At this price they purchase the liberty of appearing; and the
exclusive privilege they enjoy, as well as the contradictory and
lying assertions they all contain, prove the truth of what I
advance. They are all preachers of liberty, yet never was liberty
so shamefully outraged--of respect for property, and property was at
no time so little held sacred--of personal security, yet when were
there committed so many massacres? and, at the very moment I am
writing, new ones are premeditated. They call vehemently for
submission, and obedience to the laws, but the laws had never less
influence; and while our compliance with such as we are even
ignorant of is exacted, it is accounted a crime to execute those in
force. Every municipality has its own arbitrary code--every
battalion, every private soldier, exercises a sovereignty, a most
absolute despotism; and yet the Gazettes do not cease to boast the
excellence of such a government. They have, one and all, attributed
the massacres of the tenth of August and the second of September,
and the days following each, to a popular fermentation. The
monsters! they have been careful not to tell us, that each of these
horrid scenes (at the prisons, at La Force, at the Abbaye, &c. &c.)
was presided by municipal officers in their scarfs, who pointed out
the victims, and gave the signal for the assassination.
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