a gracious master and
a kind benefactor. Subdivisions of this faction, which since we have
seen, do not in the least differ from each other in their principles,
their dispositions, or the means they have employed. Their only quarrel
has been about power: in that quarrel, like wave succeeding wave, one
faction has got the better and expelled the other. Thus, La Fayette for
a while got the better of Orleans; and Orleans afterwards prevailed over
La Fayette. Brissot overpowered Orleans; Barere and Robespierre, and
their faction, mastered them both, and cut off their heads. All who were
not Royalists have been listed in some or other of these divisions. If
it were of any use to settle a precedence, the elder ought to have his
rank. The first authors, plotters, and contrivers of this monstrous
scheme seem to me entitled to the first place in our distrust and
abhorrence. I have seen some of those who are thought the best amongst
the original rebels, and I have not neglected the means of being
informed concerning the others. I can very truly say, that I have not
found, by observation, or inquiry, that any sense of the evils produced
by their projects has produced in them, or any _one_ of them, the
smallest degree of repentance. Disappointment and mortification
undoubtedly they feel; but to them repentance is a thing impossible.
They are atheists. This wretched opinion, by which they are possessed
even to the height of fanaticism, leading them to exclude from their
ideas of a commonwealth the vital principle of the physical, the moral,
and the political world engages them in a thousand absurd contrivances
to fill up this dreadful void. Incapable of innoxious repose or
honorable action or wise speculation in the lurking-holes of a foreign
land, into which (in a common ruin) they are driven to hide their heads
amongst the innocent victims of their madness, they are at this very
hour as busy in the confection of the dirt-pies of their imaginary
constitutions as if they had not been quite fresh from destroying, by
their impious and desperate vagaries, the finest country upon earth.

It is, however, out of these, or of such as these, guilty and
impenitent, despising the experience of others, and their own, that some
people talk of choosing their negotiators with those Jacobins who they
suppose may be recovered to a sounder mind. They flatter themselves, it
seems, that the friendly habits formed during their original partnership
of i