revolts, and the coercion, necessary to enforce the departure of the first levies (however fear, shame, and discipline, may have since made them soldiers, though not republicans) might have corrected the ardour of the orator’s inventive talents; and the zeal of the French in manufacturing salpetre, has been of so slow a growth, that any reference to it is peculiarly unlucky.  For several months the Convention has recommended, invited, intreated, and ordered the whole country to occupy themselves in the process necessary for obtaining nitre; but the republican enthusiasm was so tardy, that scarcely an ounce appeared, till a long list of sound penal laws, with fines and imprisonments in every line, roused the public spirit more effectually.*

* Two years imprisonment was the punishment assigned to a Citizen who should be found to obstruct in any way the fabricating saltpetre.  If you had a house that was adjudged to contain the materials required, and expostulated against pulling it down, the penalty was incurred.—­I believe something of this kind existed under the old government, the abuses of which are the only parts the republic seems to have preserved.

—­Another cause also has much favoured the extension of this manufacture:  the necessity of procuring gunpowder at any rate has secured an exemption from serving in the army to those who shall be employed in making it.—­*

     * Many, under this pretext, even procured their discharge from the
     army; and it was eventually found requisite to stop this commutation
     of service by a decree.

—­On this account vast numbers of young men, whose martial propensities are not too vehement for calculation, considering the extraction of saltpetre as more safe than the use of it, have seriously devoted themselves to the business.  Thus, between fear of the Convention and of the enemy, has been produced that enthusiasm which seems so grateful to Lord S____.  Yet, if the French are struck by the dissimilitude of facts with the language of your English patriots, there are other circumstances which appear still more unaccountable to them.  I acknowledge the word patriotism is not perfectly understood any where in France, nor do my prison-associates abound in it; but still they find it difficult to reconcile the love of their country, so exclusively boasted by certain senators, with their eulogiums on a government, and on men who avow an implacable hatred to it, and are the professed agents of its future destruction.  The Houses of Lords and Commons resound with panegyrics on France; the Convention with "delenda est Carthate”—­“ces vils Insulaires”—­de peuple marchand, boutiquier”—­“ces laches Anglois”—­ &c. &c. ("Carthage must be destroyed”—­“those vile Islanders”—­“that nation of shopkeepers”—­“those cowardly Englishmen”—­&c.)

The efforts of the English patriots overtly tend to the consolidation of the French republic, while the demagogues of France are yet more strenuous for the abolition of monarchy in England.  The virtues of certain people called Muir and Palmer,* are at once the theme of Mr. Fox and Robespierre,** of Mr. Grey and Barrere,***, of Collot d’Herbois**** and Mr. Sheridan; and their fate is lamented as much at the Jacobins as at St. Stephen’s.*****