* A company was formed of all the ruffians that could be collected together.  They were styled the Company of Marat, and were specially empowered to arrest whomsoever they chose, and to enter houses by night or day—­in fine, to proscribe and pillage at their pleasure.

Facts like these require no comment.  The nation may be intimidated, and habits of obedience, or despair of redress, prolong its submission; but it can no longer be deceived:  and patriotism, revolutionary liberty, and philosophy, are for ever associated with the drowning machines of Carrier, and the precepts and calculations of a Herault de Sechelles,* or a Lequinio.**—­

* Herault de Sechelles was distinguished by birth, talents, and fortune, above most of his colleagues in the Convention; yet we find him in correspondence with Carrier, applauding his enormities, and advising him how to continue them with effect.—­Herault was of a noble family, and had been a president in the Parliament of Paris.  He was one of Robespierre’s Committee of Public Welfare, and being in some way implicated in a charge of treachery brought against Simon, another Deputy, was guillotined at the same time with Danton.

** Lequinio is a philosopher by profession, who has endeavoured to enlighten his countrymen by a publication entitled “Les Prejuges Detruits,” and since by proving it advantageous to make no prisoners of war.

—­The ninety Nantais, against whom there existed no serious charge, and who had already suffered more than death, were acquitted.  Yet, though the people were gratified by this verdict, and the general indignation appeased by an immediate arrest of those who had been most notoriously active in these dreadful operations, a deep and salutary impression remains, and we may hope it will be found impracticable either to renew the same scenes, or for the Convention to shelter (as they seemed disposed to do) the principal criminals, who are members of their own body.  Yet, how are these delinquents to be brought to condemnation?  They all acted under competent authority, and their dispatches to the Convention, which sufficiently indicated their proceedings, were always sanctioned by circulation, and applauded, according to the excess of their flagitiousness.

It is worthy of remark, that Nantes, the principal theatre of these persecutions and murders, had been early distinguished by the attachment of its inhabitants to the revolution; insomuch, that, at the memorable epoch when the short-sighted policy of the Court excluded the Constituent Assembly from their Hall at Versailles, and they took refuge in the Jeu de Paume, with a resolution fatal to their country, never to separate until they had obtained their purposes, an express was sent to Nantes, as the place they should make choice of, if any violence obliged them to quit the neighbourhood of Paris.

But it was not only by its principles that Nantes had signalized itself; at every period of the war, it had contributed largely both in men and money, and its riches and commerce still rendered it one of the most important towns of the republic.—­What has been its reward?—­Barbarous envoys from the Convention, sent expressly to level the aristocracy of wealth, to crush its mercantile spirit, and decimate its inhabitants.*—­