
Assassination of Marat.
BY JAMES PARTON.


es its ohject--not even where it is don,
from lofty motives, and in the interest o
humanity. Whatever the hero worship
pers may pretend, human affairs are no
so loosely ordered that the removal Of al
individual, however important, can per
manently change the course of events.
At the breaking out of the American
revolution, there was living at Edinburgh
little Swiss named Jean Paul Marat
who earned a slender livelihood by giving
lessons in French. He stood only five
feet high, and his countenance was un-
prepossessing, and even repulsive. In
his native land be had been a student Of
medicine, with a marked inclination for
natural science, which was then the ia
volite pursuit of intellectual men. Find
ing no career open to him in Switzerland,
he had come TO Edinburgh, iu his twenty
eighth year, to seek his fortune, and per-
haps, TO increase his knowledge. Full
of the republican sentiment which was
then so fashionable on the continent, be
published work at Edinburgh, ia Eng
lish, entitled The Chains of Slavery"
which showed, at least, that he had i'm
proved his opportunity 10 learn the Eng
lish language.
The bane of this mans character was
morbid love Of distinction. Poor, half.
educated, Insignificant in appearance
slenderly endowed with talent, but not
altogether devoid of nobler traits, be
sought as it were, to storm the temple of
fame by the utterance of startling theo-
ries, and by wild dcnunciations of abler
men. Instead of applying himself to
learn of the sages of the past and the
gifted men of his own day, he read them
only TO crticise and condemn. The first
step toward true knowledge is the dis
coYery of ones own ignorance and little
ness but this was discovery never
made by Jean Paul Marat, and therefore,
he remained ignorant and narrow minded
to bis last day.
Not prOspering in Edinburgh, Marat
returned to the continent, and, in 1875,
published at Amsterdam, in three vol
umes, pretentious and shallow work.
entitled "Alan, or the Principles and
Laws OF the Influence of the Soul upon
the Body and of the Body upon the Soul.
BY J. p. Marat, NJ. D." in which, after
condemning all that previous writer's on
this subject had advanced, he endeavored
to establish, that it is the fluid of the
nerves which forms the medium of con>
nection between the soul and the body.
The aged Voltaire reviewed this work in |
his witty and sa,irical manner, advising
the author to be more modest, and to
endeavor to instruct the public, instead
Of cutting rhetorical capers, "like Harle-
quin, to amuse the pit" This review
put an extinguisher, for the time, upon
the flaming vanity of Dr. Marat.
He settled next at Paris as a physician
but with small success.
We catch glimpse of him in DR..
Franklin'S diary, TO whom he sent treat
ise, in English, on elementary Fire"
with an account of some "experiments
made in dark room," which Franklin
said he could judge of without seeing -
1t is not unlikely that he had the honor
of exhibiting his experiments to the
American philosopher. Failing to get
practice as a doctor, he is said to have sold
quack medicines in the streets of Paris,
and, at length, he obtained the place of
veterinary surgeon to one Of the French
princes, the Count D'Artois, afterwards
Charles X.
In this situation he was when the
French revolution reused all the latent
ferocity of his nature, and gave oppor-
tunity for the qualification of his insane
conceit, The cry of the maddened peo.
pie was for the blood OF "the Aristocrats."
Starting paper, which he named, Friend
Of the People, be threw himself into the
van OF the popular party, and stimulated
their worst passions by breathing out
threatenings and slaughter. His sole
remedy for social grievances was blood.
He demanded the summary execution of
eight hundred members of the National :
Assembly, because they stood in the way
ot the wholesale massacre of aristocrats.
Arrested and put on trial for his Internal!
be was acquitted by acclama,
lion, borne home in triumph, and return.
ed by prodigious majority to the Nation
al Convention. In that body, bis cry
was still for blood. Such was the yio-
Ience of his denunciations of the mod
crate party in the Convention, that one
member ventured to move a vote of GEN.