A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Part III., 1794 / Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady: with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and Manners

If I had undertaken to follow the French revolution through all its absurdities and iniquities, my indolence would long since have taken the alarm, and I should have relinquished a task become too difficult and too laborious. Events are now too numerous and too complicated to be described by occasional remarks; and a narrator of no more pretensions than myself may be allowed to shrink from an abundance of matter which will hereafter perplex the choice and excite the wonder of the historian.—Removed from the great scene of intrigues, we are little acquainted with them—we begin to suffer almost before we begin to conjecture, and our solicitude to examine causes is lost in the rapidity with which we feel their effects.
Amidst the more mischievous changes of a philosophic revolution, you will have learned from the newspapers, that the French have adopted a new aera and a new calendar, the one dating from the foundation of their republic, and other descriptive of the climate of Paris, and the productions of the French territory. I doubt, however, if these new almanack-makers will create so much confusion as might be supposed, or as they may desire, for I do not find as yet that their system has made its way beyond the public offices, and the country people are particularly refractory, for they persist in holding their fairs, markets, &c. as usual, without any regard to the hallowed decade of their legislators. As it is to be presumed that the French do not wish to relinquish all commercial intercourse with other nations, they mean possibly to tack the republican calendar to the rights of man, and send their armies to propagate them together; otherwise the correspondence of a Frenchman will be as difficult to interpret with mercantile exactness as the characters of the Chinese.
Mankind are in general more attached to customs than principles. The useful despotism of Peter, which subdued so many of the prejudices of his countrymen, could not achieve the curtailment of their beards; and you must not imagine that, with all the endurance of the French, these continual attempts at innovation pass without murmurs: partial revolts happen very frequently; but, as they are the spontaneous effect of personal suffering, not of political manoeuvre, they are without concert or union, of course easily quelled, and only serve to strengthen the government.—The people of Amiens have lately, in one of these sudden effusions of discontent, burnt the tree of liberty, and even the representative, Dumont, has been menaced; but these are only the blows of a coward who is alarmed at his own temerity, and dreads the chastisement of it.