A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795 Part 22

--Patriots of the North, would you wish to see our soldiers clothed by the same means?

--On another occasion, your British Sage describes, with great eloquence, the enthusiasm with which the youth of France "start to arms at the call of the Convention;" while the peaceful citizen antic.i.p.ates, with equal eagerness, the less glorious injunction to extract saltpetre.--The revolts, and the coercion, necessary to enforce the departure of the first levies (however fear, shame, and discipline, may have since made them soldiers, though not republicans) might have corrected the ardour of the orator's inventive talents; and the zeal of the French in manufacturing salpetre, has been of so slow a growth, that any reference to it is peculiarly unlucky. For several months the Convention has recommended, invited, intreated, and ordered the whole country to occupy themselves in the process necessary for obtaining nitre; but the republican enthusiasm was so tardy, that scarcely an ounce appeared, till a long list of sound penal laws, with fines and imprisonments in every line, roused the public spirit more effectually.*

* Two years imprisonment was the punishment a.s.signed to a Citizen who should be found to obstruct in any way the fabricating saltpetre. If you had a house that was adjudged to contain the materials required, and expostulated against pulling it down, the penalty was incurred.--I believe something of this kind existed under the old government, the abuses of which are the only parts the republic seems to have preserved.

--Another cause also has much favoured the extension of this manufacture: the necessity of procuring gunpowder at any rate has secured an exemption from serving in the army to those who shall be employed in making it.--*

* Many, under this pretext, even procured their discharge from the army; and it was eventually found requisite to stop this commutation of service by a decree.

--On this account vast numbers of young men, whose martial propensities are not too vehement for calculation, considering the extraction of saltpetre as more safe than the use of it, have seriously devoted themselves to the business. Thus, between fear of the Convention and of the enemy, has been produced that enthusiasm which seems so grateful to Lord S____. Yet, if the French are struck by the dissimilitude of facts with the language of your English patriots, there are other circ.u.mstances which appear still more unaccountable to them. I acknowledge the word patriotism is not perfectly understood any where in France, nor do my prison-a.s.sociates abound in it; but still they find it difficult to reconcile the love of their country, so exclusively boasted by certain senators, with their eulogiums on a government, and on men who avow an implacable hatred to it, and are the professed agents of its future destruction. The Houses of Lords and Commons resound with panegyrics on France; the Convention with _"delenda est Carthate"--"ces vils Insulaires"--"de peuple marchand, boutiquier"--"ces laches Anglois"--_ &c.

&c. ("Carthage must be destroyed"--"those vile Islanders"--"that nation of shopkeepers"--"those cowardly Englishmen"--&c.)

The efforts of the English patriots overtly tend to the consolidation of the French republic, while the demagogues of France are yet more strenuous for the abolition of monarchy in England. The virtues of certain people called Muir and Palmer,* are at once the theme of Mr. Fox and Robespierre,** of Mr. Grey and Barrere,***, of Collot d'Herbois****

and Mr. Sheridan; and their fate is lamented as much at the Jacobins as at St. Stephen's.*****

* If I have not mentioned these gentlemen with the respect due to their celebrity, their friends must pardon me. To say truth, I did not at this time think of them with much complacence, as I had heard of them only from the Jacobins, by whom they were represented as the leaders of a Convention, which was to arm ninety thousand men, for the establishment of a system similar to that existing in France.

**The French were so much misled by the eloquence of these gentlemen in their favour, that they were all exhibited on the stage in red caps and cropped heads, welcoming the arrival of their Gallic friends in England, and triumphing in the overthrow of the British const.i.tution, and the dethronement of the King.

*** If we may credit the a.s.sertions of Barrere, the friends.h.i.+p of the Committee of Public Welfare was not merely verbal. He says, the secret register of the Committee furnishes proofs of their having sent three frigates to intercept these distinguished victims, whom their ungrateful country had so ignominiously banished.

**** This humane and ingenious gentleman, by profession a player, is known likewise as the author of several farces and vaudevilles, and of the executions at Lyons.--It is a.s.serted, that many of the inhabitants of this unfortunate city expiated under the Guillotine the crime of having formerly hissed Collot's successful attempts on the stage.

