--
Attempts at political as well as moral perfection, when carried beyond
the limits compatible with a social state, or the weakness of our
natures, are likely to end in a depravity which moderate governments and
rational ethics would have prevented.
The debates of the Convention are violent and acrimonious. Robespierre
has been accused of aspiring to the Dictatorship, and his defence was by
no means calculated to exonerate him from the charge. All the chiefs
reproach each other with being the authors of the late massacres, and
each succeeds better in fixing the imputation on his neighbour, than in
removing it from himself. General reprobation, personal invectives, and
long speeches, are not wanting; but every thing which tends to
examination and enquiry is treated with much more delicacy and composure:
so that I fear these first legislators of the republic must, for the
present, be content with the reputation they have assigned each other,
and rank amongst those who have all the guilt, but want the courage, of
assassins.
I subjoin an extract from a newspaper, which has lately appeared.*
*Extract from _The Courier de l'Egalite,_ November, 1792:
"There are discontented people who still venture to obtrude their
sentiments on the public. One of them, in a public print, thus
expresses himself--
'I assert, that the newspapers are sold and devoted to falsehood.
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