--At the end of
their journey they were denounced by their companion, and conducted to
prison. The magistrate who took the information mentioned the
circumstance when I happened to be present. Indignant at such an act in
an Englishman, I enquired his name. You will judge of my surprize, when
he assured me it was the English Ambassador. I observed to him, that it
was not common for our Ambassadors to travel in stage-coaches: this, he
said, he knew; but that having reason to suspect the Marquis, Monsieur
l'Ambassadeur had had the goodness to have him watched, and had taken
this journey on purpose to detect him. It was not without much
reasoning, and the evidence of a lady who had been in England long enough
to know the impossibility of such a thing, that I would justify Lord
G____ from this piece of complaisance to the Jacobins, and convince the
worthy magistrate he had been imposed upon: yet this man is the Professor
of Eloquence at a college, is the oracle of the Jacobin society; and may
perhaps become a member of the Convention. This seems so almost
incredibly absurd, that I should fear to repeat it, were it not known to
many besides myself; but I think I may venture to pronounce, from my own
observation, and that of others, whose judgement, and occasions of
exercising it, give weight to their opinions, that the generality of the
French who have read a little are mere pedants, nearly unacquainted with
modern nations, their commercial and political relation, their internal
laws, characters, or manners.
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