* Postscript of the Courier de l’Egalite, Sept. 29: 

“The present minister (Rolland) takes every possible means in his power to enlighten and inform the people in whatever concerns their real interests.  For this purpose he has caused to be printed and distributed, in abundance, the accounts and papers relative to the events of the tenth of August.  We have yet at our office a small number of these publications, which we have distributed to our subscribers, and we still give them to any of our fellow-citizens who have opportunities of circulating them.”

I have seen one of these written in coarse language, and replete with vulgar abuse, purposely calculated for the lower classes in the country, who are more open to gross impositions than those of the same rank in towns; yet I have no doubt, in my own mind, that all these artifices would have proved unavailing, had the decision been left to the nation at large:  but they were intimidated, if not convinced; and the mandate of the Convention, which forbids this sovereign people to exercise their judgement, was obeyed with as much submission, and perhaps more reluctance, than an edict of Louis the fourteenth.*

* The King appealed, by his counsel, to the People; but the convention, by a decree, declared his appeal of no validity, and forbade all persons to pay attention to it, under the severest penalties.

The French seem to have no energy but to destroy, and to resist nothing but gentleness or infancy.  They bend under a firm or oppressive administration, but become restless and turbulent under a mild Prince or a minority.

The fate of this unfortunate Monarch has made me reflect, with great seriousness, on the conduct of our opposition-writers in England.  The literary banditti who now govern France began their operations by ridiculing the King’s private character—­from ridicule they proceeded to calumny, and from calumny to treason; and perhaps the first libel that degraded him in the eyes of his subjects opened the path from the palace to the scaffold.—­I do not mean to attribute the same pernicious intentions to the authors on your side the Channel, as I believe them, for the most part, to be only mercenary, and that they would write panegyrics as soon as satires, were they equally profitable.  I know too, that there is no danger of their producing revolutions in England—­we do not suffer our principles to be corrupted by a man because he has the art of rhyming nothings into consequence, nor suffer another to overturn the government because he is an orator.  Yet, though these men may not be very mischievous, they are very reprehensible; and, in a moment like the present, contempt and neglect should supply the place of that punishment against which our liberty of the press secures them.