stock gone
to ruin, and our lands have lost the almost incalculable effect of
their industry. In La Vendee six million acres of land lie
uncultivated, and five hundred thousand oxen have been turned
astray, without shelter and without an owner."
Speech of Dubois Crance, Sept. 22, 1794.

--Amazed to find themselves the objects of a tyranny they had hitherto
contributed to support, and sharing the misfortune of their Lords and
Clergy, these ignorant and mistaken people wander up and down with a
vacant sort of ruefulness, which seems to bespeak that they are far from
comprehending or being satisfied with this new specimen of
republicanism.--It has been a fatality attending the French through the
whole revolution, that the different classes have too readily facilitated
the sacrifice of each other; and the Nobility, the Clergy, the Merchant,
and the Farmer, have the mortification of experiencing, that their
selfish and illiberal policy has answered no purpose but to involve all
in one common ruin.

Angelique has contrived to-day to negotiate the sale of some bracelets,
which a lady, with whom I was acquainted previous to our detention, has
very obligingly given almost half their value for, though not without
many injunctions to secresy, and as many implied panegyrics on her
benevolence, in risking the odium of affording assistance to a foreigner.
We are, I assure you, under the necessity of being oeconomists, where the
most abundant wealth could not render us externally comfortable: and the
little we procure, by a clandestine disposal of my unnecessary trinkets,
is considerably diminished,* by arbitrary impositions of the guard and
the poor,** and a voluntary tax from the misery that surrounds us.

* I am aware of Mr. Burke's pleasantry on the expression of very
little, being greatly diminished; but my exchequer at this time was
as well calculated to prove the infinite divisibility of matter, as
that of the Welch principality.

** The guards of the republican Bastilles were paid by the prisoners
they contained; and, in many places, the tax for this purpose was
levied with indecent rigour. It might indeed be supposed, that
people already in prison could have little to apprehend from an
inability or unwillingness to submit to such an imposition; yet
those who refused were menaced with a dungeon; and I was informed,
from undoub