Charlotte Biggs

“ At Paris, where more than fifty victims were dragged daily to the scaffold, the theatres never failed to overflow, and that on the Place de la Revolution was not the least frequented. The public, in their way every evening to the Champs Ellisees, continued uninterruptedly to cross the stream of blood that deluged this fatal spot with the most dreadful indifference; and now, though these days of horror are scarcely passed over our heads, one would suppose them ages removed—so little are we sensible that we are dancing, as it were, on a platform of dead bodies. ”

“ A bon mot may alleviate the loss of a battle, and a lampoon on the court solace under the burthen of a new impost; but the most thoughtless or improvident can find nothing very facetious in the prospect of absolute want—and those who have been used to laugh under a circumscription of their political liberty, feel very seriously the evil of a government which endows its members with unlimited power, and enables a Deputy, often the meanest and most profligate character of his department, to imprison all who, from caprice, interest, or vengeance, may have become the objects of his persecution. ”

“ When I was here in 1790, parties could be scarcely said to exist—the popular triumph was too complete and too recent for intolerance and persecution, and the Noblesse and Clergy either submitted in silence, or appeared to rejoice in their own defeat. In fact, it was the confusion of a decisive conquest—the victors and the vanquished were mingled together; and the one had not leisure to exercise cruelty, nor the other to meditate revenge. Politics had not yet divided society; nor the weakness and pride of the great, with the malice and insolence of the little, thinned the public places. ”

“ At this crisis, then, when the Convention could no longer temporize with the expectations it raised—when the government was divided between one party who had deposed the King to gratify their own ambition, and another who had lent their assistance in order to facilitate the pretensions of an usurper—and when the hopes of the country were anxiously fixed on him, died Louis the Seventeenth. At an age which, in common life, is perhaps the only portion of our existence unalloyed by misery, this innocent child had suffered more than is often the lot of extended years and mature guilt. ”

“ The undefined notions of liberty imbibed from poets and historians, fade away—my reverence for names long consecrated in our annals abates—and the sole object of my political attachment is the English constitution, as tried by time and undeformed by the experiments of visionaries and impostors. I begin to doubt either the sense or honesty of most of those men who are celebrated as the promoters of changes of government which have chiefly been adopted rather with a view to indulge a favourite theory, than to relieve a people from any acknowledged oppression. ”

“ Imagine to yourself whatever tyranny can inflict, or human nature submit to— whatever can be the result of unrestrained wickedness and unresisting despair—all that can scourge or disgrace a people—and you may form some idea of the actual state of this country: but do not search your books for comparisons, or expect to find in the proscriptions and extravagancies of former periods any examples by which to judge the present.—Tiberius and Nero are on the road to oblivion, and the subjects of the Lama may boast comparative pretensions to rank as a free and enlightened nation. ”

“ I know nothing more disgustingly impertinent than his ignorance, which intrenches itself behind the forms of civility, and, affecting to decline controversy, assumes the merit of forbearance and moderation: yet this must have been often observed by every one who has lived much in French society: for the first emotion of a Frenchman, on hearing any thing which tends to place another country on an equality with France, is doubt—this doubt is instantly reinforced by vanity—and, in a few seconds, he is perfectly satisfied that the thing is impossible. ”

“ It is now the custom for all people to address each other by the appellation of Citizen; and whether you are a citizen or not—whether you inhabit Paris, or are a native of Peru—still it is an indication of aristocracy, either to exact, or to use, any other title. This is all congruous with the system of the day: the abuses are real, the reform is imaginary. The people are flattered with sounds, while they are losing in essentials. And the permission to apply the appellation of Citizen to its members, is but a poor compensation for the despotism of a department or a municipality. ”

“ Several of our fellow prisoners, whom I supposed only transferred to other houses, have been taken away to undergo the ceremony of a trial, and from thence to the scaffold. These judicial massacres are now become common, and the repetition of them has destroyed at once the feeling of humanity and the sense of justice. Familiarized to executions, the thoughtless and sanguinary people behold with equal indifference the guilty or innocent victim; and the Guillotine has not only ceased to be an object of horror, but is become almost a source of amusement. ”

“ I know not if one's heart gain any thing by this habitual contemplation of successive victims, who ought not to inspire pity, and whom justice and humanity forbid one to regret.—How many parties have fallen, who seem to have laboured only to transmit a dear-bought tyranny, which they had not time to enjoy themselves, to their successors: The French revolutionists may, indeed, adopt the motto of Virgil's Bees, "Not for ourselves, but for you." ”

“ Such vanity, however, is not pardonable: a man has a right to ruin himself, or to make himself ridiculous; but when his vanity becomes baneful to others, as it has all the effect, so does it merit the punishment, of vice.
Of all the rest, Condorcet has most powerfully disgusted me. The avowed wickedness of Thuriot or Marat inspires one with horror; but this cold philosophic hypocrite excites contempt as well as detestation. He seems to have wavered between a desire to preserve the reputation of humanity, which he has affected, and that of gratifying the real depravity of his mind. ”