***** The printing of a particular speech was interdicted on account of its containing allusions to certain circ.u.mstances, the knowledge of which might be of disservice to their unfortunate friends during their trial.

--The conduct of Mr. Pitt is not more acrimoniously discussed at the Palais National than by a part of his colleagues; and the censure of the British government, which is now the order of the day at the Jacobins, is nearly the echo of your parliamentary debates.*

* Allowing for the difference of education in the orators, a journeyman shoemaker was, I think, as eloquent, and not more abusive, than the facetious _ci-devant_ protege of Lord T____d.

--All this, however, does not appear to me out of the natural order of things; it is the sorry history of opposition for a century and an half, and our political rect.i.tude, I fear, is not increasing: but the French, who are in their way the most corrupt people in Europe, have not hitherto, from the nature of their government, been familiar with this particular mode of provoking corruption, nor are they at present likely to become so. Indeed, I must here observe, that your English Jacobins, if they are wise, should not attempt to introduce the revolutionary system; for though the total possession of such a government is very alluring, yet the prudence, which looks to futurity, and the incert.i.tude of sublunary events, must acknowledge it is "Caesar or nothing;" and that it offers no resource in case of those segregations, which the jealousy of power, or the appropriation of spoil, may occasion, even amongst the most virtuous a.s.sociates.--The eloquence of a discontented orator is here silenced, not by a pension, but by a mandat d'arret; and the obstinate patriotism, which with you could not be softened with less than a partic.i.p.ation of authority, is more cheaply secured by the Guillotine. A menace is more efficacious than a bribe, and in this respect I agree with Mr. Thomas Paine,* that a republic is undoubtedly more oeconomical than a monarchy; besides, that being conducted on such principles, it has the advantage of simplifying the science of government, as it consults neither the interests nor weaknesses of mankind; and, disdaining to administer either to avarice or vanity, subdues its enemies by the sole influence of terror.--*

* This gentleman's fate is truly to be pitied. After rejecting, as his friends a.s.sert, two hundred a year from the English Ministry, he is obliged now to be silent gratis, with the additional desagrement of occupying a corner in the Luxembourg.

--Adieu!--Heaven knows how often I may have to repeat the word thus unmeaningly. I sit here, like Pope's bard "lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane," and scribbling high-sounding phrases of monarchy, patriotism, and republics, while I forget the humbler subject of our wants and embarra.s.sments. We can scarcely procure either bread, meat, or any thing else: the house is crouded by an importation of prisoners from Abbeville, and we are more strictly guarded than ever. My friend ennuyes as usual, and I grow impatient, not having sang froid enough for a true French ennuie in a situation that would tempt one to hang one's self.

March, 1794.

The aspect of the times promises no change in our favour; on the contrary, every day seems to bring its attendant evil. The gentry who had escaped the comprehensive decree against suspected people, are now swept away in this and the three neighbouring departments by a private order of the representatives, St. Just, Lebas, and Dumont.*

* The order was to arrest, without exception, all the ci-devant n.o.blessse, men, women, and children, in the departments of the Somme, North, and Pas de Calais, and to exclude them rigourously from all external communication--(mettre au secret).

--A severer regimen is to be adopted in the prisons, and husbands are already separated from their wives, and fathers from their daughters, for the purpose, as it is alledged, of preserving good morals. Both this place and the Bicetre being too full to admit of more inhabitants, two large buildings in the town are now appropriated to the male prisoners.-- My friends continue at Arras, and, I fear, in extreme distress. I understand they have been plundered of what things they had with them, and the little supply I was able to send them was intercepted by some of the harpies of the prisons. Mrs. D____'s health has not been able to sustain these acc.u.mulated misfortunes, and she is at present at the hospital. All this is far from enlivening, even had I a larger share of the national philosophy; and did I not oftener make what I observe, than what I suffer, the subject of my letters, I should tax your patience as much by repet.i.tion, as I may by dullness.

