ects his features: yet there is a wide
difference between such toleration and freedom and security; and it is a
circumstance not favourable to those who look beyond the moment, that the
tyrannical laws which authorized all the late enormities are still
unrepealed. The Revolutionary Tribunal continues to sentence people to
death, on pretexts as frivolous as those which were employed in the time
of Robespierre; they have only the advantage of being tried more
formally, and of forfeiting their lives upon proof, instead of without
it, for actions that a strictly administered justice would not punish by
a month's imprisonment.*
* For instance, a young monk, for writing fanatic letters, and
signing resolutions in favour of foederalism--a hosier, for
facilitating the return of an emigrant--a man of ninety, for
speaking against the revolution, and discrediting the assignats--a
contractor, for embezzling forage--people of various descriptions,
for obstructing the recruitment, or insulting the tree of liberty.
These, and many similar condemnations, will be found in the
proceedings of the Revolutionary Tribunal, long after the death of
Robespierre, and when justice and humanity were said to be restored.
A ceremony has lately taken place, the object of which was to deposit the
ashes of Marat in the Pantheon, and to dislodge the bust of Mirabeau--
who, notwithstanding two years notice to quit this mansion of
immortality, still remained there. The ashes of Marat being escorted to
the Convention by a detachment of Jacobins, and the President having
properly descanted on the virtues which once animated the said ashes,
they were conveyed to the place destined for their reception; and the
excommunicated Mirabeau being delivered over to the secular arm of a
beadle, these remains of the divine Marat were placed among the rest of
the republican deities. To have obliged the Convention in a body to
attend and consecrate the crimes of this monster, though it could not
degrade them, was a momentary triumph for the Jacobins, nor could the
royalists behold without satisfaction the same men deploring the death of
Marat, who, a month before, had celebrated the fall of Louis the
Sixteenth! To have been so deplored, and so celebrated, are, methinks,
the very extremes of infamy and glory.
I must explain to you, that the Jacobins have lately been composed of two
parties--the avowed adherents of Coll
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