My friend Madame de la F———— has left us, and I fear is only gone home to die. Her health was perfectly good when we were first arrested, though vexation, more than confinement, has contributed to undermine it. The revolution had, in various ways, diminished her property; but this she would have endured with patience, had not the law of successions involved her in difficulties which appeared every day more interminable, and perplexed her mind by the prospect of a life of litigation and uncertainty. By this law, all inheritances, donations, or bequests, since the fourteenth of July 1789, are annulled and subjected to a general partition among the nearest relatives. In consequence, a large estate of the Marquise's, as well as another already sold, are to be accounted for, and divided between a variety of claimants. Two of the number being emigrants, the republic is also to share; and as the live stock, furniture, farming utensils, and arrears, are included in this absurd and iniquitous regulation, the confusion and embarrassment which it has occasioned are indescribable.
Though an unlucky combination of circumstances has rendered such a law particularly oppressive to Madame de la F————, she is only one of an infinite number who are affected by it, and many of whom may perhaps be still greater sufferers than herself. The Constituent Assembly had attempted to form a code that might counteract the spirit of legal disputation, for which the French are so remarkable; but this single decree will give birth to more processes than all the pandects, canons, and droits feodaux, accumulated since the days of Charlemagne; and I doubt, though one half the nation were lawyers, whether they might not find sufficient employment in demalgamating the property of the other half.
This mode of partition, in itself ill calculated for a rich and commercial people, and better adapted to the republic of St. Marino than to that of France, was introduced under pretext of favouring the system of equality; and its transition from absurdity to injustice, by giving it a retroactive effect, was promoted to accommodate the "virtuous" Herault de Sechelles, who acquired a considerable addition of fortune by it. The Convention are daily beset with petitions from all parts on this subject; but their followers and themselves being somewhat in the style of Falstaff's regiment—"younger sons of younger brothers," they seem determined, as they usually are, to square their notions of justice by what is most conducive to their own interest.
An apprehension of some attempt from the Jacobins, and the discontents which the scarcity of bread give rise to among the people, have produced a private order from the Committees of government for arming and re-organizing the National Guard.*
* Though I have often had occasion to use the term National Guard, it is to be understood only as citizens armed for some temporary purpose, whose arms were taken from them as soon as that service was performed. The Garde Nationale, as a regular institution, had been in a great measure suppressed since the summer of 1793, and those who composed it gradually disarmed. The usual service of mounting guard was still continued, but the citizens, with very few exceptions, were armed only with pikes, and even those were not entrusted to their own care, each delivering up his arms when he retired more exactly than if it were an article of capitulation with a successful enemy.
—I remember, in 1789 and 1790, when this popular militia was first instituted, every one, either from policy or inclination, appeared eager to promote it; and nothing was discussed but military fetes, balls, exercise, and uniforms. These patriotic levities have now entirely vanished, and the business proceeds with languor and difficulty. One dreads the present expence, another future persecution, and all are solicitous to find cause for exemption.
This reluctance, though perhaps to be regretted, is in a great measure justifiable. Where the lives and fortunes of a whole nation are dependent on the changes of party, obscurity becomes the surest protection, and those who are zealous now, may be the first sacrifices hereafter. Nor is it encouraging to arm for the defence of the Convention, which is despised, or to oppose the violence of a populace, who, however misguided, are more objects of compassion than of punishment.
Fouquier Tinville, with sixteen revolutionary Judges and Jurymen, have been tried and executed, at the moment when the instigators of their crimes, Billaud-Varennes, Collot, &c. were sentenced by the Convention to a banishment, which is probably the object of their wishes. This Tinville and his accomplices, who condemned thousands with such ferocious gaiety, beheld the approach of death themselves with a mixture of rage and terror, that even cowardice and guilt do not always exhibit. It seems an awful dispensation of Providence, that they who were inhuman enough to wish to deprive their victims of the courage which enabled them to submit to their fate with resignation, should in their last moments want that courage, and die despairing, furious, and uttering imprecations, which were returned by the enraged multitude.*
—Yours, &c.
* Some of the Jurymen were in the habit of taking caricatures of the prisoners while they condemned them. Among the papers of the Revolutionary Tribunal were found blank sentences, which were occasionally sent to the Committee of Public Safety, to be filled up with the names of those intended to be sacrificed.—The name of one of the Jurymen executed on this occasion was Leroi, but being a very ardent republican, he had changed it for that of Citizen Tenth of August.