, with every species
of contumely, and without any exception, every prisoner of war who did
not escape out of their hands. To have had property, to have been robbed
of it, and to endeavor to regain it,--these are crimes irremissible, to
which every man who regards his property or his life, in every country,
ought well to look in all connection with those with whom to have had
property was an offence, to endeavor to keep it a second offence, to
attempt to regain it a crime that puts the offender out of all the laws
of peace or war. You cannot see one of those wretches without an alarm
for your life as well as your goods. They are like the worst of the
French and Italian banditti, who, whenever they robbed, were sure to
murder.

Are they not the very same ruffians, thieves, assassins, and regicides
that they were from the beginning? Have they diversified the scene by
the least variety, or produced the face of a single new villany? _Taedet
harum quotidianarum formarum_. Oh! but I shall be answered, "It is now
quite another thing;--they are all changed. You have not seen them in
their state dresses;--this makes an amazing difference. The new habit of
the Directory is so charmingly fancied, that it is impossible not to
fall in love with so well-dressed a Constitution;--the costume of the
_sans-culotte_ Constitution of 1793 was absolutely insufferable. The
Committee for Foreign Affairs were such slovens, and stunk so
abominably, that no _muscadin_ ambassador of the smallest degree of
delicacy of nerves could come within ten yards of them; but now they are
so powdered, and perfumed, and ribanded, and sashed, and plumed, that,
though they are grown infinitely more insolent in their fine clothes
even than they were in their rags, (and that was enough,) as they now
appear, there is something in it more grand and noble, something more
suitable to an awful Roman Senate receiving the homage of dependent
tetrarchs. Like that Senate, (their perpetual model for conduct towards
other nations,) they permit their vassals (during their good pleasure)
to assume the name of kings, in order to bestow more dignity on the
suite and retinue of the sovereign Republic by the nominal rank of their
slaves: _Ut habeant instrumenta servitutis et reges_." All this is very
fine, undoubtedly; and ambassadors whose hands are almost out for want
of employment may long to have their part in this august ceremony of the
Republic one and indivisible. But, with