35, No.
32.--Editor.

Soon after I was put into arrestation, and imprisoned in the Luxembourg,
the Americans who were then in Paris went in a body to the bar of the
Convention to reclaim me. They were answered by the then President
Vadier, who has since absconded, that _I was born in England_, and it
was signified to them, by some of the Committee of _General Surety_, to
whom they were referred (I have been told it was Billaud Varennes,) that
their reclamation of me was only the act of individuals, without any
authority from the American government.

A few days after this, all communications from persons imprisoned to
any person without the prison was cut off by an order of the Police. I
neither saw, nor heard from, any body for six months; and the only hope
that remained to me was, that a new Minister would arrive from America
to supercede Morris, and that he would be authorized to enquire into
the cause of my imprisonment. But even this hope, in the state to which
matters were daily arriving, was too remote to have any consolatory
effect, and I contented myself with the thought, that I might be
remembered when it would be too late. There is perhaps no condition from
which a man conscious of his own uprightness cannot derive consolation;
for it is in itself a consolation for him to find, that he can bear that
condition with calmness and fortitude.

From about the middle of March (1794) to the fall of Robespierre
July 29, (9th of Thermidor,) the state of things in the prisons was a
continued scene of horror. No man could count upon life for twenty-four
hours. To such a pitch of rage and suspicion were Robespierre and his
Committee arrived, that it seemed as if they feared to leave a man
living. Scarcely a night passed in which ten, twenty, thirty, forty,
fifty, or more, were not taken out of the prison, carried before a
pretended tribunal in the morning, and guillotined before night. One
hundred and sixty-nine were taken out of the Luxembourg one night, in
the month of July, and one hundred and sixty of them guillotined. A
list of two hundred more, according to the report in the prison, was
preparing a few days before Robespierre fell. In this last list I have
good reason to believe I was included. A memorandum in the hand-writing
of Robespierre was afterwards produced in the Convention, by the
committee to whom the papers of Robespierre were referred, in these
words:

"Demander que Thomas "I D