still believe it, a
national prejudice, because I am convinced that the vices or virtues of
all civilized nations are relatively the same; but those Irish rebels we
have seen here, and who must be, like our Jacobins, the very dregs of
their country, have conducted themselves so as to inspire not only
mistrust but abhorrence. It is also an undeniable truth that they were
greatly disappointed by our former and present Government. They expected
to enjoy liberty and equality, and a pension for their treachery; but our
police commissaries caught them at their landing, our gendarmes escorted
them as criminals to their place of destination, and there they received
just enough to prevent them from starving. If they complained they were
put in irons, and if they attempted to escape they were sent to the
galleys as malefactors or shot as spies. Despair, therefore, no doubt
induced many to perpetrate acts of which they were accused, and to rob,
swindle, and murder, because they were punished as thieves and assassins.
But, some of them, who have been treated in the most friendly,
hospitable, and generous manner in this capital, have proved themselves
ungrateful, as well as infamous. A lady of my acquaintance, of a once
large fortune, had nothing left but some furniture, and her subsistence
depended upon what she got by letting furnished lodgings. Mischance
brought three young Irishmen to her house, who pretended to be in daily
expectation of remittances from their country, and of a pension from
Bonaparte. During six months she not only lodged and supported them, but
embarrassed herself to procure them linen and a decent apparel. At last
she was informed that each of, them had been allowed sixty livres--in the
month, and that arrears had been paid them for nine months. Their debt
to her was above three thousand livres--but the day after she asked for
payment they decamped, and one of them persuaded her daughter, a girl of
fourteen, to elope with him, and to assist him in robbing her mother of
all her plate.--He has, indeed, been since arrested and sentenced to the
galleys for eight years; but this punishment neither restored the
daughter her virtue nor the mother her property. The other two denied
their debts, and, as she had no other evidence but her own scraps of
accounts, they could not be forced to pay; their obdurate effrontery and
infamy, however, excited such an indignation in the judges, that they
delivered them over as swind