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The actual situation at the National Convention at the end of 1792 had reached a crisis point.After the removal of the King and the declaration of the Republic, debate had turned to definition ofthe form of that Republic, and by the time the National Convention opened in November mostdiscussion was in favour of the models provided by the classical republics. Harold Parker points outthat one key subject for debate was the need to create a virtuous society, for ‘without virtue a republiccould not endure’. 2 The pursuit of ‘Virtue’ was recognised to be the aim of every citizen if the ideal ofa just republic was to be achieved. But just how ‘virtue’ could be defined, and by what means it couldbe achieved, was contentious. Wordsworth would have witnessed the beginning of the long andincreasingly acrimonious debates that centred on defining and creating a virtuous society, and hewould return to England with that debate weighing heavily on his own mind. Earlier debate haddiscussed the beliefs of men like Montesquieu and Rousseau and the earlier record of Plutarch thathad idealised the Greek republicans and stressed their pursuit of virtue. Once it was understood thatthe classical republics declined when virtue decayed, then the creation of virtue become the primaryaim of the logical minds of Robespierre and Saint-Just who set about initiating a program in whichlove of one’s country, and of its laws, would produce virtue in its obedient citizens. (Parker 164). 3Wordsworth had left Paris before this debate developed into open hostility between the factions, buthe had witnessed the beginnings of more open conflict, something signalled by Louvet’s denunciationof Robespierre. Robespierre succeeded in evading Louvet’s accusations by preparing a clever andeloquent reply that enabled him to continue his hold on power. It was a speech Wordsworth wouldhave read, noting the way mere words, eloquently delivered, could be used to direct the minds andhearts of the multitude, and just how an effective speaker could make a crowd believe that they held acommon vision.Just over a year after his reply to Louvet, Robespierre would declare that ‘Terror is nothingother than justice, prompt, severe, and inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue’. 4 Later, inmany of the speeches made in 1794, ‘virtue’ would become linked with Robespierre’s and Saint-Just’svision of the ideal republic, founded on the example of their equally idealistic vision of antiquity:What is the fundamental principle of a democratic and popular government, that is, theessential motive which supports it and makes it move? It is virtue: I speak of the politicalvirtue which accomplishes so many prodigies in Greece and Rome, and which ought toproduce far more astonishing ones in republican France; of that virtue which is nothing elsethan the love of our country and of its laws. 5It was Richard Price’s sermon in ‘On the Love of Our Country’ in 1789 that had provoked EdmundBurke’s dramatic response in his Reflections on the Revolution in France that led, in turn, to the2 Harold T. Parker, The Cult of Antiquity in the French Revolution: A Study of the Development of theRevolutionary Spirit p. 120. Much of the following section draws on Parker’s description of therevolutionaries’ identification with Classical ideals.3 Such laws, as decreed by the state, had no authority in Cicero’s political thinking unless they were founded onthe true understanding of virtue originating in Nature.4 ‘Rapport sur les principes de morale politique qui doivent guider la Convention nationale dans l'administrationintérieure de la République’. (5 February 1794), in Oeuvres 10: 356-7.5 Moniteur, No 139 (7 February 1794). Parker, p. 166.163