*
* It has frequently been asserted in the Convention, that by
emigrations, banishments, and executions, half Paris had become the
property of the public.
--Yet these unseemly and desolate appearances do not prevent the
attendance of congregations more numerous, and, I think, more fervent,
than were usual when the altars shone with the offerings of wealth, and
the walls were covered with the more interesting decorations of pictures
and tapestry.
This it is not difficult to account for. Many who used to perform these
religious duties with negligence, or indifference, are now become pious,
and even enthusiastic--and this not from hypocrisy or political
contradiction, but from a real sense of the evils of irreligion, produced
by the examples and conduct of those in whom such a tendency has been
most remarkable.--It must, indeed, be acknowledged, that did Christianity
require an advocate, a more powerful one need not be found, than in a
retrospect of the crimes and sufferings of the French since its
abolition.
Those who have made fortunes by the revolution (for very few have been
able to preserve them) now begin to exhibit equipages; and they hope to
render the people blind to this departure from their visionary systems of
equality, by foregoing the use of arms and liveries--as if the real
difference between the rich and the poor was not constituted rather by
essential accommodation, than extrinsic embellishments, which perhaps do
not gratify the eyes of the possessor a second time, and are, probably of
all branches of luxury, the most useful.
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