two thousand livres promised to one of the Jacobin leaders, if he succeeded in procuring the men their liberty.—­I do not advance this merely on conjecture.  The fact is well known to the municipality; and the decent part of it would willingly have expelled this man, who is one of their members, but that they found themselves too weak to engage in a serious quarrel with the Jacobins.—­One cannot reflect, without apprehension, that any society should exist which can oppose the execution of the laws with impunity, or that a people, who are little sensible of realities, should be thus abused by names.  They suffer, with unfeeling patience, a thousand enormities—­yet blindly risk their liberties and lives to promote the designs of an adventurer, because he harangues at a club, and calls himself a patriot.—­I have just received advice that my friends have left Lausanne, and are on their way to Paris.  Our first plan of passing the winter there will be imprudent, if not impracticable, and we have concluded to take a house for the winter six months at Amiens, Chantilly, or some place which has the reputation of being quiet.  I have already ordered enquiries to be made, and shall set out with Mrs. ____ in a day or two for Amiens.  I may, perhaps, not write till our return; but shall not cease to be, with great truth.—­Yours, &c.

Amiens, 1792.

The departement de la Somme has the reputation of being a little aristocratic.  I know not how far this be merited, but the people are certainly not enthusiasts.  The villages we passed on our road hither were very different from those on the frontiers—­we were hailed by no popular sounds, no cries of Vive la nation! except from here and there some ragged boy in a red cap, who, from habit, associated this salutation with the appearance of a carriage.  In every place where there are half a dozen houses is planted an unthriving tree of liberty, which seems to wither under the baneful influence of the bonnet rouge. [The red cap.] This Jacobin attribute is made of materials to resist the weather, and may last some time; but the trees of liberty, being planted unseasonably, are already dead.  I hope this will not prove emblematic, and that the power of the Jacobins may not outlive the freedom of the people.

The Convention begin their labours under disagreeable auspices.  A general terror seems to have seized on the Parisians, the roads are covered with carriages, and the inns filled with travellers.  A new regulation has just taken place, apparently intended to check this restless spirit.  At Abbeville, though we arrived late and were fatigued, we were taken to the municipality, our passports collated with our persons, and at the inn we were obliged to insert in a book our names, the place of our birth, from whence we came, and where we were going.  This, you will say, has more the features of a mature Inquisition, than a new-born Republic; but the French have different notions of liberty from yours, and take these things very quietly.—­At Flixecourt we eat out of pewter spoons, and the people told us, with much inquietude, that they had sold their plate, in expectation of a decree of the Convention to take it from them.  This decree, however, has not passed, but the alarm is universal, and does not imply any great confidence in the new government.