by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations.  Among these are found persons in comparison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation.  Nor is it in these clubs alone that the public measures are deformed into monsters.  They undergo a previous distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the places of public resort.  In these meetings of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring and violent and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius.  Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.  Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to the public.  Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure.  Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or meditated, they are forming plans for the good order of future society.  Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and promoting their relations on the title of their offences, they drive hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to subsist by beggary or by crime.

The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of deliberation with as little decency as liberty.  They act like the comedians of a fair, before a riotous audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and sometimes mix and take their seats amongst them,—­domineering over them with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous authority.  As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is in the place of the house.  This assembly, which overthrows kings and kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy and aspect of a grave legislative body,—­nec color imperii, nec frons erat ulla senatus.  They have a power given to them, like that of the Evil Principle, to subvert and destroy,—­but none to construct, except such machines as may be fitted for further subversion and further destruction.

Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to national representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that sacred institute?  Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike abhor it.  The members of your Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny of which they have all the shame, none of the direction, and little of the profit.  I am sure many of the members who compose even the majority of that body must feel as I do, notwithstanding the applauses of the Revolution Society.  Miserable king! miserable assembly!  How must that assembly be silently scandalized with those of their members who could call a day which seemed to blot the sun out of heaven “un beau jour"![90] How must they be inwardly indignant at hearing others who