the time prescribed by the law is elapsed.—­In a private letter from Paris now before me, written within these few days, is the following observation on this very circumstance:  “The constitution has received another blow.  The month of Vendemiaire is past, and our Directors still remain the same.  Hence we begin to drop the appalation of Directory, and substitute that of the Cinqvir, who are more to be dreaded for their power, and more to be detested for their crimes, than the Decemvir of ancient Rome.”  The same letter also contains a brief abstract of the state of the metropolis of the French republic, which is wonderfully characteristic of the attention of the government to the welfare and happiness of its inhabitants!

“The reign of misery and of crime seems to be perpetuated in this distracted capital:  suicides, pillage, and assassinations, are daily committed, and are still suffered to pass unnoticed.  But what renders our situation still more deplorable, is the existence of an innumerable band of spies, who infest all public places, and all private societies.  More than a hundred thousand of these men are registered on the books of the modern Sartine; and as the population of Paris, at most, does not exceed six hundred thousand souls, we are sure to find in six individuals one spy.  This consideration makes me shudder, and, accordingly, all confidence, and all the sweets of social intercourse, are banished from among us.  People salute each other, look at each other, betray mutual suspicions, observe a profound silence, and part.  This, in few words, is an exact description of our modern republican parties.  It is said, that poverty has compelled many respectable persons, and even state-creditors, to enlist under the standard of COCHON, (the Police Minister,) because such is the honourable conduct of our sovereigns, that they pay their spies in specie—­and their soldiers, and the creditors of the state, in paper.—­Such is the morality, such the justice, such are the republican virtues, so loudly vaunted by our good and dearest friends, our pensioners—­the Gazetteers of England and Germany!”

There is not a single abuse, which the modern reformers reprobated so loudly under the ancient system, that is not magnified, in an infinite degree, under the present establishment.  For one Lettre de Cachet issued during the mild reign of Louis the Sixteenth, a thousand Mandats d’Arret have been granted by the tyrannical demagogues of the revolution; for one Bastile which existed under the Monarchy, a thousand Maisons de Detention have been established by the Republic.  In short, crimes of every denomination, and acts of tyranny and injustice, of every kind, have multiplied, since the abolition of royalty, in a proportion which sets all the powers of calculation at defiance.