“ One half of the newspaper is filled with a list of names of the guillotined, and the other with that of places of amusement; and every thing now more than ever marks that detestable association of cruelty and levity, of impiety and absurdity, which has uniformly characterized the French revolution. It is become a crime to feel, and a mode to affect a brutality incapable of feeling—the persecution of Christianity has made atheism a boast, and the danger of respecting traditional virtues has hurried the weak and timid into the apotheosis of the most abominable vices. ”

“ But this revolutionary barbarism, not content with stopping the progress of the rising generation, has ravaged without mercy the monuments of departed genius, and persecuted with senseless despotism those who were capable of replacing them. Pictures have been defaced, statues mutilated, and libraries burnt, because they reminded the people of their Kings or their religion; while artists, and men of science or literature, were wasting their valuable hours in prison, or expiring on the scaffold.—The moral and gentle Florian died of vexation. ”

“ Every person I meet seems to have contracted a sort of revolutionary aspect: many walk with their heads down, and with half-shut eyes measure the whole length of a street, as though they were still intent on avoiding greetings from the suspicious; some look grave and sorrow-worn; some apprehensive, as if in hourly expectation of a mandat d'arret; and others absolutely ferocious, from a habit of affecting the barbarity of the times. ”

“ I have often thought, that the habit of watching with selfish avidity for those turns of fortune which enrich one individual by the misery of another, must imperceptibly tend to harden the heart. How can the gamester, accustomed both to suffer and inflict ruin with indifference, preserve that benevolent frame of mind, which, in the ordinary and less censurable pursuits of common life, is but too prone to become impaired, and to leave humanity more a duty than a feeling? ”

“ Yet, while they exercised this savage oppression in the countries near the Loire, their fellow-citizens on the banks of the Seine crouched at the frown of paltry tyrants, and were unresistingly dragged to dungeons, or butchered by hundreds on the scaffold.—At Marseilles, Lyons, Bourdeaux, Arras, wherever these baleful principles have made converts, they have made criminals and victims; and those who have been most eager in imbibing or propagating them have, by a natural and just retribution, been the first sacrificed. ”

“ One dreads the present expence, another future persecution, and all are solicitous to find cause for exemption.
This reluctance, though perhaps to be regretted, is in a great measure justifiable. Where the lives and fortunes of a whole nation are dependent on the changes of party, obscurity becomes the surest protection, and those who are zealous now, may be the first sacrifices hereafter. Nor is it encouraging to arm for the defence of the Convention, which is despised, or to oppose the violence of a populace, who, however misguided, are more objects of compassion than of punishment. ”

“ Every one will then be at liberty to form his spiritual regimen to his own taste, till in the end the invincible ascendant of reason shall teach him that the Supreme Being, the Eternal Being, is no other than Nature uncreated and uncreatable; and that the only Providence is the association of mankind in freedom and equality!— This sovereign providence affords comfort to the afflicted, rewards the good, and punishes the wicked. ”

“ How are the morals of the people to resist a doctrine which teaches them that the rich only can be criminal, and that poverty is a substitute for virtue—that wealth is holden by the sufferance of those who do not possess it—and that he who is the frequenter of a club, or the applauder of a party, is exempt from the duties of his station, and has a right to insult and oppress his fellow citizens? ”

“ After all this, Lecointre, whose figure is almost ludicrous, and who is no orator, was to repeat a voluminous denunciation, amidst the clamour, abuse, chicane, and derision of the whole Convention. But there are occasions when the keenest ridicule is pointless; when the mind, armed by truth and elevated by humanity, rejects its insidious efforts—and, absorbed by more laudable feelings, despises even the smile of contempt. ”

“ Every allusion to the Austrians, every song or sentence, expressive of determined resistance, is followed by bursts of assent, easily distinguishable not to be the effort of party, but the sentiment of the people in general. There are, doubtless, here, as in all other places, party dissensions; but the threatened siege seems at least to have united all for their common defence: they know that a bomb makes no distinction between Feuillans, Jacobins, or Aristocrates, and neither are so anxious to destroy the other, when it is only to be done at such a risk to themselves. ”

“ The French are on the eve of exhibiting the singular spectacle of a nation enlightened by science, accustomed to the benefit of laws and the enjoyment of arts, suddenly becoming barbarous by system, and sinking into ignorance from choice.—When the Goths shared the most curious antiques by weight, were they not more civilized than the Parisian of 1793, who disturbs the ashes of Henry the Fourth, or destroys the monument of Turenne, by a decree?—I have myself been forced to an act very much in the spirit of the times, but I could not, without risking my own safety, do otherwise ”

“ In this source of guilt and misery the people of La Vendee are now to be instructed—that people, who are acknowledged to be hospitable, humane, and laborious, and whose ideas of freedom may be better estimated by their resistance to a despotism which the rest of France has sunk under, than by the jargon of pretended reformers.—I could wish, that not only the peasants of La Vendee, but those of all other countries, might for ever remain strangers to such pernicious knowledge. ”