e
numerous and helpless families, are left without assistance. Even
the poorest people now regard the national paper with contempt; and,
persuaded it must soon be of no value, they eagerly squander
whatever they receive, without care for the future.

As I have frequently, in the course of these letters, had occasion to
quote from the debates of the Convention, and other recent publications,
I ought to observe that the French language, like every thing else in the
country, has been a subject of innovation--new words have been invented,
the meaning of old ones has been changed, and a sort of jargon,
compounded of the appropriate terms of various arts and sciences,
introduced, which habit alone can render intelligible. There is scarcely
a report read in the Convention that does not exhibit every possible
example of the Bathos, together with more conceits than are to be found
in a writer of the sixteenth century; and I doubt whether any of their
projects of legislation or finance would be understood by Montesquieu or
Colbert.

But the style most difficult to be comprehended by foreigners, is that
of the newspapers; for the dread of offending government so entirely
possesses the imagination of those who compose such publications, that it
is not often easy to distinguish a victory from a defeat, by the language
in which it is conveyed. The common news of the day is worded as
cautiously as though it were to be the subject of judicial disquisition;
and the real tendency of an article is sometimes so much at variance with
its comment, that the whole, to a cursory peruser, may seem destitute of
any meaning at all. Time, however, has produced a sort of intelligence
between news-writers and their readers--and rejoicings, lamentations,
praise, or censure, are, on particular occasions, understood to convey
the reverse of what they express.

The affected moderation of the government, and the ascendency which some
of the Brissotin party are beginning to take in it, seem to flatter the
public with the hope of peace. They forget that these men were the
authors of the war, and that a few months imprisonment has neither
expiated their crimes, nor subdued their ambition. It is the great
advantage of the Brissotins, that the revolutionary tyranny which they
had contributed to establish, was wrested from them before it had taken
its full effect; but those who appreciate their original claims, without
regard to the