The two parties were not long before they began to differ, after their common victory. The revolutionary tribunal was an especial object of general horror. On the 11th Thermidor it was suspended; but Billaud- Varennes, in the same sitting, had the decree of suspension rescinded. He maintained that the accomplices of Robespierre alone were guilty, that the majority of the judges and jurors being men of integrity, it was desirable to retain them in their offices. Barrère presented a decree to that effect: he urged that the triumvirs had done nothing for the revolutionary government; that they had often even opposed its measures; that their only care had been to place their creatures in it, and to give it a direction favourable to their own projects; he insisted, in order to strengthen that government, upon retaining the law _des suspects_ and the tribunal, with its existing members, including Fouquier-Tinville. At this name a general murmur rose in the assembly. Fréron, rendering himself the organ of the general indignation, exclaimed: "I demand that at last the earth be delivered from that monster, and that Fouquier be sent to hell, there to wallow in the blood he has shed." His proposition was applauded, and Fouquier's accusation decreed. Barrère, however, did not regard himself as defeated; he still retained toward the convention the imperious language which the old committee had made use of with success; this was at once habit and calculation on his part; for he well knew that nothing is so easily continued as that which has been successful.
But the political tergiversations of Barrère, a man of noble birth, and who was a royalist Feuillant before the 10th of August, did not countenance his assuming this imperious and inflexible tone. "Who is this president of the Feuillants," said Merlin de Thionville, "who assumes to dictate to us the law?" The hall resounded with applause. Barrère became confused, left the tribune, and this first check of the committees indicated their decline in the convention. The revolutionary tribunal continued to exist, but with other members and another organization. The law of the 22nd Prairial was abolished, and there were now as much deliberation and moderation, as many protecting forms in trials, as before there had been precipitation and inhumanity. This tribunal was no longer made use of against persons formerly suspected, who were still detained in prison, though under milder treatment, and who, by degrees, were restored to liberty on the plan proposed by Camille Desmoulins for his Committee of Clemency.