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
constitution, and the dethronement of the King.
*** If we may credit the assertions of Barrere, the friendship 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 asserted, 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 circumstances, 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
|