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• Advertisement From the Editor.
• Historical Memoirs.
• ‘to the Minister of the Home Department.
• ‘citizenness Roland to the Minister of Justice.
• ‘to the Minister of the Home Department.
• Citizenness Roland to the Deputy Dulaure, Author of the Thermometer of the Day.
• Note.
• Characters and Anecdotes.
• Buzot
• Pétion
• Pache
• Gironde. Guadet and Gensonné
• Vergniaux
• Grangeneuve
• Barbaroux
• Louvet
• Lazowski
• Robert
• Champfort and Carra
• Dorat-cubiéres
• Anecdotes.

‘To the minister of the home department.

June 8, 1793.

‘I know you have transmitted my complaints to the legislative body; but my letter has not been read. Have you fulfilled the whole of your duties by forwarding it at my request?—I have been apprehended, without any cause being alleged: I have been detained a week, without having been interrogated. It behoves you, filling a public post, to endeavour the delivery of that innocence, which you could not preserve from oppression.

‘You are more interested, perhaps, than myself, in the office I invite you to undertake. I am not the sole victim of prejudice and envy: and their present pursuit of every one, who unites virtue with talents, renders honourable the persecution, of which I am the object, and which is owing to my connexion with the venerable man, whose cause posterity will revenge. But you, who are now at the helm, if you be incapable of guiding it with a firm hand, will not escape the reproach of having yielded the vessel to the waves, and the disgrace of having remained at a post, the functions of which you could not execute.

‘Factions pass away, justice alone remains: and of all the faults of men in place weakness is the least pardoned; for it is the source of the greatest disorders, particularly in troublous times.

‘I need not add any thing to these reflections, if they reach you in time for you and for myself, or urge their application to what concerns me: since nothing can supply the want of courage and of will.’

Ministers, who have neglected and despised the decrees, that enjoined them to seek out the authors of the massacre of september, and the conspirators of the 10th of march; men, whose weak and unworthy conduct on those occasions emboldened guilt, favoured criminality, and assured this new insurrection, in which blindness and audacity, prescribing laws to the national convention, call forth all the evils of civil war; will not be the impeachers of oppression. From them I expect nothing: the truths I address to them are calculated much more to show them what they ought, and what they have failed, to do; than to procure me that justice, which they are incapable of rendering, unless a little shame produce a miracle.

Esop represents all the animals, who usually trembled at the aspect of the lion, coming to insult him when ill, each in his turn: thus the mob of inferiour men, deceived or jealous, attack with fury them, whom oppression holds captive, or whose capabilities it diminishes, by changing the public opinion respecting them. Of this the Thermometer of the Day, for the 9th of june, No. 526, affords an example. There appears, under the title of examination of L. P. d’Orleans, a series of questions, amongst which the following accusation is to be noticed: that he had been present at secret cabals, held by night at the apartment of the wife of Buzot, in the suburb of St. Germain; at which were present Dumouriez, Roland and his wife, Vergniaux, Brissot, Gensonné, Gorsas, Louvet, Petion, Cuadet, &c.’

What profundity of wickedness! and what excess of impudence! The deputies here named are precisely those, who voted for the banishment of the Bourbons. Those proud defenders of freedom never considered d’Orleans as a leader possessed of capacity; but he always appeared to them a dangerous implement. They were the first to dread his vices, his wealth, his connexions, his popularity, and his faction; and to denounce the latter, and pursue them, whom they deemed it’s agents. Louvet has marked them out in his Philippic against Robespierre; a valuable piece, as are all that have come from his pen, which history will carefully preserve; in which he follows them step by step to the electoral assembly, whence d’Orleans issued a deputy. Buzot, whose persevering energy has drawn on him the hatred of the factions, seized the first instant he thought favourable, to demand the banishment of the Bourbons; a measure, which he regarded as indispensable, from the moment the convention took upon itself to pass judgment on Lewis. Neither Roland, nor I, ever visited d’Orleans. Even Sillery, who I am told is a good and amiable man, I have avoided admitting to my house, because his connexion with d’Orleans rendered me suspicious of him. I remember two striking letters on this subject; one of which was written by madame Sillery to Louvet, after he had supported the motion of Buzot. ‘See here a proof,’ said Louvet, showing it to me, ‘that we are not mistaken, and that the Orleans party is no chimera. Madame Sillery would not write to me in such terms, were she not in concert with the parties concerned: and if they be so much afraid of banishment, it must be because exile will defeat some of their schemes.’ In fact, the object of the studied letter of madame Sillery was to induce Louvet to change his opinion: she endeavouring to persuade him, that the republican principles, in which the children of d’Orleans had been educated, would render them the most zealous supporters of a commonwealth; and that it was equally cruel and impolitic, to sacrifice unquestionably useful subjects to absurd prejudices.

The other letter was Louvet’s answer, which exhibited his motives for his opinion with force, yet delivered them with politeness. In it he observed, that the monarchical principles, and aristrocatical and other prejudices, which appeared in the works of madame Sillery herself, were far from satisfying him with respect to those of her pupils; and with the dignity of a free man he persisted in an opinion, which the love of his country inspired.

With respect to the pretended cabals at Buzot’s wife’s, nothing in the world could be so ridiculous. Buzot, who visited us frequently at the time of the constituent assembly, with whom I remained in friendly intercourse, and whose courage, sensibility, purity of principles, and gentleness of manners, inspired me with infinite esteem and attachment, came frequently to the residence of the minister of the home-department: his wife I visited only once, after their arrival at Paris, when he was sent up to the convention: and they had no kind of connexion with Dumouriez.

Indignant at these absurdities, I took up my pen to write to Dulaure, the editor of the Thermometer of the Day, a worthy man, who had visited me, till he was seduced by the mountain* .

[* ]I have since learnt, that the late excesses of the mountain have opened his eyes, and brought him to a proper sense of it’s principles.