or during any period, is not to act with fairness. But if in point of
prodigality in the expenditure of money, or in point of rigor in the
exercise of power, it be compared with any of the former reigns, I
believe candid judges will give little credit to the good intentions of
those who dwell perpetually on the donations to favorites, or on the
expenses of the court, or on the horrors of the Bastile, in the reign of
Louis the Sixteenth.[109]

Whether the system, if it deserves such a name, now built on the ruins
of that ancient monarchy, will be able to give a better account of the
population and wealth of the country which it has taken under its care,
is a matter very doubtful. Instead of improving by the change, I
apprehend that a long series of years must be told, before it can
recover in any degree the effects of this philosophic Revolution, and
before the nation can be replaced on its former footing. If Dr. Price
should think fit, a few years hence, to favor us with an estimate of the
population of France, he will hardly be able to make up his tale of
thirty millions of souls, as computed in 1789, or the Assembly's
computation of twenty-six millions of that year, or even M. Necker's
twenty-five millions in 1780. I hear that there are considerable
emigrations from France,--and that many, quitting that voluptuous
climate, and that seductive Circean liberty, have taken refuge in the
frozen regions and under the British despotism of Canada.

In the present disappearance of coin, no person could think it the same
country in which the present minister of the finances has been able to
discover fourscore millions sterling in specie. From its general aspect
one would conclude that it had been for some time past under the special
direction of the learned academicians of Laputa and Balnibarbi.[110]
Already the population of Paris has so declined, that M. Necker stated
to the National Assembly the provision to be made for its subsistence
at a fifth less than what had formerly been found requisite.[111] It is
said (and I have never heard it contradicted) that a hundred thousand
people are out of employment in that city, though it is become the seat
of the imprisoned court and National Assembly. Nothing, I am credibly
informed, can exceed the shocking and disgusting spectacle of mendicancy
displayed in that capital. Indeed, the votes of the National Assembly
leave no doubt of the fact. They have lately appointed a standing
co