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.

I am just returned from a day’s ramble, during which I have met with various subjects of unpleasant meditation.  About dinner-time I called on an old Chevalier de St. Louis and his lady, who live in the Fauxbourg St. Germain.  When I knew them formerly, they had a handsome annuity on the Hotel de Ville, and were in possession of all the comforts necessary to their declining years.  To-day the door was opened by a girl of dirty appearance, the house looked miserable, the furniture worn, and I found the old couple over a slender meal of soup maigre and eggs, without wine or bread.  Our revolutionary adventures, as is usual on all meetings of this kind, were soon communicated; and I learned, that almost before they knew what was passing around them, Monsieur du G--------’s forty years’ service, and his croix, had rendered him suspected, and that he and his wife were taken from their beds at midnight and carried to prison.  Here they consumed their stock of ready money, while a guard, placed in their