sterling
a year!

To suppose, then, that the French are devoted to a system which has
served as a pretext for so many crimes, and has been the cause of so many
calamities, is to conclude them a nation of philosophers, who are able to
endure, yet incapable of reasoning; and who suffer evils of every kind in
defence of a principle with which they can be little acquainted, and
which, in practice, they have known only by the destruction it has
occasioned.

You may, perhaps, have been persuaded, that the people submit patiently
now, for the sake of an advantage in perspective; but it is not in the
disposition of unenlightened men (and the mass of a people must
necessarily be so) to give up the present for the future. The individual
may sometimes atchieve this painful conquest over himself, and submit to
evil, on a calculation of future retribution, but the multitude will ever
prefer the good most immediately attainable, if not under the influence
of that terror which supersedes every other consideration. Recollect,
then, the counsel of the first historian of our age, and "suspend your
belief of whatever deviates from the laws of nature and the character of
man;" and when you are told the French are attached to a government which
oppresses them, or to principles of which they are ignorant, suppose
their adoption of the one, and their submission to the other, are the
result of fear, and that those who make these assertions to the contrary,
are either interested or misinformed.

Excuse me if I have devoted a few pages to a subject which with you is
obsolete. I am indignant at the perusal of such falsehoods; and though I
feel for the humiliation of great talents, I feel still more for the
disgrace such an abuse of them brings on our country.

It is not inapposite to mention a circumstance which happened to a friend
of Mr. D____'s, some little time since, at Paris. He was passing through
France, in his way from Italy, at the time of the general arrest, and was
detained there till the other day. As soon as he was released from
prison, he applied in person to a member of the Convention, to learn when
he might hope to return to England. The Deputy replied, _"Ma soi je n'en
sais rien_ [Faith I can't tell you.]--If your Messieurs (naming some
members in the opposition) had succeeded in promoting a revolution, you
would not have been in your cage so long--_mais pour le coup il faut
attendre."_ [But now you must have patience