Chapter 391

Berkeley Square, March 23, 1793.(page 538)

I shall certainly not leave off taunting your virtues, my excellent friend, for I find it sometimes makes you correct them. I scolded you for your modesty in not acquainting me with your "Village Politics" even after they were published; and you have already conquered that unfriendly delicacy, and announced another piece of which you are in labour. Still I se there wanted your ghostly father, the )Bishop of London, to join you to be quite shameless and avow your natural child.(848) I do approve his doctrine: calling it by your own name will make its fortune. If, like Rousseau, you had left your babe among the enfans trouv`es, it might never be heard of more than his poor issue have been; for I can but observe that the French patriots, who have made such a fuss with his ashes, have not taken the smallest pains to attempt to discover his real progeny, which might not have been impossible by collating dates and circumstances. I am proud of having imitated you at a great distance, and been persuaded, much against my will and practice, to let my name be put to the second subscription for the poor French clergy, as it was thought it might tend to animate that consumptive contribution.

I am impatient for your pamphlet, not only as being yours, but hoping it will invigorate horror against French atheism, which, I am grieved to say did not by any means make due impression. very early apply to your confessor, to beg he would enjoin his clergy to denounce that shocking impiety; I could almost recommend to you to add a slight postscript on the massacre of that wretch Manuel. I do not love such insects as we are dispensing judgments yet, if the punishment of that just victim might startle such profane criminals, it might be charity to suggest the hint to them.

24th.

I must modify the massacre of Manuel; he has been a good deal stabbed, but will, they say, recover.(849) Perhaps it is better that some of those assassins should live to acknowledge, that "Do not to others what you would not have done to you" is not so silly a maxim as most of the precepts of morality and Justice have lately been deemed by philosophers and legislators--titles self-assumed by men who have abolished all other titles; and who have disgraced and debased the former denomination, and under the latter have enjoined triple perjuries, and at last cannot fix on any code which should exact more forswearing. I own I am pleased that that ruffian pedant Condorcet's new constitution was too clumsy and unwieldy to go down the throats of those who have swallowed every thing else. I did but just cast my eyes on the beginning and end, and was so lucky as to observe the hypocrite's contradiction: he sets out with declaration of equality, and winds up with security of property; that is, we will plunder every body, and then entail the spoils on ourselves and our (wrong) heirs.(850)

Well! that bloody chaos seems recoiling on themselves! It looks as if civil war was bursting out in many provinces, and will precipitate approaching famine. When, till now, could one make such a reflection without horror to one's self? But, alas! have not the French brought it to the question, whether Europe or France should be laid desolate'! Religion, morality, justice, have been stabbed, torn up by the roots: every right has been trampled under foot. Marriage has been profaned and undermined by law; and no wonder, that, amidst such excesses, the poor arts have shared in the common ruin! And who have been the perpetrators of, or advocates for, such universal devastation? Philosophers, geometricians, astronomers--a Condorcet, a Bailly, a Bishop of Autun, and a Doctor Priestley, and the last the worst. The French had seen grievances, crying grievances! yet not under the good late King. But what calamities or dangers threatened or had fallen on Priestley, but want of papal power, like his predecessor Calvin? If you say his house was burnt -but did he intend the fire should blaze on that side of the street? Your charity may believe him innocent, but your understanding does not. Well! I am glad to hear he is going to America; I hope he will not bring back scalping, even to that National Assembly of which he was proud of being elected a member! I doubt if Cartouche would have thought it an honour. It was stuck up in Lloyd's coffeehouse lately, that the Duke of Orleans was named "Chef de la R`epublique." I thought it should be "Chef de la Lie publique."

(848) Miss More had informed Walpole, that she was occupied in writing her "Remarks" on the atheistical speech of M. Dupont, made in the National Convention; and to which the Bishop of London had recommended her to put her name.-E.

(849) Manuel was deeply implicated in the massacres of 1792; in consequence of which he was nominated a deputy to the National Convention. He resigned his seat in January 1793, and retired to Montargis, where he narrowly escaped assassination. He was afterwards seized as a suspected person. On being brought before the revolutionary tribunal, he reminded his judges of his services, and desired it might be engraved on his tombstone, that he had occasioned the events of the 10th of August. He was guillotined in November 1793.-E.

(850) In the following July, Condorcet was accused of being an accomplice with Brissot, and, to save his life, concealed himself in the house of Madame Verney, where he remained eight months. Having at length learned that death was denounced against all who harboured a proscribed individual, he fled in disguise from Paris. He wandered about for some time, until, driven by hunger, he entered a small public-house at Clamar, where he was arrested as a suspicious person, and thrown into prison. On the following morning, March 28, 1794, he was found dead on the floor of his room, having apparently swallowed poison, which he always carried about with him.-E.