trial of the ninety-four Nantais, that the revolutionary
Committees were, for the most part, composed of the very refuse of
society--adventurers, thieves, and even assassins; and it would be
difficult to imagine a crime that did not there find reward and
protection.--In vain were the privileges of the nobility abolished,
and religion proscribed. A new privileged order arose in the
Jacobins, and guilt of every kind, without the semblance of
penitence, found an asylum in these Committees, and an inviolability
more sacred than that afforded by the demolished altars.

To these may be added a few men of weak character, and unsteady
principles, who remain in office because they fear to resign; with a few,
and but very few, ignorant fanatics, who really imagine they are free
because they can molest and destroy with impunity all they have hitherto
been taught to respect, and drink treble the quantity they did formerly.

Oct. 30.

For some days the guards have been so untractable, and the croud at the
door has been so great, that Fleury was obliged to make various efforts
before he could communicate the result of his negotiation. He has at
length found means to inform us, that his friend the tailor had exerted
all his interest in our favour, but that Dumont and Le Bon (as often
happens between neighbouring potentates) are at war, and their enmity
being in some degree subject to their mutual fears, neither will venture
to liberate any prisoner arrested by the other, lest such a disposition
to clemency should be seized on by his rival as a ground of accusation.*

* But if they did not free the enemies of each other, they revenged
themselves by throwing into prison all their mutual friends--for the
temper of the times was such, that, though these Representatives
were expressly invested with unlimited powers, they did not venture
to set any one at liberty without a multitude of forms and a long
attendance: on the contrary, they arrested without any form at all,
and allowed their myrmidons to harrass and confine the persons and
sequester the property of all whom they judged proper.--It seemed to
have been an elementary principle with those employed by the
government at this time, that they risked nothing in doing all the
mischief they could, and that they erred only in not doing enough.

--All, therefore, that can be obtained is,