—­These services being too great for adequate reward, were not rewarded at all; and the municipality, tired of the odium of crime, without the participation of power, has seized on its portion of tyranny; while the convention, at once jealous and timid, exasperated and doubtful, yet menaces with the trepidation of a rival, rather than with the security of a conqueror.

Hebert, the Deputy-solicitor for the commune of Paris, appears on this occasion as the opponent of the whole legislature; and all the temporizing eloquence of Barrere, and the mysterious phraseology of Robespierre, are employed to decry his morals, and to reproach the ministers with the sums which have been the price of his labours.—­*

* Five thousand pounds, two thousand pounds, and other considerable sums, were paid to Hebert for supplying the army with his paper, called “La Pere Duchene.”  Let whoever has read one of them, conceive the nature of a government to which such support was necessary, which supposed its interests promoted by a total extinction of morals, decency, and religion.  I could almost wish, for the sake of exhibiting vice under its most odious colours, that my sex and my country permitted me to quote one.

—­Virtuous republicans! the morals of Hebert were pure when he outraged humanity in his accusations of the Queen—­they were pure when he prostrated the stupid multitude at the feet of a Goddess of Reason;* they were pure while his execrable paper served to corrupt the army, and to eradicate every principle which yet distinguished the French as a civilized people.

     * Madame Momoro, the unfortunate woman who exposed herself in this
     pageant, was guillotined as an accomplice of Hebert, together with
     the wives of Hebert and Camille Desmoulins.

—­Yet, atrocious as his crimes are, they form half the Magna Charta of the republic,* and the authority of the Convention is still supported by them.

     * What are the death of the King, and the murders of August and
     September, 1792, but the Magna Charta of the republicans?

—­It is his person, not his guilt, that is proscribed; and if the one be threatened with the scaffold, the fruits of the other are held sacred.  He will fall a sacrifice—­not to offended religion or morality, but to the fears and resentment of his accomplices!

Amidst the dissentions of two parties, between which neither reason nor humanity can discover a preference, a third seems to have formed itself, equally inimical to, and hated by both.  At the head of it are Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Philipeaux, &c.—­I own I have no better opinion of the integrity of these, than of the rest; but they profess themselves the advocates of a system of mildness and moderation, and, situated as this country is at present, even the affectation