agnificent building we had just left,
and my first emotions were those of regret and censure. When we only
feel, and have not leisure to reflect, we are indignant that vast sums
should be expended on sumptuous edifices, and that the poor should live
in vice and want; yet the erection of St. Vaast must have maintained
great numbers of industrious hands; and perhaps the revenues of the abbey
may not, under its new possessors, be so well employed. When the
offerings and the tributes to religion are the support of the industrious
poor, it is their best appropriation; and he who gives labour for a day,
is a more useful benefactor than he who maintains in idleness for two.
--I could not help wishing that the poor might no longer be tempted by
the facility of a resource, which perhaps, in most instances, only
increases their distress.--It is an injudicious expedient to palliate an
evil, which great national works, and the encouragement of industry and
manufactures, might eradicate.*

* In times of public commotion people frequently send their valuable
effects to the Mont de Piete, not only as being secure by its
strength, but as it is respected by the people, who are interested
in its preservation.

--With these reflections I concluded mental peace with the monks of St.
Vaast, and would, had it depended upon me, have readily comprized the
finishing their great church in the treaty.

The Primary Assemblies have already taken place in this department. We
happened to enter a church while the young Robespierre was haranguing to
an audience, very little respectable either in numbers or appearance.
They were, however, sufficiently unanimous, and made up in noisy applause
what they wanted in other respects. If the electors and elected of other
departments be of the same complexion with those of Arras, the new
Assembly will not, in any respect, be preferable to the old one. I have
reproached many of the people of this place, who, from their education
and property, have a right to take an interest in the public affairs,
with thus suffering themselves to be represented by the most desperate
and worthless individuals of the town. Their defence is, that they are
insulted and overpowered if they attend the popular meetings, and by
electing _"les gueux et les scelerats pour deputes,"_* they send them to
Paris, and secure their own local tranquillity.

* The scrubs and scoundrels for deputies.

--The first