*On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim—that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published.
*On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim—that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published.
*On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim—that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published.
*On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim—that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published.
*On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim—that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published.
I know not if it be attributable to these political inconsistencies that the calm which has succeeded the late disorders is little more than external. The minds of the people are uncommonly agitated, and every one expresses either hope or apprehension of some impending event. The royalists, amidst their ostensible persecutions, are particularly elated; and I have been told, that many conspicuous revolutionists already talk of emigration.
I am just returned from a day's ramble, during which I have met with various subjects of unpleasant meditation. About dinner-time I called on an old Chevalier de St. Louis and his lady, who live in the Fauxbourg St. Germain. When I knew them formerly, they had a handsome annuity on the Hotel de Ville, and were in possession of all the comforts necessary to their declining years. To-day the door was opened by a girl of dirty appearance, the house looked miserable, the furniture worn, and I found the old couple over a slender meal of soup maigre and eggs, without wine or bread. Our revolutionary adventures, as is usual on all meetings of this kind, were soon communicated; and I learned, that almost before they knew what was passing around them, Monsieur du G————'s forty years' service, and his croix, had rendered him suspected, and that he and his wife were taken from their beds at midnight and carried to prison. Here they consumed their stock of ready money, while a guard, placed in their house, pillaged what was moveable, and spoiled what could not be pillaged. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor they were released, but they returned to bare walls, and their annuity, being paid in assignats, now scarcely affords them a subsistence.—Monsieur du G———— is near seventy, and Madame is become helpless from a nervous complaint, the effect of fear and confinement; and if this depreciation of the paper should continue, these poor people may probably die of absolute want.
I dined with a relation of the Marquise's, and in the afternoon we called by appointment on a person who is employed by the Committee of National Domains, and who has long promised my friend to facilitate the adjustment of some of the various claims which the government has on her property. This man was originally a valet to the brother of the Marquise: at the revolution he set up a shop, became a bankrupt, and a furious Jacobin, and, in the end, a member of a Revolutionary Committee. In the last capacity he found means to enrich himself, and intimidate his creditors so as to obtain a discharge of his debts, without the trouble of paying them.*
* "It was common for men in debt to procure themselves to be made members of a revolutionary committee, and then force their creditors to give them a receipt in full, under the fear of being imprisoned." Clauzel's Report, Oct. 13, 1794. I am myself acquainted with an old lady, who was confined four months, for having asked one of these patriots for three hundred livres which he owed her.
* "It was common for men in debt to procure themselves to be made members of a revolutionary committee, and then force their creditors to give them a receipt in full, under the fear of being imprisoned." Clauzel's Report, Oct. 13, 1794. I am myself acquainted with an old lady, who was confined four months, for having asked one of these patriots for three hundred livres which he owed her.