ominations unpunished. Paris is, perhaps, as
wicked a spot as exists. Incest, murder, bestiality, fraud, rapine,
oppression, baseness, cruelty, and yet this is the city which has
stepped forward in the sacred cause of Liberty!'

This picture of Paris in 1789 is the more impressive that it was not
drawn by a Puritan or a Pharisee. Gouverneur Morris was eminently what
is called a 'man of the world,' His diary abounds in proofs that, to use
his own language, he was 'no enemy to the tender passion.' Indeed, while
the elections for the States-General were going on, he appears to have
been almost as much interested in finding out the fair author of an
anonymous billet-doux as in unravelling the politics of the day. He was
not so much scandalised by the immorality as appalled by the lawlessness
of the French capital. He foresaw the failure of the Revolution from the
outset. A week before the States-General met in April, 1789, he wrote to
General Washington: 'One fatal principle pervades all ranks. It is a
perfect indifference to the violation of all engagements.'

He noted at the same time the fears of Necker lest it should be 'found
impossible to trust the troops.'

Of the Tiers-Etat, when it had carried into effect the grotesque and
senseless dictum, of the Abbe Sieyes, that the Tiers-Etat, having
thitherto been nothing in France, ought thenceforth to be everything,
Morris expected only what came of it under its self-assumed title of a
'National Assembly.' 'It is impossible,' he wrote to Robert Morris in
America, 'to imagine a more disorderly body. They neither reason,
examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve, and hiss those
whom they disapprove.... I told their President frankly that it was
impossible for such a mob to govern the country. They have unhinged
everything. It is anarchy beyond conception, _and they will be obliged
to take back their chains_.'

All this was long before 'the Terror,' I repeat. It was long before 'the
Terror' that the hotel of the Duc de Castries was stormed and pillaged
in Paris by a mob because the son of the Duc, having been grossly
insulted by a popular favourite, De Lameth, had called Lameth out,
allowed Lameth's seconds to choose swords as the weapons, and then
wounded Lameth. This monstrous performance the Assembly sanctioned.

'I think,' wrote Morris very quietly, 'it will lead to consequences not
now dreamt of.'

In this same year, 1789, long before 'the Terror,' Morr