The aspect of the times promises no change in our favour; on the contrary, every day seems to bring its attendant evil. The gentry who had escaped the comprehensive decree against suspected people, are now swept away in this and the three neighbouring departments by a private order of the representatives, St. Just, Lebas, and Dumont.

A severer regimen is to be adopted in the prisons, and husbands are already separated from their wives, and fathers from their daughters, for the purpose, as it is alledged, of preserving good morals. Both this place and the Bicetre being too full to admit of more inhabitants, two large buildings in the town are now appropriated to the male prisoners. My friends continue at Arras, and, I fear, in extreme distress. I understand they have been plundered of what things they had with them, and the little supply I was able to send them was intercepted by some of the harpies of the prisons. Mrs. D’s health has not been able to sustain these accumulated misfortunes, and she is at present at the hospital. All this is far from enlivening, even had I a larger share of the national philosophy; and did I not oftener make what I observe, than what I suffer, the subject of my letters, I should tax your patience as much by repetition, as I may by dullness.

When I enumerated in my last letters a few of the obligations the French have to their friends in England, I ought also to have observed, with how little gratitude they behave to those who are here. Without mentioning Mr. Thomas Paine, whose persecution will doubtless be recorded by abler pens, nothing, I assure you, can be more unpleasant than the situation of one of these Anglo-Gallican patriots. The republicans, supposing that an Englishman who affects a partiality for them can be only a spy, execute all the laws, which concern foreigners, upon him with additional rigour; and when an English Jacobin arrives in prison, far from meeting with consolation or sympathy, his distresses are beheld with triumph, and his person avoided with abhorrence. They talk much here of a gentleman, of very democratic principles, who left the prison before I came. It seems, that, notwithstanding Dumont condescended to visit at his house, and was on terms of intimacy with him, he was arrested, and not distinguished from the rest of his countrymen, except by being more harshly treated. The case of this unfortunate gentleman was rendered peculiarly amusing to his companions, and mortifying to himself, by his having a very pretty mistress, who had sufficient influence over Dumont to obtain any thing but the liberation of her protector. The Deputy was on this head inflexible; doubtless, as a proof of his impartial observance of the laws, and to show that, like the just man in Horace, he despised the clamour of the vulgar, who did not scruple to hint, that the crime of our countryman was rather of a moral than a political nature that he was unaccommodating, and recalcitrant addicted to suspicions and jealousies, which it was thought charitable to cure him of, by a little wholesome seclusion. In fact, the summary of this gentleman’s history is not calculated to tempt his fellow societists on your side of the water to imitate his example. After taking refuge in France from the tyranny and disappointments he experienced in England, and purchasing a large national property to secure himself the rights of a citizen, he is awakened from his dream of freedom, to find himself lodged in a prison, his estate under sequestration, and his mistress in requisition. Let us leave this Coriolanus among the Volscians it is a persecution to make converts, rather than martyrs, and

"Quand le malheur ne seroit bon,
“Qua mettre un sot a la raison,
“Toujours seroit-ce a juste cause
“Qu’on le dit bon a quelque chose."

Yours, &c.