Webb? Yet, bating the danger, I
assure you, the audience of Amiens was equally unreasonable. But liberty
at present seems to be in an undefined state; and until our rulers shall
have determined what it is, the matter will continue to be settled as it
is now--by each man usurping as large a portion of tyranny as his
situation will admit of. He who submits without repining to his
district, to his municipality, or even to the club, domineers at the
theatre, or exercises in the street a manual censure on aristocratic
apparel.*
*It was common at this time to insult women in the streets if
dressed too well, or in colours the people chose to call
aristocratic. I was myself nearly thrown down for having on a straw
bonnet with green ribbons.
Our embarrassment for small change is renewed: many of the communes who
had issued bills of five, ten, and fifteen sols, repayable in assignats,
are become bankrupts, which circumstance has thrown such a discredit on
all this kind of nominal money, that the bills of one town will not pass
at another. The original creation of these bills was so limited, that no
town had half the number requisite for the circulation of its
neighbourhood; and this decrease, with the distrust that arises from the
occasion of it, greatly adds to the general inconvenience.
The retreat of the Prussian army excites more surprize than interest, and
the people talk of it with as much indifference as they would of an event
that had happened beyond the Ganges.
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