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.
Were I not bound to attend an appointment at twelve o’clock, in the
event of which I am deeply interested, methinks it were a curious
speculation (to which I incline) to try to develope what will be the
probable state of France, when peace with all her neighbours shall be
restored to her. The thinking part of the nation survey, not without
alarming anticipation, the consequence of a million and a half of armed
men, to whom a habit of indolence is become familiar, being turned loose
upon a country whose specie has disappeared, whose foreign commerce is
annihilated, and whose manufactures must be _born again_, for hardly a
trace of their having ever existed remains: add to this, that the
government, by being no longer revolutionary, will lose its strong
executive spring: and that the people are split into innumerable
parties, which hate each other with irreconcileable inveteracy.
National prejudices and political antipathies I consider as a vile state
engine, which, in the hands of a few crafty men, has for more than five
thousand years wrought the misery of the human race. Englishmen and
Frenchmen, the Charib and the Hindoo, the philosopher of Europe and the
naked savage whose wanderings I have witnessed at Botany Bay, shall one
day, I presume in humble confidence to trust, be assembled before the
“living throne,” of a common Father; and look back on that diminutive
speck, which in the boundless ocean of infinity nothing short of divine
irradiation could make visible to their eyes;----to review with
unqualified contempt, sorrow, and repentance, those false principles,
and sanguinary conclusions, which rendered it unto them a theatre of
contention and horror, and caused their days to be “few and evil!”
If such be my sentiments, I have no right to wish calamity to France. I
do not.----May she conclude peace with her neighbours; and labour to
settle her own government; and render happy her numerous children! But
when I look forward to the completion of such an event, I think I
foresee so many long years of havoc, which have yet to urge their course
in this devoted country, that I will drop the curtain, and hasten to
meet-------- --------. Adieu.