These facts are now commented on with as much freedom as can be expected among a people whose imaginations are yet haunted by revolutionary tribunals and Bastilles, and the conclusions are not favourable to the Convention.  The national discontent is, however, suspended by the hostilities between the legislature and the Jacobin club:  the latter still persists in demanding the revolutionary system in its primitive severity, while the former are restrained from compliance, not only by the odium it must draw on them, but from a certainty that it cannot be supported but through the agency of the popular societies, who would thus again become their dictators.  I believe it is not unlikely that the people and the Convention are both endeavouring to make instruments of each other to destroy the common enemy; for the little popularity the Convention enjoy is doubtless owing to a superior hatred of the Jacobins:  and the moderation which the former affect towards the people, is equally influenced by a view of forming a powerful balance against these obnoxious societies.—­While a sort of necessity for this temporizing continues, we shall go on very tranquilly, and it is become a mode to say the Convention is “adorable.”

Tallien, who has been wrestling with his ill fame for a transient popularity, has thought it advisable to revive the public attention by the farce of Pisistratus—­at least, an attempt to assassinate him, in which there seems to have been more eclat than danger, has given rise to such an opinion.  Bulletins of his health are delivered every day in form to the Convention, and some of the provincial clubs have sent congratulations on his escape.  But the sneers of the incredulous, and perhaps an internal admonition of the ridicule and disgrace attendant on the worship of an idol whose reputation is so unpropitious, have much repressed the customary ardour, and will, I think, prevent these “hair-breadth ’scapes” from continuing fashionable.—­Yours, &c.

[No Date Given]

When I describe the French as a people bending meekly beneath the most absurd and cruel oppression, transmitted from one set of tyrants to another, without personal security, without commerce—­menaced by famine, and desolated by a government whose ordinary resources are pillage and murder; you may perhaps read with some surprize the progress and successes of their armies.  But, divest yourself of the notions you may have imbibed from interested misrepresentations—­forget the revolutionary common-place of “enthusiams”, “soldiers of freedom,” and “defenders of their country”—­examine the French armies as acting under the motives which usually influence such bodies, and I am inclined to believe you will see nothing very wonderful or supernatural in their victories.

The greater part of the French troops are now composed of young men taken indiscriminately from all classes, and forced into the service by the first requisition.  They arrive at the army ill-disposed, or at best indifferent, for it must not be forgotten, that all who could be prevailed on to go voluntarily had departed before recourse was had to the measure of a general levy.  They are then distributed into different corps, so that no local connections remain:  the natives of the North are mingled with those of the South, and all provincial combinations are interdicted.