He had purchased his popularity, first by his private virtues, which the people almost always confound with public virtues, and subsequently by his democratic speeches in the Constituent Assembly.

The skilful balance which he preserved at the Jacobins between the Girondists and Robespierre had rendered him respectable and important.
Friend of Roland, Robespierre, Danton, and Brissot, at the same time suspected of too close connection with Madame de Genlis and the Duc d'Orleans' party, he still always covered himself with the mantle of proper devotion to order and a superstitious reverence for the constitution.

He had thus all the apparent titles to the esteem of honest men and the respect of factions; but the greatest of all was in his mediocrity.

Mediocrity, it must be confessed, is almost always the brand of these idols of the people: either that the mob, mediocre itself, has only a taste for what resembles it; or that jealous contemporaries can never elevate themselves sufficiently high towards great characters and great virtues; or that Providence, which distributes gifts and faculties in proportion, will not allow that one man should unite in himself, amidst a free people, these three irresistible powers, virtue, genius, and popularity; or rather, that the constant favour of the multitude is a thing of such a nature that its price is beyond its worth in the eyes of really virtuous men, and that it is necessary to stoop too low to pick it up, and become too weak to retain it.

Petion was only king of the people on condition of being complaisant to its excesses.