and ambition, are here refused or relinquished with such perfect sincerity, that a decree became requisite to oblige every one, under pain of durance, to preserve the station to which his ill stars, mistaken politics, or affectation of patriotism, had called him.  Were it not for this law, such is the dreadful responsibility and danger attending offices under the government, that even low and ignorant people, who have got possession of them merely for support, would prefer their original poverty to emoluments which are perpetually liable to the commutation of the guillotine.—­Some members of a neighbouring district told me to-day, when I asked them if they came to release any of our fellow-prisoners, that so far from it, they had not only brought more, but were not certain twelve hours together of not being brought themselves.

The visionary equality of metaphysical impostors is become a substantial one—­not constituted by abundance and freedom, but by want and oppression.  The disparities of nature are not repaired, but its whole surface is levelled by a storm.  The rich are become poor, but the poor still remain so; and both are conducted indiscriminately to the scaffold.  The prisons of the former government were “petty to the ends” of this.  Convents, colleges, palaces, and every building which could any how be adapted to such a purpose, have been filled with people deemed suspicious;* and a plan of destruction seems resolved on, more certain and more execrable than even the general massacre of September 1792.

* Now multiplied to more than four hundred thousand!—­The prisons of Paris and the environs were supposed to contain twenty-seven thousand.  The public papers stated but about seven thousand, because they included the official returns of Paris only.

—­Agents of the police are, under some pretended accusation, sent to the different prisons; and, from lists previously furnished them, make daily information of plots and conspiracies, which they alledge to be carrying on by the persons confined.  This charge and this evidence suffice:  the prisoners are sent to the tribunal, their names read over, and they are conveyed by cart’s-full to the republican butchery.  Many whom I have known, and been in habits of intimacy with, have perished in this manner; and the expectation of Le Bon,* with our numbers which make us of too much consequence to be forgotten, all contribute to depress and alarm me.

     * Le Bon had at this period sent for lists of the prisoners in the
     department of the Somme—­which lists are said to have been since
     found, and many of the names in them marked for destruction.

—­Even the levity of the French character yields to this terrible despotism, and nothing is observed but weariness, silence, and sorrow:—­ "O triste loisir, poids affreux du tems." [St. Lambert.] The season returns with the year, but not to us—­the sun shines, but to add to our miseries that of insupportable heat—­and the vicissitudes of nature only awaken our regret that we cannot enjoy them—­