The insurgents of La Vendee continue to have frequent and decided successes, but the insurrections in the other departments languish.  The avowed object of liberating the Convention is not calculated to draw adherents, and if any better purpose be intended, while a faction are the promoters of it, it will be regarded with too much suspicion to procure any effectual movement.  Yet, however partial and unconnected this revolt may be, it is an object of great jealousy and inquietude:  all the addresses or petitions brought in favour of it are received with disapprobation, and suppressed in the official bulletin of the legislature; but those which express contrary sentiments are ordered to be inserted with the usual terms of “applaudi, adopte, et mention honorable.”—­In this manner the army and the people, who derive their intelligence from these accounts (which are pasted up in the streets,) are kept in ignorance of the real state of distant provinces, and, what is still more important for the Convention, the communication of examples, which they know so many are disposed to imitate, is retarded.

The people here are nearly in the same state they have been in for some time—­murmuring in secret, and submitting in public; expecting every thing from that energy in others which they have not themselves, and accumulating the discontents they are obliged to suppress.  The Convention call them the brave republicans of Amiens; but if their bravery were as unequivocal as their aristocracy, they would soon be at the gates of Paris.  Even the first levies are not all departed for the frontiers, and some who were prevailed on to go are already returned.—­ All the necessaries of life are augmenting in price—­the people complain, pillage the shops and the markets one day, and want the next.  Many of the departments have opposed the recruiting much more decidedly than they have ventured to do here; and it was not without inspiring terror by numerous arrests, that the levies which were immediately necessary were procured.—­France offers no prospect but that of scarcity, disorder, and oppression; and my friends begin to perceive that we have committed an imprudence in remaining so long.  No passports can now be obtained, and we must, as well as several very respectable families still here, abide the event of the war.

Some weeks have elapsed since I had letters from England, and those we receive from the interior come open, or sealed with the seal of the district.  This is not peculiar to our letters, as being foreigners, but the same unceremonious inspection is practised with the correspondence of the French themselves.  Thus, in this land of liberty, all epistolary intercourse has ceased, except for mere matters of business; and though in the declaration of the rights of man it be asserted, that every one is entitled to write or print his thoughts, yet it is certain no person can entrust a letter to the post, but at the risk of having