It is impossible to calculate the vast number of private assassinations committed in the dead of the night, by order of this cannibal, on persons of every rank and description.

My task is now ended.  Nothing remains for me but the reflections which these sad and shocking remembrances cannot fail to awaken in all minds, and especially in mine.  Is it not astonishing that, in an age so refined, so free from the enormous and flagitious crimes which were the common stains of barbarous centuries, and at an epoch peculiarly enlightened by liberal views, the French nation, by all deemed the most polished since the Christian era, should have given an example of such wanton, brutal, and coarse depravity to the world, under pretences altogether chimerical, and, after unprecedented bloodshed and horror, ended at the point where it began!

The organized system of plunder and anarchy, exercised under different forms more or less sanguinary, produced no permanent result beyond an incontestible proof that the versatility of the French nation, and its puny suppleness of character, utterly incapacitate it for that energetic enterprise without which there can be no hope of permanent emancipation from national slavery.  It is my unalterable conviction that the French will never know how to enjoy an independent and free Constitution.

The tree of liberty unavoidably in all nations has been sprinkled with human blood; but, when bathed by innocent victims, like the foul weed, though it spring up, it rots in its infancy, and becomes loathsome and infectious.  Such has been the case in France; and the result justifies the Italian satire: 

“Un albero senza fruta
Baretta senza testa
Governo che non resta.”

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Honesty is to be trusted before genius
More dangerous to attack the habits of men than their religion