bout me, as soon as it heard of my imprisonment.
But if this had not been the case, that government owed it to me on
every ground and principle of honour and gratitude. Mr. Washington owed
it to me on every score of private acquaintance, I will not now say,
friendship; for it has some time been known by those who know him, that
he has no friendships; that he is incapable of forming any; he can serve
or desert a man, or a cause, with constitutional indifference; and it is
this cold hermaphrodite faculty that imposed itself upon the world,
and was credited for a while by enemies as by friends, for prudence,
moderation and impartiality.(1)

1 "L'on pent dire qu'il [Washington] jouit de tous les
avantages possibles a l'exception des douceurs de
l'amitie."--Louis Otto, Charge d'Affaires (at New York) to
his government, 13 June, 1790. French Archives, vol. 35, No.
32.--Editor.

Soon after I was put into arrestation, and imprisoned in the Luxembourg,
the Americans who were then in Paris went in a body to the bar of the
Convention to reclaim me. They were answered by the then President
Vadier, who has since absconded, that _I was born in England_, and it
was signified to them, by some of the Committee of _General Surety_, to
whom they were referred (I have been told it was Billaud Varennes,) that
their reclamation of me was only the act of individuals, without any
authority from the American government.

A few days after this, all communications from persons imprisoned to
any person without the prison was cut off by an order of the Police. I
neither saw, nor heard from, any body for six months; and the only hope
that remained to me was, that a new Minister would arrive from America
to supercede Morris, and that he would be authorized to enquire into
the cause of my imprisonment. But even this hope, in the state to which
matters were daily arriving, was too remote to have any consolatory
effect, and I contented myself with the thought, that I might be
remembered when it would be too late. There is perhaps no condition from
which a man conscious of his own uprightness cannot derive consolation;
for it is in itself a consolation for him to find, that he can bear that
condition with calmness and fortitude.

From about the middle of March (1794) to the fall of Robespierre
July 29, (9th of Thermidor,) the state of things in the prisons was a
continued scene of horror. No man could count upon life for twen