ich
is now seven months. I rested altogether on the hope that a new Minister
would arrive from America. I have escaped with life from more dangers
than one. Had it not been for the fall of Roberspierre and your timely
arrival I know not what fate might have yet attended me. There seemed to
be a determination to destroy all the Prisoners without regard to merit,
character, or any thing else. During the time I laid at the height of my
illness they took, in one night only, 169 persons out of this prison
and executed all but eight. The distress that I have suffered at being
obliged to exist in the midst of such horrors, exclusive of my own
precarious situation, suspended as it were by the single thread of
accident, is greater than it is possible you can conceive--but thank God
times are at last changed, and I hope that your Authority will release
me from this unjust imprisonment.

1 The falsehood told Paine, accompanied by an intimation of
danger in pursuing the pretended reclamation, was of course
meant to stop any farther action by Paine or his friends.--
_Editor._.

August 25, 1794.

My Dear Sir: Having nothing to do but to sit and think, I will write
to pass away time, and to say that I am still here. I have received two
notes from Mr. Beresford which are encouraging (as the generality of
notes and letters are that arrive to persons here) but they contain
nothing explicit or decisive with respect to my liberation, and _I
shall be very glad to receive a line from yourself to inform me in what
condition the matter stands_. If I only glide out of prison by a sort
of accident America gains no credit by my liberation, neither can my
attachment to her be increased by such a circumstance. She has had the
services of my best days, she has my allegiance, she receives my portion
of Taxes for my house in Borden Town and my farm at New Rochelle, and
she owes me protection both at home and thro' her Ministers abroad, yet
I remain in prison, in the face of her Minister, at the arbitrary will
of a committee.

Excluded as I am from the knowledge of everything and left to a random
of ideas, I know not what to think or how to act. Before there was
any Minister here (for I consider Morris as none) and while the
Robespierrian faction lasted, I had nothing to do but to keep my mind
tranquil and expect the fate that was every day inflicted upon my
comrades, not individually but by scores. Many a man whom I have pas