Mankind are in general more attached to customs than principles. The
useful despotism of Peter, which subdued so many of the prejudices of his
countrymen, could not achieve the curtailment of their beards; and you
must not imagine that, with all the endurance of the French, these
continual attempts at innovation pass without murmurs: partial revolts
happen very frequently; but, as they are the spontaneous effect of
personal suffering, not of political manoeuvre, they are without concert
or union, of course easily quelled, and only serve to strengthen the
government.--The people of Amiens have lately, in one of these sudden
effusions of discontent, burnt the tree of liberty, and even the
representative, Dumont, has been menaced; but these are only the blows of
a coward who is alarmed at his own temerity, and dreads the chastisement
of it.*
* The whole town of Bedouin, in the south of France, was burnt
pursuant to a decree of the convention, to expiate the imprudence of
some of its inhabitants in having cut down a dead tree of liberty.
Above sixty people were guillotined as accomplices, and their bodies
thrown into pits, dug by order of the representative, Magnet, (then
on mission,) before their death. These executions were succeeded by
a conflagration of all the houses, and the imprisonment or
dispersion of their possessors. It is likewise worthy of remark,
that many of these last were obliged, by express order of Maignet,
to be spectators of the murder of their friends and relations.
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