Mrs. D____ is too ill to travel far at present, and
her dread of crossing the sea makes her less disposed to think our
situation here hazardous or ineligible. Mr. D____, too, who, without
being a republican or a partizan of the present system, has always been a
friend to the first revolution, is unwilling to believe the Convention so
bad as there is every reason to suppose it. I therefore let my judgement
yield to my friendship, and, as I cannot prevail on them to depart, the
danger which may attend our remaining is an additional reason for my not
quitting them.
The national perfidy which has always distinguished France among the
other countries of Europe, seems now not to be more a diplomatic
principle, than a rule of domestic government. It is so extended and
generalized, that an individual is as much liable to be deceived and
betrayed by confiding in a decree, as a foreign power would be by relying
on the faith of a treaty.--An hundred and twenty priests, above sixty
years of age, who had not taken the oaths, but who were allowed to remain
by the same law that banished those who were younger, have been lately
arrested, and are confined together in a house which was once a college.
The people did not behold this act of cruelty with indifference, but,
awed by an armed force, and the presence of the Commissioners of the
Convention, they could only follow the priests to their prison with
silent regret and internal horror.
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