When I enumerated in my last letters a few of the obligations the French have to their friends in England, I ought also to have observed, with how little grat.i.tude they behave to those who are here. Without mentioning Mr. Thomas Paine, whose persecution will doubtless be recorded by abler pens, nothing, I a.s.sure you, can be more unpleasant than the situation of one of these Anglo-Gallican patriots. The republicans, supposing that an Englishman who affects a partiality for them can be only a spy, execute all the laws, which concern foreigners, upon him with additional rigour;*

and when an English Jacobin arrives in prison, far from meeting with consolation or sympathy, his distresses are beheld with triumph, and his person avoided with abhorrence. They talk much here of a gentleman, of very democratic principles, who left the prison before I came. It seems, that, notwithstanding Dumont condescended to visit at his house, and was on terms of intimacy with him, he was arrested, and not distinguished from the rest of his countrymen, except by being more harshly treated.

The case of this unfortunate gentleman was rendered peculiarly amusing to his companions, and mortifying to himself, by his having a very pretty mistress, who had sufficient influence over Dumont to obtain any thing but the liberation of her protector. The Deputy was on this head inflexible; doubtless, as a proof of his impartial observance of the laws, and to show that, like the just man in Horace, he despised the clamour of the vulgar, who did not scruple to hint, that the crime of our countryman was rather of a moral than a political nature--that he was unaccommodating, and recalcitrant--addicted to suspicions and jealousies, which it was thought charitable to cure him of, by a little wholesome seclusion. In fact, the summary of this gentleman's history is not calculated to tempt his fellow societists on your side of the water to imitate his example.--After taking refuge in France from the tyranny and disappointments he experienced in England, and purchasing a large national property to secure himself the rights of a citizen, he is awakened from his dream of freedom, to find himself lodged in a prison, his estate under sequestration, and his mistress in requisition.--Let us leave this Coriola.n.u.s among the Volscians--it is a persecution to make converts, rather than martyrs, and

_"Quand le malheur ne seroit bon, "Qu'a mettre un sot a la raison, "Toujours seroit-ce a juste cause "Qu'on le dit bon a quelque chose."_*

* If calamity were only good to restore a fool to his senses, still we might justly say, "that it was good for some thing."

Yours, &c.

March 5, 1794.

Of what strange influence is this word revolution, that it should thus, like a talisman of romance, keep inchained, as it were, the reasoning faculties of twenty millions of people! France is at this moment looking for the decision of its fate in the quarrels of two miserable clubs, composed of individuals who are either despised or detested. The munic.i.p.ality of Paris favours the Cordeliers, the Convention the Jacobins; and it is easy to perceive, that in this cafe the auxiliaries are princ.i.p.als, and must shortly come to such an open rupture, as will end in the destruction of either one or the other. The world would be uninhabitable, could the combinations of the wicked be permanent; and it is fortunate for the tranquil and upright part of mankind, that the attainment of the purposes for which such combinations are formed, is usually the signal of their dissolution.

The munic.i.p.ality of Paris had been the iniquitous drudges of the Jacobin party in the legislative a.s.sembly--they were made the instruments of ma.s.sacring the prisoners,* of dethroning and executing the king,** and successively of destroying the Brissotine faction,*** filling the prisons with all who were obnoxious to the republicans,**** and of involving a repentant nation in the irremidiable guilt of the Queen's death.--*****

* It is well known that the a.s.sa.s.sins were hired and paid by the munic.i.p.ality, and that some of the members presided at these horrors in their scarfs of office.

** The whole of what is called the revolution of the 10th of August may very justly be ascribed to the munic.i.p.ality of Paris--I mean the active part of it. The planning and political part has been so often disputed by different members of the Convention, that it is not easy to decide on any thing, except that the very terms of these disputes fully evince, that the people at large, and more particularly the departments, were both innocent, and, until it took place, ignorant of an event which has plunged the country into so many crimes and calamities.

*** A former imprisonment of Hebert formed a princ.i.p.al charge against the Brissotines, and, indeed, the one that was most insisted on at their trial, if we except that of having precipitated France into a war with England.--It must be difficult for the English Jacobins to decide on this occasion between the virtues of their dead friends and those of their living ones.

**** The famous definition of suspected persons originated with the munic.i.p.ality of Paris.

***** It is certain that those who, deceived by the calumnies of faction, permitted, if not a.s.sented to, the King's death, at this time regretted it; and I believe I have before observed, that one of the reasons urged in support of the expediency of putting the Queen to death, was, that it would make the army and people decisive, by banis.h.i.+ng all hope of peace or accommodation. See the _Moniteur_ of that time, which, as I have elsewhere observed, may be always considered as official.

