have seen it done with indifference or levity, I may perhaps have
sometimes transferred to the measure itself a sentiment of
disapprobation, excited originally by the manner of its adoption. When I
saw people expatiate with calmness, and heard them speak of it as a means
of distinguishing themselves, I did not sufficiently allow for the
tendency of the French to make the best of every thing, or the influence
of vanity on men who allow it to make part of the national
characteristic: and surely, if ever vanity were laudable, that of marking
a detestation for revolutionary principles, and an attachment to loyalty
and religion, may justly be considered so. Many whom I then accused of
being too lightly affected by the prospect of exile, might be animated by
the hope of personally contributing to the establishment of peace and
order, and rescuing their country from the banditti who were oppressing
it; and it is not surprising that such objects should dazzle the
imagination and deceive the judgment in the choice of measures by which
they were to be obtained.

The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great;
and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the
humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have
ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?--But if
the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so.

By Emigrants, I mean all who, without being immediately in danger, left
their country through apprehension of the future--from attachment to the
persons of the Princes, or to join companions in the army whom they might
deem it a disgrace to abandon.--Those whom I think may with truth be
styled Refugees, are the Nobility and Priests who fled when the people,
irritated by the literary terrorists of the day, the Brissots, Rolands,
Camille Desmoulins, &c. were burning their chateaux and proscribing their
persons, and in whom expatriation cannot properly be deemed the effect of
choice. These, wherever they have sought an asylum, are entitled to our
respect and sympathy.

Yet, I repeat, we are not authorized to discriminate. There is no
reasoning coldly on the subject. The most cautious prudence, the most
liberal sacrifices, and the meanest condescensions, have not insured the
lives and fortunes of those who ventured to remain; and I know not that
the absent require any other apology than the desolation of the country
they have quit