* This too great facility of the Parisians has been commented upon
     by an anonymous writer in the following terms: 

“At Paris, where more than fifty victims were dragged daily to the scaffold, the theatres never failed to overflow, and that on the Place de la Revolution was not the least frequented.  The public, in their way every evening to the Champs Ellisees, continued uninterruptedly to cross the stream of blood that deluged this fatal spot with the most dreadful indifference; and now, though these days of horror are scarcely passed over our heads, one would suppose them ages removed—­so little are we sensible that we are dancing, as it were, on a platform of dead bodies.  Well may we say, respecting those events which have not reached ourselves—­

          ’Le malheur Qui n’est plus, n’a jamais existe.’

     But if we desire earnestly that the same misfortunes should not
     return, we must keep them always present in our recollection.”

The practice of the government appears to depart every day more widely from its professions; and the moderate harangues of the tribune are often succeeded by measures as arbitrary as those which are said to be exploded.—­Perhaps the Convention begin to perceive their mistake in supposing that they can maintain a government against the inclination of the people, without the aid of tyranny.  They expected at the same time that they decried Robespierre, to retain all the power he possessed.  Hence, their assumed principles and their conduct are generally at variance; and, divided between despotism and weakness, they arrest the printers of pamphlets and newspapers one day, and are obliged to liberate them the next.—­They exclaim publicly against the system of terror, yet secretly court the assistance of its agents.—­They affect to respect the liberty of the press, yet every new publication has to defend itself against the whole force of the government, if it happen to censure a single member of the reigning party.—­Thus, the Memoirs of Dumouriez had circulated nearly through all Europe, yet it was not without much risk, and after a long warfare, that they were printed in France.*

On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim—­that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers’ presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published.

I know not if it be attributable to these political inconsistencies that the calm which has succeeded the late disorders is little more than external.  The minds of the people are uncommonly agitated, and every one expresses either hope or apprehension of some impending event.  The royalists, amidst their ostensible persecutions, are particularly elated; and I have been told, that many conspicuous revolutionists already talk of emigration.