The situation of France has altered much within the last two months:  the seat of power is less fluctuating and the exercise of it more absolute—­ arbitrary measures are no longer incidental, but systematic—­and a regular connection of dependent tyranny is established, beginning with the Jacobin clubs, and ending with the committees of the sections.  A simple decree for instance, has put all the men in the republic, (unmarried and without children,) from eighteen to forty-five at the requisition of the Minister of War.  A levy of three hundred thousand is to take place immediately:  each department is responsible for the whole of a certain number to the Convention, the districts are answerable for their quota to the departments, the municipalities to the district, and the diligence of the whole is animated by itinerant members of the legislature, entrusted with the disposal of an armed force.  The latter circumstance may seem to you incredible; yet is it nevertheless true, that most of the departments are under the jurisdiction of these sovereigns, whose authority is nearly unlimited.  We have, at this moment, two Deputies in the town, who arrest and imprison at their pleasure.  One-and-twenty inhabitants of Amiens were seized a few nights ago, without any specific charge having been exhibited against them, and are still in confinement.  The gates of the town are shut, and no one is permitted to pass or repass without an order from the municipality; and the observance of this is exacted even of those who reside in the suburbs.  Farmers and country people, who are on horseback, are obliged to have the features and complexion of their horses minuted on the passport with their own.  Every person whom it is found convenient to call suspicious, is deprived of his arms; and private houses are disturbed during the night, (in opposition to a positive law,) under pretext of searching for refractory priests.—­These regulations are not peculiar to this department, and you must understand them as conveying a general idea of what passes in every part of France.—­I have yet to add, that letters are opened with impunity—­that immense sums of assignats are created at the will of the Convention—­that no one is excused mounting guard in person—­and that all housekeepers, and even lodgers, are burthened with the quartering of troops, sometimes as many as eight or ten, for weeks together.

You may now, I think, form a tolerable idea of the liberty that has accrued to the French from the revolution, the dethronement of the King, and the establishment of a republic.  But, though the French suffer this despotism without daring to murmur openly, many a significant shrug and doleful whisper pass in secret, and this political discontent has even its appropriate language, which, though not very explicit, is perfectly understood.—­Thus when you hear one man say to another, "Ah, mon Dieu, on est bien malheureux dans ce moment ici;" or, "Nous sommes dans une