I have in general remarked, that the republicans are either of the
species I have just been describing, waiters, jockies, gamblers,
bankrupts, and low scribblers, living in great splendour, or men taken
from laborious professions, more sincere in their principles, more
ignorant and brutal--and who dissipate what they have gained in gross
luxury, because they have been told that elegance and delicacy are worthy
only of Sybarites, and that the Greeks and Romans despised both. These
patriots are not, however, so uninformed, nor so disinterested, as to
suppose they are to serve their country without serving themselves; and
they perfectly understand, that the rich are their legal patrimony, and
that it is enjoined them by their mission to pillage royalists and
aristocrats.*
--Yours.
* Garat observes, it was a maxim of Danton, _"Que ceux qui fesaient
les affaires de la republique devaient aussi faireles leurs,"_ that
who undertook the care of the republic should also take care of
themselves. This tenet, however, seems common to the friends of
both.
Paris, June 6, 1795.
I had scarcely concluded my last, when I received advice of the death of
Madame de la F--------; and though I have, almost from the time we
quitted the Providence, thought she was declining, and that such an event
was probable, it has, nevertheless, both shocked and grieved me.
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