sm was so tardy, that scarcely an ounce appeared, till
a long list of sound penal laws, with fines and imprisonments in every
line, roused the public spirit more effectually.*

* Two years imprisonment was the punishment assigned to a Citizen
who should be found to obstruct in any way the fabricating
saltpetre. If you had a house that was adjudged to contain the
materials required, and expostulated against pulling it down, the
penalty was incurred.--I believe something of this kind existed
under the old government, the abuses of which are the only parts the
republic seems to have preserved.

--Another cause also has much favoured the extension of this manufacture:
the necessity of procuring gunpowder at any rate has secured an exemption
from serving in the army to those who shall be employed in making it.--*

* Many, under this pretext, even procured their discharge from the
army; and it was eventually found requisite to stop this commutation
of service by a decree.

--On this account vast numbers of young men, whose martial propensities
are not too vehement for calculation, considering the extraction of
saltpetre as more safe than the use of it, have seriously devoted
themselves to the business. Thus, between fear of the Convention and of
the enemy, has been produced that enthusiasm which seems so grateful to
Lord S____. Yet, if the French are struck by the dissimilitude of facts
with the language of your English patriots, there are other circumstances
which appear still more unaccountable to them. I acknowledge the word
patriotism is not perfectly understood any where in France, nor do my
prison-associates abound in it; but still they find it difficult to
reconcile the love of their country, so exclusively boasted by certain
senators, with their eulogiums on a government, and on men who avow an
implacable hatred to it, and are the professed agents of its future
destruction. The Houses of Lords and Commons resound with panegyrics on
France; the Convention with _"delenda est Carthate"--"ces vils
Insulaires"--"de peuple marchand, boutiquier"--"ces laches Anglois"--_ &c.
&c. ("Carthage must be destroyed"--"those vile Islanders"--"that nation
of shopkeepers"--"those cowardly Englishmen"--&c.)

The efforts of the English patriots overtly tend to the consolidation of
the French republic, while the demagogues of France are yet more
strenuous for the abolition of mona