(845) “The causes which at this time put assignats apparently on a par with specie were the following.  A law forbade, under heavy penalties, the traffic in specie, that is, the exchange at a loss of the assignat against money:  another law decreed very severe penalties against those who, in purchases, should bargain for different prices according as payment was to be made in paper or in cash:  by a last law, it was enacted, that hidden gold, silver, or jewels, should belong partly to the state, partly to the informer.  Thenceforth people could neither employ specie in trade nor conceal it; it became troublesome; it exposed the holders to the risk of being considered suspected persons; they began to be afraid of it, an(l to find the assignat preferable for daily use.”  Thiers, vol. iii. p. 213.-E.

(846) Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Duke of Orleans, who had relinquished his titles and called himself Philippe Egalit`e, and become a member of the National Convention, in giving his vote for the death of his kinsman, had read these words:—­“Exclusively governed by my duty, and convinced that all those who have resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is for death!” The atrocity of this vote occasioned great agitation in the -assembly; it seemed as if, by this single vote, the fate of the Monarch was irrevocably sealed.  On the 6th of November, in the same year, the Duke was himself brought before the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned on account of the suspicions which he had excited in all parties.  “Odious,” says M. Thiers “to the emigrants, Suspected by the Girondins and the Jacobins, he inspired none of those regrets which afford some consolation for an unjust death.  A universal disgust, an absolute scepticism were his last sentiments; and he went to the scaffold with extraordinary composure and indifference, As he was drawn along the Rue St. Honor`e, he beheld his palace with a dry eye, and never belied for a moment his disgust of men and of life,” Vol. iii, P. 205—­E.

(847) A little work which Miss More had Just published anonymously.  The sale of it was enormous.  Many thousands were sent by government to Scotland and Ireland.  Several persons printed large editions Of it at their own expense; and in London Only many hundred thousands were circulated.-E.

Letter 401 To Miss Hannah More.  Berkeley Square, March 23, 1793.(page 538)

I shall certainly not leave off taunting your virtues, my excellent friend, for I find it sometimes makes you correct them.  I scolded you for your modesty in not acquainting me with your “Village Politics” even after they were published; and you have already conquered that unfriendly delicacy, and announced another piece of which you are in labour.  Still I se there wanted your ghostly father, the )Bishop of London, to join you to be quite shameless and avow your natural child.(848) I do approve his doctrine:  calling