ts seize on any weapons
nearest hand, and drub and pursue the retrograding armies as they would
wild beasts; and though, as Dumouriez observes in one of his dispatches,
our revolution is intended to favour the country people, _"c'est
cependant les gens de campagne qui s'arment contre nous, et le tocsin
sonne de toutes parts;"_ ["It is, however, the country people who take up
arms against us, and the alarm is sounded from all quarters."] so that
the French will, in fact, have created a public debt of so singular a
nature, that every one will avoid as much as possible making any demand
of the capital.

I have already been more diffuse than I intended on the subject of
finance; but I beg you to observe, that I do not affect to calculate, or
speculate, and that I reason only from facts which are daily within my
notice, and which, as tending to operate on the morals of the people, are
naturally included in the plan I proposed to myself.

I have been here but a few days, and intend returning to-morrow. I left
Mrs. D____ very little better, and the disaffection of Dumouriez, which I
just now learn, may oblige us to remove to some place not on the route to
Paris.--Every one looks alert and important, and a physiognomist may
perceive that regret is not the prevailing sentiment--

"We now begin to speak in tropes,
"And, by our fears, express our hopes."

The Jacobins are said to be apprehensive, which augurs well; for,
certainly, next to the happiness of good people, one desires the
punishment of the bad.

Amiens, April 7, 1793.

If the sentiments of the people towards their present government had been
problematical before, the visible effect of Dumouriez' conduct would
afford an ample solution of the problem. That indifference about public
affairs which the prospect of an established despotism had begun to
create has vanished--all is hope and expectation--the doors of those who
retail the newspapers are assailed by people too impatient to read them--
each with his gazette in his hand listens eagerly to the verbal
circulation, and then holds a secret conference with his neighbour, and
calculates how long it may be before Dumouriez can reach Paris. A
fortnight ago the name of Dumouriez was not uttered but in a tone of
harshness and contempt, and, if ever it excited any thing like
complacency, it was when he announced defeats and losses. Now he is
spoken of with a significant modulatio