I must here remark to you, that the term aristocrate has much varied from its former signification.  A year ago, aristocrate implied one who was an advocate for the privileges of the nobility, and a partizan of the ancient government—­at present a man is an aristocrate for entertaining exactly the same principles which at that time constituted a patriot; and, I believe, the computation is moderate, when I say, that more than three parts of the nation are aristocrates.  The rich, who apprehend a violation of their property, are aristocrates—­the merchants, who regret the stagnation of commerce, and distrust the credit of the assignats, are aristocrates—­the small retailers, who are pillaged for not selling cheaper than they buy, and who find these outrages rather encouraged than repressed, are aristocrates—­and even the poor, who murmur at the price of bread, and the numerous levies for the army, are, occasionally, aristocrates.

Besides all these, there are likewise various classes of moral aristocrates—­such as the humane, who are averse from massacres and oppression—­those who regret the loss of civil liberty—­the devout, who tremble at the contempt for religion—­the vain, who are mortified at the national degradation—­and authors, who sigh for the freedom of the press.—­When you consider this multiplicity of symptomatic indications, you will not be surprized that such numbers are pronounced in a state of disease; but our republican physicians will soon generalize these various species of aristocracy under the single description of all who have any thing to lose, and every one will be deemed plethoric who is not in a consumption.  The people themselves who observe, though they do not reason, begin to have an idea that property exposes the safety of the owner and that the legislature is less inexorable when guilt is unproductive, than when the conviction of a criminal comprehends the forfeiture of an estate.—­A poor tradesman was lamenting to me yesterday, that he had neglected an offer of going to live in England; and when I told him I thought he was very fortunate in having done so, as he would have been declared an emigrant, he replied, laughing, "Moi emigre qui n’ai pas un sol:" ["I am emigrant, who am not worth a halfpenny!"]—­No, no; they don’t make emigrants of those who are worth nothing.  And this was not said with any intended irreverence to the Convention, but with the simplicity which really conceived the wealth of the emigrants to be the cause of the severity exercised against them.

The commercial and political evils attending a vast circulation of assignats have been often discussed, but I have never yet known the matter considered in what is, perhaps, its most serious point of view—­I mean its influence on the habits and morals of the people.  Wherever I go, especially in large towns like this, the mischief is evident, and, I fear, irremediable.  That oeconomy, which was one of the most valuable