Yet, notwithstanding these reciprocal cajoleries, the return of justice is slow and mutable; an instinctive or habitual preference of evil appears at times to direct the Convention, even in opposition to their own interests.  They have as yet done little towards repairing the calamities of which they are the authors; and we welcome the little they have done, not for its intrinsic value, but as we do the first spring flowers—­which, though of no great sweetness or beauty, we consider as pledges that the storms of winter are over, and that a milder season is approaching.—­It is true, the revolutionary Committees are diminished in number, the prisons are disencumbered, and a man is not liable to be arrested because a Jacobin suspects his features:  yet there is a wide difference between such toleration and freedom and security; and it is a circumstance not favourable to those who look beyond the moment, that the tyrannical laws which authorized all the late enormities are still unrepealed.  The Revolutionary Tribunal continues to sentence people to death, on pretexts as frivolous as those which were employed in the time of Robespierre; they have only the advantage of being tried more formally, and of forfeiting their lives upon proof, instead of without it, for actions that a strictly administered justice would not punish by a month’s imprisonment.*

* For instance, a young monk, for writing fanatic letters, and signing resolutions in favour of foederalism—­a hosier, for facilitating the return of an emigrant—­a man of ninety, for speaking against the revolution, and discrediting the assignats—­a contractor, for embezzling forage—­people of various descriptions, for obstructing the recruitment, or insulting the tree of liberty.  These, and many similar condemnations, will be found in the proceedings of the Revolutionary Tribunal, long after the death of Robespierre, and when justice and humanity were said to be restored.

A ceremony has lately taken place, the object of which was to deposit the ashes of Marat in the Pantheon, and to dislodge the bust of Mirabeau—­ who, notwithstanding two years notice to quit this mansion of immortality, still remained there.  The ashes of Marat being escorted to the Convention by a detachment of Jacobins, and the President having properly descanted on the virtues which once animated the said ashes, they were conveyed to the place destined for their reception; and the excommunicated Mirabeau being delivered over to the secular arm of a beadle, these remains of the divine Marat were placed among the rest of the republican deities.  To have obliged the Convention in a body to attend and consecrate the crimes of this monster, though it could not degrade them, was a momentary triumph for the Jacobins, nor could the royalists behold without satisfaction the same men deploring the death of Marat, who, a month before, had celebrated the fall of Louis the Sixteenth!  To have been so deplored, and so celebrated, are, methinks, the very extremes of infamy and glory.