r some
person that can read and write, at their head, as President. Priests and
nobles, with all that are related, or anywise attached, to them, are
excluded by the law; and it is understood that true sans-culottes only
should be admitted.

With all these precautions, the indifference and hatred of the people to
their government are so general, that, perhaps, there are few places
where this regulation is executed so as to answer the purposes of the
jealous tyranny that conceived it. The members of these Committees seem
to exact no farther compliances than such as are absolutely necessary to
the mere form of the proceeding, and to secure themselves from the
imputation of disobedience; and are very little concerned whether the
real design of the legislature be accomplished or not. This negligence,
or ill-will, which prevails in various instances, tempers, in some
degree, the effect of that restless suspicion which is the usual
concomitant of an uncertain, but arbitrary, power. The affections or
prejudices that surround a throne, by ensuring the safety of the Monarch,
engage him to clemency, and the laws of a mild government are, for the
most part, enforced with exactness; but a new and precarious authority,
which neither imposes on the understanding nor interests the heart, which
is supported only by a palpable and unadorned tyranny, is in its nature
severe, and it becomes the common cause of the people to counteract the
measures of a despotism which they are unable to resist.--This (as I have
before had occasion to observe) renders the condition of the French less
insupportable, but it is by no means sufficient to banish the fears of a
stranger who has been accustomed to look for security, not from a
relaxation or disregard of the laws, but from their efficacy; not from
the characters of those who execute them, but from the rectitude with
which they are formed.--What would you think in England, if you were
obliged to contemplate with dread the three branches of your legislature,
and depend for the protection of your person and property on soldiers and
constables? Yet such is nearly the state we are in; and indeed a system
of injustice and barbarism gains ground so fast, that almost any
apprehension is justified.--The Tribunal Revolutionnaire has already
condemned a servant maid for her political opinions; and one of the
Judges of this tribunal lately introduced a man to the Jacobins, with
high panegyrics, because, a