incredulous, and
perhaps an internal admonition of the ridicule and disgrace attendant on
the worship of an idol whose reputation is so unpropitious, have much
repressed the customary ardour, and will, I think, prevent these
"hair-breadth 'scapes" from continuing fashionable.--Yours, &c.

[No Date Given]

When I describe the French as a people bending meekly beneath the most
absurd and cruel oppression, transmitted from one set of tyrants to
another, without personal security, without commerce--menaced by famine,
and desolated by a government whose ordinary resources are pillage and
murder; you may perhaps read with some surprize the progress and
successes of their armies. But, divest yourself of the notions you may
have imbibed from interested misrepresentations--forget the revolutionary
common-place of "enthusiams", "soldiers of freedom," and "defenders of
their country"--examine the French armies as acting under the motives
which usually influence such bodies, and I am inclined to believe you
will see nothing very wonderful or supernatural in their victories.

The greater part of the French troops are now composed of young men taken
indiscriminately from all classes, and forced into the service by the
first requisition. They arrive at the army ill-disposed, or at best
indifferent, for it must not be forgotten, that all who could be
prevailed on to go voluntarily had departed before recourse was had to
the measure of a general levy. They are then distributed into different
corps, so that no local connections remain: the natives of the North are
mingled with those of the South, and all provincial combinations are
interdicted.

It is well known that the military branch of espionage is as extended as
the civil, and the certainty of this destroys confidence, and leaves even
the unwilling soldier no resource but to go through his professional duty
with as much zeal as though it were his choice. On the one hand, the
discipline is severe--on the other, licentiousness is permitted beyond
all example; and, half-terrified, half-seduced, principles the most
inimical, and morals the least corrupt, become habituated to fear nothing
but the government, and to relish a life of military indulgence.--The
armies were some time since ill clothed, and often ill fed; but the
requisitions, which are the scourge of the country, supply them, for the
moment, with profusion: the manufacturers, the shops, and the private
individua