Another patriot of “distinguished note,” and more peculiarly interesting to our countrymen, because he has laboured much for their conversion, is Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun.—­He was in England some time as Plenipotentiary from the Jacobins, charged with establishing treaties between the clubs, publishing seditious manifestoes, contracting friendly alliances with discontented scribblers, and gaining over neutral or hostile newspapers.—­But, besides his political and ecclesiastical occupations, and that of writing letters to the Constitutional Society, it seems this industrious Prelate had likewise a correspondence with the Agents of the Court, which, though he was too modest to surcharge his fame by publishing it, was, nevertheless, very profitable.

I am sorry his friends in England are mostly averse from episcopacy, otherwise they might have provided for him, as I imagine he will have no objection to relinquish his claims on the see of Autun.  He is not under accusation, and, were he to return, he would not find the laws quite so ceremonious here as in England.  After labouring with impunity for months together to promote an insurrection with you, a small private barter of his talents would here cost him his head; and I appeal to the Bishop’s friends in England, whether there can be a proper degree of freedom in a country where a man is refused the privilege of disposing of himself to the best advantage.

To the eternal obloquy of France, I must conclude, in the list of those once popular, the ci-devant Duke of Orleans.  But it was an unnatural popularity, unaided by a single talent, or a single virtue, supported only by the venal efforts of those who were almost his equals in vice, though not in wealth, and who found a grateful exercise for their abilities in at once profiting by the weak ambition of a bad man, and corrupting the public morals in his favour.  The unrighteous compact is now dissolved; those whom he ruined himself to bribe have already forsaken him, and perhaps may endeavour to palliate the disgrace of having been called his friends, by becoming his persecutors.—­Thus, many of the primitive patriots are dead, or fugitives, or abandoned, or treacherous; and I am not without fear lest the new race should prove as evanescent as the old.

The virtuous Rolland,* whose first resignation was so instrumental in dethroning the King, has now been obliged to resign a second time, charged with want of capacity, and suspected of malversation; and this virtue, which was so irreproachable, which it would have been so dangerous to dispute while it served the purposes of party, is become hypocrisy, and Rolland will be fortunate if he return to obscurity with only the loss of his gains and his reputation.