republic is also to share; and as the live
stock, furniture, farming utensils, and arrears, are included in this
absurd and iniquitous regulation, the confusion and embarrassment which
it has occasioned are indescribable.

Though an unlucky combination of circumstances has rendered such a law
particularly oppressive to Madame de la F--------, she is only one of an
infinite number who are affected by it, and many of whom may perhaps be
still greater sufferers than herself. The Constituent Assembly had
attempted to form a code that might counteract the spirit of legal
disputation, for which the French are so remarkable; but this single
decree will give birth to more processes than all the _pandects, canons,_
and _droits feodaux,_ accumulated since the days of Charlemagne; and I
doubt, though one half the nation were lawyers, whether they might not
find sufficient employment in demalgamating the property of the other
half.

This mode of partition, in itself ill calculated for a rich and
commercial people, and better adapted to the republic of St. Marino than
to that of France, was introduced under pretext of favouring the system
of equality; and its transition from absurdity to injustice, by giving it
a retroactive effect, was promoted to accommodate the "virtuous" Herault
de Sechelles, who acquired a considerable addition of fortune by it. The
Convention are daily beset with petitions from all parts on this subject;
but their followers and themselves being somewhat in the style of
Falstaff's regiment--"younger sons of younger brothers," they seem
determined, as they usually are, to square their notions of justice by
what is most conducive to their own interest.

An apprehension of some attempt from the Jacobins, and the discontents
which the scarcity of bread give rise to among the people, have produced
a private order from the Committees of government for arming and
re-organizing the National Guard.*

* Though I have often had occasion to use the term National Guard,
it is to be understood only as citizens armed for some temporary
purpose, whose arms were taken from them as soon as that service was
performed. The _Garde Nationale,_ as a regular institution, had
been in a great measure suppressed since the summer of 1793, and
those who composed it gradually disarmed. The usual service of
mounting guard was still continued, but the citizens, with very few
exceptions, were ar