some of your patriots behold this with envy, and it is not to be wondered
at that they should wish to see a similar revolution in England. What a
seducing prospect for the assertors of liberty, to have the power of
imprisoning and guillotining all their countrymen! What halcyon days,
when the aristocratic palaces* shall be purified by solacing the fatigues
of republican virtue, and the levellers of all distinction travel with
four horses and a military escort!--But, as Robespierre observes, you are
two centuries behind the French in patriotism and information; and I
doubt if English republicanism will ever go beyond a dinner, and toasting
the manes of Hampden and Sydney. I would, therefore, seriously advise
any of my compatriots who may be enamoured of a government founded on the
rights of man, to quit an ungrateful country which seems so little
disposed to reward their labours, and enjoy the supreme delight of men a
systeme, that of seeing their theories in action.

* Many of the emigrants' houses were bought by members of the
Convention, or people in office. At Paris, crouds of inferior
clerks, who could not purchase, found means to get lodged in the
most superb national edifices: Monceaux was the villa of
Robespierre--St. Just occasionally amused himself at Raincy--Couthon
succeed the Comte d'Artois at Bagatelle-and Vliatte, a juryman of
the Revolutionary Tribunal, was lodged at the pavillion of Flora, in
the Tuilleries, which he seems to have occupied as a sort of Maitre
d'Hotel to the Comite de Salut Public.

_A propos_--a decree of the Convention has lately passed to secure the
person of Mr. Thomas Paine, and place seals on his papers. I hope,
however, as he has been installed in all the rights of a French citizen,
in addition to his representative inviolability, that nothing more than a
temporary retreat is intended for him. Perhaps even his personal