scales. It is
very extraordinary, that, the very instant the mode of Paris is known
here, it becomes all the fashion in London. This is their jargon. It is
the old _bon-ton_ of robbers, who cast their common crimes on the
wickedness of their departed associates. I care little about the memory
of this same Robespierre. I am sure he was an execrable villain. I
rejoiced at his punishment neither more nor less than I should at the
execution of the present Directory, or any of its members. But who gave
Robespierre the power of being a tyrant? and who were the instruments of
his tyranny? The present virtuous constitution-mongers. He was a tyrant;
they were his satellites and his hangmen. Their sole merit is in the
murder of their colleague. They have expiated their other murders by a
new murder. It has always been the case among this banditti. They have
always had the knife at each other's throats, after they had almost
blunted it at the throats of every honest man. These people thought,
that, in the commerce of murder, he was like to have the better of the
bargain, if any time was lost; they therefore took one of their short
revolutionary methods, and massacred him in a manner so perfidious and
cruel as would shock all humanity, if the stroke was not struck by the
present rulers on one of their own associates. But this last act of
infidelity and murder is to expiate all the rest, and to qualify them
for the amity of an humane and virtuous sovereign and civilized people.
I have heard that a Tartar believes, when he has killed a man, that all
his estimable qualities pass with his clothes and arms to the murderer;
but I have never heard that it was the opinion of any savage Scythian,
that, if he kills a brother villain, he is, _ipso facto_, absolved of
all his own offences. The Tartarian doctrine is the most tenable
opinion. The murderers of Robespierre, besides what they are entitled to
by being engaged in the same tontine of infamy, are his representatives,
have inherited all his murderous qualities, in addition to their own
private stock. But it seems we are always to be of a party with the last
and victorious assassins. I confess I am of a different mind, and am
rather inclined, of the two, to think and speak less hardly of a dead
ruffian than to associate with the living. I could better bear the
stench of the gibbeted murderer than the society of the bloody felons
who yet annoy the world. Whilst they wait the recompense due