serves to be called a difficulty. There
have been riots in a few instances, in three or four different places,
in which there may have been a dozen or twenty lives lost. The exact
truth is not be got at. A few days ago, a much more serious riot took
place in this city, in which it became necessary for the troops to
engage in regular action with the mob, and probably about one hundred of
the latter were killed. Accounts vary from twenty to two hundred. They
were the most abandoned banditti of Paris, and never was a riot more
unprovoked and unpitied. They began, under a pretence that a paper
manufacturer had proposed in an assembly, to reduce their wages to
fifteen sous a day. They rifled his house, destroyed every thing in his
magazines and shops, and were only stopped in their career of mischief,
by the carnage above mentioned. Neither this nor any other of the riots,
have had a professed connection with the great national reformation
going on. They are such as have happened every year since I have been
here, and as will continue to be produced by common incidents. The
States General were opened on the 4th instant, by a speech from the
throne, one by the _Garde des Sceaux_, and one from Mr. Necker. I hope
they will be printed in time to send you herewith: lest they should not,
I will observe, that that of Mr, Necker stated the real and ordinary
deficit to be fifty-six millions, and that he showed that this could
be made up without a new tax, by economies and bonifications which he
specified. Several articles of the latter are liable to the objection,
that they are proposed on branches of the revenue, of which the nation
has demanded a suppression. He tripped too lightly over the great
articles of constitutional reformation, these being not as clearly
announced in this discourse as they were in his _Rapport au Roy_, which
I sent you some time ago. On the whole, his discourse has not satisfied
the patriotic party. It is now, for the first time, that their
revolution is likely to receive a serious check, and begins to wear a
fearful appearance. The progress of light and liberality in the order
of the _Noblesse_ has equalled expectation in Paris only, and its
vicinities. The great mass of deputies of that order, which come from
the country, show that the habits of tyranny over the people, are
deeply rooted in them. They will consent, indeed, to equal taxation; but
five-sixths of that chamber are thought to be, decidedly, for