reconcile them to a farther endurance of a representation from which they did not disguise their wishes to be released.  An opportunity was therefore seized on, or created, when our allowance of bread had become unusually short, and the Jacobins unusually turbulent, to bring forward this project of renovating the legislature.  But in politics, as well as love, such experiments are dangerous.  Far from being received with regret, the proposition excited universal transport; and it required all the diligence of the agents of government to insinuate effectually, that if Paris were abandoned by the Convention at this juncture, it would not only become a prey to famine, but the Jacobins would avail themselves of the momentary disorder to regain their power, and renew their past atrocities.

“A conviction that we in reality derive our scanty supplies from exertions which would not be made, were they not necessary to restrain the popular ill humour, added to an habitual apprehension of the Clubs,* assisted this manoeuvre; and a few of the sections were, in consequence, prevailed on to address our Representatives, and to request they would remain at their post.—­

* Paris had been long almost entirely dependent on the government for subsistence, so that an insurrection could always be procured by withholding the usual supply.  The departments were pillaged by requisitions, and enormous sums sent to the neutral countries to purchase provisions, that the capital might be maintained in dependence and good humour.  The provisions obtained by these means were distributed to the shopkeepers, who had instructions to retail them to the idle and disorderly, at about a twentieth part of the original cost, and no one could profit by this regulation, without first receiving a ticket from the Committee of his section.

It was lately asserted in the Convention, and not disavowed, that if the government persisted in this sort of traffic, the annual loss attending the article of corn alone would amount to fifty millions sterling.  The reduction of the sum in question into English money is made on a presumption that the French government did not mean (were it to be avoided) to commit an act of bankruptcy, and redeem their paper at less than par.  Reckoning, however, at the real value of assignats when the calculation was made, and they were then worth perhaps a fifth of their nominal value, the government was actually at the expence of ten millions sterling a year, for supplying Paris with a very scanty portion of bread!  The sum must appear enormous, but the peculation under such a government must be incalculable; and when it is recollected that all neutral ships bringing cargoes for the republic must have been insured at an immense premium, or perhaps eventually purchased by the French, and that very few could reach their destination, we may conclude that such as did arrive cost an immoderate sum.

—­“The insurrection that immediately succeeded was at first the effect of a similar scheme, and it ended in a party contention, in which the people, as usual, were neuter.