first to suffer
from his revolutionary proceedings, and reproached him as one of the most
active instruments of persecution against the clergy of Toulouse, and as
one of the causes of all the blood that flowed in consequence. A coward
as well as a traitor, after the death of Louis XVI. he never dared ascend
the tribune of the National Convention, but always gave a silent vote to
all the atrocious laws proposed and carried by Marat, Robespierre, and
their accomplices. It was in 1795, when the Reign of Terror had ceased,
that he first displayed his zeal for anarchy, and his hatred to royalty;
his contemptible and disgusting vices were, however, so publicly
reprobated, that even the Directory dared not nominate him a Minister of
Justice, a place for which he intrigued in vain, from 1796 to 1799; when
Bonaparte, either not so scrupulous, or setting himself above the public
opinion, caused him to be called to the Consulate; which, in 1802, was
ensured him for life, but exchanged, in 1804, for the office of an
Arch-Chancellor.

He is now worth thirty millions of livres--all honestly obtained by his
revolutionary industry. Besides a Prince, a Serene Highness, an
Arch-Chancellor, a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, he is also a
Knight of the Prussian Black Eagle! For his brother, who was for a long
time an emigrant clergyman, and whom he then renounced as a fanatic, he
has now procured the Archbishopric of Rouen and a Cardinal's hat. His
Eminence is also a grand officer of the Legion of Honour in France, and a
Pope in petto at Rome.

LETTER XIV.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--No Sovereign Prince has more incurred the hatred of Bonaparte
than the present King of Sweden; and I have heard from good authority
that our Government spares neither bribes nor intrigues to move the tails
of those factions which were dissolved, but not crushed, after the murder
of Gustavus III. The Swedes are generally brave and loyal, but their
history bears witness that they are easily misled; all their grand
achievements are their own, and the consequence of their national spirit
and national valour, while all their disasters have been effected by the
influence of foreign gold and of foreign machinations. Had they not been
the dupes of the plots and views of the Cabinets of Versailles and St.
Petersburg, their country might have been as powerful in the nineteenth
century as it was in the seventeenth.

That Gustavus IV. both knew t