Carrier, Taillefer, &c. &c. from the whole nation to be their Representatives.—­There must, in all large associations, be a mixture of good and bad; but when it is incontrovertible that the principal members of the Convention are monsters, who, we hope, are not to be paralleled—­ that the rest are inferior rather in talents than wickedness, or cowards and ideots, who have supported and applauded crimes they only wanted opportunity to commit—­it is not possible to conceive, that any people in the world could make a similar choice.  Yet if the French were absolutely unbiassed, and of their own free will made this collection, who would, after such an example, be the advocates of general suffrage and popular representation?—­But, I repeat, the people were not free.  They were not, indeed, influenced by bribes—­they were intimidated by the horrors of the moment; and along with the regulations for the new elections, were every where circulated details of the assassinations of August and September.*

* The influence of the municipality of Paris on the new elections is well known.  The following letter will show what instruments were employed, and the description of Representatives likely to be chosen under such auspices.

     “Circular letter, written by the Committee of Inspection of the
     municipality of Paris to all the departments of the republic, dated
     the third of September, the second day of the massacres: 

“The municipality of Paris is impatient to inform their brethren of the departments, that a part of the ferocious conspirators detained in the prisons have been put to death by the people:  an act of justice which appeared to them indispensable, to restrain by terror those legions of traitors whom they must have left behind when they departed for the army.  There is no doubt but the whole nation, after such multiplied treasons, will hasten to adopt the same salutary measure!”—­Signed by the Commune of Paris and the Minister of Justice.

     Who, after this mandate, would venture to oppose a member
     recommended by the Commune of Paris?

—­The French, then, neither chose the republican form of government, nor the men who adopted it; and are, therefore, not republicans on principle.—­Let us now consider whether, not being republicans on principle, experience may have rendered them such.

The first effects of the new system were an universal consternation, the disappearance of all the specie, an extravagant rise in the price of provisions, and many indications of scarcity.  The scandalous quarrels of the legislature shocked the national vanity, by making France the ridicule of all Europe, until ridicule was suppressed by detestation at the subsequent murder of the King.  This was followed by the efforts of one faction to strengthen itself against another, by means of a general war—­the leaders of the former presuming, that they alone were capable of conducting it.