We return to Amiens to-morrow, though you must not imagine so formidable
a person as myself is permitted to wander about the republic without due
precaution; and I had much difficulty in being allowed to come, even
attended by a guard, who has put me to a considerable expence; but the
man is civil, and as he has business of his own to transact in the town,
he is no embarrassment to me.
Amiens, Nov. 26, 1794.
The Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, and the National
Convention, all seem to have acted from a persuasion, that their sole
duty as revolutionists was comprised in the destruction of whatever
existed under the monarchy. If an institution were discovered to have
the slightest defect in principle, or to have degenerated a little in
practice, their first step was to abolish it entirely, and leave the
replacing it for the present to chance, and for the future to their
successors. In return for the many new words which they have introduced
into the French language, they have expunged that of reform; and the
havock and devastation, which a Mahometan conqueror might have performed
as successfully, are as yet the only effects of philosophy and
republicanism.
This system of ignorance and violence seems to have persecuted with
peculiar hostility all the ancient establishments for education; and the
same plan of suppressing daily what they have neither leisure nor
abilities to supply, which I remarked to you two years ago, has directed
the Convention ever since.
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