About fifteen departments are in insurrection, ostensibly in behalf of
the expelled Deputies; but I believe I am authorized in saying, it is by
no means the desire of the people at large to interfere. All who are
capable of reflection consider the dispute merely as a family quarrel,
and are not partial enough to either party to adopt its cause. The
tropps they have already raised have been collected by the personal
interest of the members who contrived to escape, or by an attempt of a
few of the royalists to make one half of the faction subservient to the
destruction of the other. If you judge of the principles of the nation
by the success of the Foederalists,* and the superiority of the
Convention, you will be extremely deceived; for it is demonstrable, that
neither the most zealous partizans of the ancient system, nor those of
the abolished constitution, have taken any share in the dispute; and the
departments most notoriously aristocratic have all signified their
adherence to the proceedings of the Assembly.
* On the 31st of May and 2d of June, the Convention, who had been
for some months struggling with the Jacobins and the municipality of
Paris, was surrounded by an armed force: the most moderate of the
Deputies (those distinguished by the name of Brissotins,) were
either menaced into a compliance with the measures of the opposite
faction, or arrested; others took flight, and, by representing the
violence and slavery in which the majority of the Convention was
holden, excited some of the departments to take arms in their
favour.
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