Price, the Priestleys, father and son, and David Williams. He had
furnished Lafayette with a good deal of his revolutionary rhetoric, had
contributed to the Monthly Review of the Girondists and the "Chronique
de Paris," and had written a series of articles in defence of
representative government, which Condorcet had translated for him.
Paine was a man of one idea in politics; a federal republic, on the
American plan, was the only system of government he believed in, and
the only one he wished to see established in France. Lafayette belonged
to this school. So did Condorcet, Petion, Buzot, and others of less
note. Under Paine's direction they formed a republican club, which met
at Condorcet's house. This federal theory cost them dear. In 1793, it
was treason against the _une et indivisible_, and was punished
accordingly.
After the flight to Varennes, Paine openly declared that the King was
"a political superfluity." This was true enough. The people had lost
all respect for the man and for the office. None so base as to call him
King.
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