--These services being too great for adequate reward, were not rewarded at all; and the munic.i.p.ality, tired of the odium of crime, without the partic.i.p.ation of power, has seized on its portion of tyranny; while the convention, at once jealous and timid, exasperated and doubtful, yet menaces with the trepidation of a rival, rather than with the security of a conqueror.

Hebert, the Deputy-solicitor for the commune of Paris, appears on this occasion as the opponent of the whole legislature; and all the temporizing eloquence of Barrere, and the mysterious phraseology of Robespierre, are employed to decry his morals, and to reproach the ministers with the sums which have been the price of his labours.--*

* Five thousand pounds, two thousand pounds, and other considerable sums, were paid to Hebert for supplying the army with his paper, called "La Pere d.u.c.h.ene." Let whoever has read one of them, conceive the nature of a government to which such support was necessary, which supposed its interests promoted by a total extinction of morals, decency, and religion. I could almost wish, for the sake of exhibiting vice under its most odious colours, that my s.e.x and my country permitted me to quote one.

--Virtuous republicans! the morals of Hebert were pure when he outraged humanity in his accusations of the Queen--they were pure when he prostrated the stupid mult.i.tude at the feet of a G.o.ddess of Reason;* they were pure while his execrable paper served to corrupt the army, and to eradicate every principle which yet distinguished the French as a civilized people.

* Madame Momoro, the unfortunate woman who exposed herself in this pageant, was guillotined as an accomplice of Hebert, together with the wives of Hebert and Camille Desmoulins.

--Yet, atrocious as his crimes are, they form half the Magna Charta of the republic,* and the authority of the Convention is still supported by them.

* What are the death of the King, and the murders of August and September, 1792, but the Magna Charta of the republicans?

--It is his person, not his guilt, that is proscribed; and if the one be threatened with the scaffold, the fruits of the other are held sacred.

He will fall a sacrifice--not to offended religion or morality, but to the fears and resentment of his accomplices!

Amidst the dissentions of two parties, between which neither reason nor humanity can discover a preference, a third seems to have formed itself, equally inimical to, and hated by both. At the head of it are Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Philipeaux, &c.--I own I have no better opinion of the integrity of these, than of the rest; but they profess themselves the advocates of a system of mildness and moderation, and, situated as this country is at present, even the affectation of virtue is captivating.-- As far as they dare, the people are partial to them: bending beneath the weight of a sanguinary and turbulent despotism, if they sigh not for freedom, they do for repose; and the hara.s.sed mind, bereft of its own energy, looks up with indolent hope for relief from a change of factions.

They forget that Danton is actuated by ambitious jealousy, that Camille Desmoulins is hacknied in the atrocities of the revolution, and that their partizans are adventurers, with neither honour nor morals. Yet, after all, if they will destroy a few of the guillotines, open our bastilles, and give us at least the security of servitude, we shall be content to leave these retrospections to posterity, and be thankful that in this our day the wicked sometimes perceive it their interest to do good.

In this state of seclusion, when I remark to you the temper of the public at any important crisis, you are, perhaps, curious to know my sources of intelligence; but such details are unnecessary. I might, indeed, write you a manuel des prisons, and, like Trenck or Latude, by a vain display of ingenuity, deprive some future victim of a resource. It is enough, that Providence itself seems to aid our invention, when its object is to elude tyranny; besides that a constant accession of prisoners from all parts, who are too numerous to be kept separate, necessarily circulates among us whatever pa.s.ses in the world.

The Convention has lately made a sort of _pas retrogade_ [Retrogade movement.] in the doctrine of holy equality, by decreeing, that every officer who has a command shall be able to read and write, though it cannot be denied that their reasons for this lese democratie are of some weight. All gentlemen, or, as it is expressed here, n.o.blesse, have been recalled from the army, and replaced by officers chosen by the soldiers themselves, [Under the rank of field-officers.] whose affections are often conciliated by qualities not essentially military, though sometimes professional. A buffoon, or a pot-companion, is, of course, often more popular than a disciplinarian; and the brightest talents lose their influence when put in compet.i.tion with a head that can bear a greater number of bottles.*