is by nature and education passionate and gross, and in other times might only have been a good natured Polisson.  Hitherto he has contented himself with alarming, and making people tired of their lives, but I do not believe he has been the direct or intentional cause of anyone’s death.  He has so often been the hero of my adventures, that I mention him familiarly to you, without reflecting, that though the delegate of more than monarchical power here, he is too insignificant of himself to be known in England.  But the history of Dumont is that of two-thirds of the Convention.  He was originally clerk to an attorney at Abbeville, and afterwards set up for himself in a neighbouring village.  His youth having been marked by some digressions from the “’haviour of reputation,” his profession was far from affording him a subsistence; and the revolution, which seems to have called forth all that was turbulent, unprincipled, or necessitous in the country, naturally found a partizan in an attorney without practice.—­At the election of 1792, when the King’s fall and the domination of the Jacobins had spread so general a terror that no man of character could be prevailed upon to be a candidate for a public situation, Dumont availed himself of this timidity and supineness in those who ought to have become the representatives of the people; and, by a talent for intrigue, and a coarse facility of phrase-making, (for he has no pretensions to eloquence,) prevailed on the mob to elect him.  His local knowledge, active disposition, and subservient industry, render him an useful kind of drudge to any prevailing party, and, since the overthrow of the Brissotines, he has been entrusted with the government of this and some of the neighbouring departments.  He professes himself a zealous republican, and an apostle of the doctrine of universal equality, yet unites in his person all the attributes of despotism, and lives with more luxury and expence than most of the ci-devant gentry.  His former habitation at Oisemont is not much better than a good barn; but patriotism is more profitable here than in England, and he has lately purchased a large mansion belonging to an emigrant.

* “Britain no longer pays her patriots with her spoils:”  and perhaps it is matter of congratulation to a country, when the profession of patriotism is not lucrative.  Many agreeable inferences may be made from it—­the sentiment may have become too general for reward, Ministers too virtuous to fear, or even the people too enlightened to be deceived.

—­His mode of travelling, which used at best to be in the coche d’eau [Passage-boat.] or the diligence, is now in a coach and four, very frequently accompanied by a led horse, and a party of dragoons.  I fear some of your patriots behold this with envy, and it is not to be wondered at that they should wish to see a similar revolution in England.  What a seducing prospect for the assertors of liberty,