I have written until my paper is exhausted, my eyes bedimmed, and my imagination haunted by racks, wheels, and guillotines dyed in human gore.—Therefore good night! and adieu until to-morrow, when I will resume my pen!
LETTER XI.
Quimper, 1st May 1795.
AMIDST such scenes as I was yesterday condemned to describe, it were impossible but an universal corruption of manners must follow, and it has accordingly arrived. That the French should pant to be free, who can doubt, or who can blame? But it has happened to them, as it must to every people who are suddenly hurried into extremes, without the national mind being in any degree prepared for the change which has taken place. This people possesses not the stability of character, or the austere self-denying virtues, of the ancient republicans. Many of the present leading demagogues of the convention do not even affect a common regularity of manners; and, if the public journals, which do not spare them by name, may be believed, wallow in the most scandalous sensuality. I read the other day a description of a drunken scene between one of the Merlins and a brother deputy, which was pourtrayed with much humour. I mention this to shew you, that the editors of news-papers here are not more afraid of the executive power than on your side of the water. When I compare the present number of the convention to what it was at its institution, not three years since, and recollect the causes,—self-murder, public execution, desertion, and banishment—which have occasioned the diminution, I stand petrified with amazement and horror. What stronger proof of the depravity of this legislative assembly can be adduced than their perpetual deliberate acts of treachery towards each other, in betraying private conversations, which have passed among themselves? Their annals are full of it. How many of their members have been hurried by it to the guillotine; and how many more have been supplanted in the public favour by the informers!
The thirst for dissipation is not lessened; but whence the means which enable many of the French to pursue it in its present form are derived, is a mystery. If the excessive and daily increasing price of commodities be considered, nothing is more inexplicable than how those who have only stipulated incomes contrive to subsist upon them. I live with the most rigid frugality, and yet cannot bound my expences within less than 250 livres a week. It is certain that false assignats abound; and the tongue of malevolence has not scrupled to assert, that many of them have been issued from the national treasury, “in order to lessen the public debt, when the day of presentation for payment shall arrive.” Remember, I do not pretend to state this as more than the whisper of party. It is evident that the habits, which this plenty of the medium of exchange, however obtained, creates, are destructive of all industry. This little town is crowded by men and women, who, like the Athenians, do nothing from morning to night “but tell and hear of some new thing.” The national fickleness demonstrates itself no less in private than in public opinion. In Paris alone, in the month of last Nivose, 223 divorces took place, 198 of which were solicited by the wives. Nothing is more specious than a facility of divorce. To render the chain of union indissoluble were, indeed, to realize the punishment of Mezentius; but to permit its separation upon every trifling and momentary caprice, is to corrupt society in its source. You know that marriage is here a civil contract only, which I have seen entered into at the bureau of the municipality, and which consists merely in the parties declaring, before certain witnesses, their wish to be united, and entering their names in a register; but of late all but flaming republicans have thought it necessary to strengthen the engagement, by privately superadding the ceremony of the church.
The national taste has suffered equal degradation. The dramas of Racine, and the odes and epistles of Boileau, are supplanted by crude declamatory productions, to which the revolutionary spirit has given birth. The French have been almost as ingenious as ourselves. It was a discovery reserved for the present age, that Pope was a mere versifier; and that the immortal compositions of the two before-mentioned writers are harmonious tinklings only, devoid of fire of fancy, and elevation of genius. There has been a report presented to the convention, on the Gothicism which has overspread the land, and exterminated in its fury more than two thirds of the works of art and taste, which ennobled France. It will be handed down to posterity, in the chronicles of the revolution, as a fact that marks the spirit in which it has been conducted.
Notwithstanding the various arms by which religion has been persecuted, she again begins to lift her head. A report, presented by Boissy d’Anglas, from the united committees of public safety, general security, and legislation, to the convention, containing ten articles in favour of public worship, has been adopted and decreed. By these the republic acknowledges no national religious institution; nor grants salaries to the priesthood; nor furnishes any place for the performance of worship, &c. &c.; but it expressly forbids, under pain of punishment, every one from preventing his neighbour from the exercise of his devotion.
In consequence of this decree on the back of the proclamation issued by Guesno and Guermeur, and of assurances from the constituted authorities that they shall not be molested, the moderate catholics here assemble on every Sabbath in the cathedral, the use of which (as an indulgence) is granted to them; but the more rigid, fearless of the law (which forbids it) hold little meetings at each other’s houses, where the non-juring clergy officiate. This is known to the police; but the predilection of the country people, who flock in great numbers to these assemblies, renders it convenient to wink at them, and has hitherto restrained all attack upon them.
I went upon Easter Sunday to the cathedral, and found a numerous congregation there. The altar was lighted up by twelve large waxen tapers; the holy water was sprinkled upon the congregants; and the incense was burnt, with the accustomed ceremonies; but even here democratic spleen manifested itself in disturbing what it is no longer allowed to interdict. In the most solemn part of the service, the Marseillois Hymn was heard from the organ: that war-whoop, to whose sound the bands of regicides who attacked their sovereign in his palace marched; and which, during the last three years, has been the watch-word of violence, rapine, and murder[H]! How incongruous were its notes in the temple of the Prince of Peace! A black-guard-looking fellow close to me, whom I knew, by his uncombed hair, dirty linen, ragged attire, and contemptuous gestures, to be a veritable sans-culotte, joined his voice to the music, and echoed, “Aux armes, citoyens!” Fear alone kept the people quiet; and of its influence in this country I have witnessed astonishing proofs, which demonstrate, beyond volumes of reasoning, the terror inspired by the revolutionary government.
As the observance of the Sabbath advances, the Decadis sink into contempt. I had heard much of civic feasts and other patriotic institutions celebrated upon them; but since I have been here, nothing of the sort has occurred. The national flag is displayed on the public offices, and if there is no pressure of business, the clerks have a holiday. A few zealous republicans also shut up their shops; but at present for one shop shut on a Decadi, there are six on a Sunday; for, however their owners may differ on political questions, a sense of religion is not extinguished in the mass of the people, even of the town. I have, nevertheless, been assured, that six months ago, to have shewn this mark of respect for the Sabbath would have been a certain mean of drawing down the resentment of the predominant faction. On every Decadi the laws are appointed to be read in the cathedral, and the municipality attend. I had once the curiosity to go to this meeting, and found the number of auditors, which I counted, exclusive of the reader, and those who attended officially, to be twenty-seven persons, of whom, to my surprize, five were old women.