e are
victims, will enforce a general liberation.--We are guarded but slightly;
and I think I perceive in the behaviour of the Jacobin Commissaries
something of civility and respect not usual.

Thus an event, which I beheld merely as the justice which one set of
banditti were made the instruments of exercising upon another, may
finally tend to introduce a more humane system of government; or, at
least, suspend proscription and massacre, and give this harassed country
a little repose.

I am in arrears with my epistolary chronicle, and the hope of so
desirable a change will now give me courage to resume it from the
conclusion of my last. To-morrow shall be dedicated to this purpose.--
Yours.

August 12.

My letters, previous to the time when I judged it necessary to desist
from writing, will have given you some faint sketch of the situation of
the country, and the sufferings of its inhabitants--I say a faint sketch,
because a thousand horrors and iniquities, which are now daily
disclosing, were then confined to the scenes where they were perpetrated;
and we knew little more of them than what we collected from the reports
of the Convention, where they excited a laugh as pleasantries, or
applause as acts of patriotism.

France had become one vast prison, executions were daily multiplied, and
a minute and comprehensive oppression seemed to have placed the lives,
liberty, and fortune of all within the grasp of the single Committee.
Despair itself was subdued, and the people were gradually sinking into a
gloomy and stupid obedience.

* The words despotism and tyranny are sufficiently expressive of the
nature of the government to which they are applied; yet still they
are words rendered familiar to us only by history, and convey no
precise idea, except that of a bad political system. The condition
of the French at this time, besides its wretchedness, had something
so strange, so original in it, that even those who beheld it with
attention must be content to wonder, without pretending to offer any
description as adequate.

--The following extract from a speech of Bailleul, a member of the
Convention, exhibits a picture nearer the original than I have yet seen--

_"La terreur dominait tous les esprits, comprimait tous les couers--
elle etait la force du gouvernement, et ce gouvernement etait tel,
que les nombreux habitans d'un vaste territoire semblaient avo