has two wheels or four:  all of which must be specified in your passport:  and you cannot send your baggage from one town to another without the risk of having it searched.  All these things are so disgusting and troublesome, that I begin to be quite of a different opinion from Brutus, and should certainly prefer being a slave among a free people, than thus be tormented with the recollection that I am a native of England in a land of slavery.  Whatever liberty the French might have acquired by their first revolution, it is now much like Sir John Cutler’s worsted stockings, so torn, and worn, and disguised by patchings and mendings, that the original texture is not discoverable.—­Yours, &c.

June 3, 1793.

We have been three days without receiving newspapers; but we learn from the reports of the courier, that the Brissotins are overthrown, that many of them have been arrested, and several escaped to raise adherents in the departments.  I, however, doubt much if their success will be very general:  the people have little preference between Brissot and Marat, Condorcet and Robespierre, and are not greatly solicitous about the names or even principles of those who govern them—­they are not yet accustomed to take that lively interest in public events which is the effect of a popular constitution.  In England every thing is a subject of debate and contest, but here they wait in silence the result of any political measure or party dispute; and, without entering into the merits of the cause, adopt whatever is successful.  While the King was yet alive, the news of Paris was eagerly sought after, and every disorder of the metropolis created much alarm:  but one would almost suppose that even curiosity had ceased at his death, for I have observed no subsequent event (except the defection of Dumouriez) make any very serious impression.  We hear, therefore, with great composure, the present triumph of the more violent republicans, and suffer without impatience this interregnum of news, which is to continue until the Convention shall have determined in what manner the intelligence of their proceedings shall be related to the departments.

The great solicitude of the people is now rather about their physical existence than their political one—­provisions are become enormously dear, and bread very scarce:  our servants often wait two hours at the baker’s, and then return without bread for breakfast.  I hope, however, the scarcity is rather artificial than real.  It is generally supposed to be occasioned by the unwillingness of the farmers to sell their corn for paper.  Some measures have been adopted with an intention of remedying this evil, though the origin of it is beyond the reach of decree.  It originates in that distrust of government which reconciles one part of the community to starving the other, under the idea of self-preservation.  While every individual persists in establishing it as a maxim, that any thing is better than assignats, we must expect that all things will be difficult to procure, and will, of course, bear a high price.  I fear, all the empyricism of the legislature cannot produce a nostrum for this want of faith.  Dragoons and penal laws only “linger, and linger it out;” the disease is incurable.