ded the people that the fate of Kings is regulated only by the
ordinary dispensations of Providence; and they seem to persist in
believing, that royalty, if it has not a more fortunate pre-eminence, is
at least distinguished by an unusual portion of calamities.

When we recollect the various and absurd stories which have been
propagated and believed at the death of Monarchs or their offspring,
without even a single ground either political or physical to justify
them, we cannot now wonder, when so many circumstances of every kind tend
to excite suspicion, that the public opinion should be influenced, and
attribute the death of the King to poison. The child is allowed to have
been of a lively disposition, and, even long after his seclusion from his
family, to have frequently amused himself by singing at the window of his
prison, until the interest he was observed to create in those who
listened under it, occasioned an order to prevent him. It is therefore
extraordinary, that he should lately have appeared in a state of
stupefaction, which is by no means a symptom of the disorder he is
alledged to have died of, but a very common one of opiates improperly
administered.*

* In order to account in some way for the state in which the young
King had lately appeared, it was reported that he had been in the
habit of drinking strong liquors to excess. Admitting this to be
true, they must have been furnished for him, for he could have no
means of procuring them.--It is not inapposite to record, that on a
petition being formerly presented to the legislature from the
Jacobin societies, praying that the "son of the tyrant" might be put
to death, an honourable mention in the national bulletin was
unanimously decreed!!!

Though this presumption, if supported by the evidence of external
appearances, may seem but of little weight; when combined with others, of
a moral and political nature, it becomes of considerable importance. The
people, long amused by a supposed design of the Convention to place the
Dauphin on the throne, were now become impatient to see their wishes
realized; or, they hoped that a renewal of the representative body,
which, if conducted with freedom, must infallibly lead to the
accomplishment of this object, would at least deliver them from an
Assembly which they considered as exhausted in talents and degraded in
reputation.--These dispositions were not attempted to be