distracted capital: suicides, pillage, and assassinations, are daily
committed, and are still suffered to pass unnoticed. But what renders
our situation still more deplorable, is the existence of an innumerable
band of spies, who infest all public places, and all private societies.
More than a hundred thousand of these men are registered on the books of
the modern SARTINE; and as the population of Paris, at most, does not
exceed six hundred thousand souls, we are sure to find in six individuals
one spy. This consideration makes me shudder, and, accordingly, all
confidence, and all the sweets of social intercourse, are banished from
among us. People salute each other, look at each other, betray mutual
suspicions, observe a profound silence, and part. This, in few words, is
an exact description of our modern republican parties. It is said, that
poverty has compelled many respectable persons, and even state-creditors,
to enlist under the standard of COCHON, (the Police Minister,) because
such is the honourable conduct of our sovereigns, that they pay their
spies in specie--and their soldiers, and the creditors of the state, in
paper.--Such is the morality, such the justice, such are the republican
virtues, so loudly vaunted by our good and dearest friends, our
pensioners--the Gazetteers of England and Germany!"

There is not a single abuse, which the modern reformers reprobated so
loudly under the ancient system, that is not magnified, in an infinite
degree, under the present establishment. For one Lettre de Cachet issued
during the mild reign of LOUIS the Sixteenth, a thousand Mandats d'Arret
have been granted by the tyrannical demagogues of the revolution; for one
Bastile which existed under the Monarchy, a thousand Maisons de Detention
have been established by the Republic. In short, crimes of every
denomination, and acts of tyranny and injustice, of every kind, have
multiplied, since the abolition of royalty, in a proportion which sets
all the powers of calculation at defiance.