testimony to convict him.—­ Another underwent the same punishment for pursuing his usual course of tillage, and sowing part of his ground with lucerne, instead of employing the whole for wheat; and every where these people became the objects of persecution, both in their persons and property.

     “Almost all our considerable farmers have been thrown into prison;
     the consequence is, that their capital is eat up, their stock gone
     to ruin, and our lands have lost the almost incalculable effect of
     their industry.  In La Vendee six million acres of land lie
     uncultivated, and five hundred thousand oxen have been turned
     astray, without shelter and without an owner.” 
                    Speech of Dubois Crance, Sept. 22, 1794.

—­Amazed to find themselves the objects of a tyranny they had hitherto contributed to support, and sharing the misfortune of their Lords and Clergy, these ignorant and mistaken people wander up and down with a vacant sort of ruefulness, which seems to bespeak that they are far from comprehending or being satisfied with this new specimen of republicanism.—­It has been a fatality attending the French through the whole revolution, that the different classes have too readily facilitated the sacrifice of each other; and the Nobility, the Clergy, the Merchant, and the Farmer, have the mortification of experiencing, that their selfish and illiberal policy has answered no purpose but to involve all in one common ruin.

Angelique has contrived to-day to negotiate the sale of some bracelets, which a lady, with whom I was acquainted previous to our detention, has very obligingly given almost half their value for, though not without many injunctions to secresy, and as many implied panegyrics on her benevolence, in risking the odium of affording assistance to a foreigner.  We are, I assure you, under the necessity of being oeconomists, where the most abundant wealth could not render us externally comfortable:  and the little we procure, by a clandestine disposal of my unnecessary trinkets, is considerably diminished,* by arbitrary impositions of the guard and the poor,** and a voluntary tax from the misery that surrounds us.

* I am aware of Mr. Burke’s pleasantry on the expression of very little, being greatly diminished; but my exchequer at this time was as well calculated to prove the infinite divisibility of matter, as that of the Welch principality.

** The guards of the republican Bastilles were paid by the prisoners they contained; and, in many places, the tax for this purpose was levied with indecent rigour.  It might indeed be supposed, that people already in prison could have little to apprehend from an inability or unwillingness to submit to such an imposition; yet those who refused were menaced with a dungeon; and I was informed, from undoubted authority, of two instances of the sort among the English—­the one