A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Part III., 1794: Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady: with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and MannersBiggs, Charlotte
History
A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Part III., 1794: Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady: with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and Manners
Biggs, Charlotte
Biggs, Charlotte, approximately 1763-1827 -- Correspondence; France -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; France -- Social life and customs -- 1789-1815
A grand-daughter of the celebrated De Witt, who resided thirty leagues
from hence, was arrested in the night, put in an open cart, without any
regard to her age, her sex, or her infirmities, though the rain fell in
torrents; and, after sleeping on straw in different prisons on the road,
was deposited here. As a Fleming, the law places her in the same
predicament with a very pretty young woman who has lived some months at
Amiens; but Dumont, who is at once the maker, the interpreter, and
executor of the laws, has exempted the latter from the general
proscription, and appears daily with her in public; whereas poor Madame
De Witt is excluded from such indulgence, being above seventy years old--
and is accused, moreover, of having been most exemplarily charitable,
and, what is still worse, very religious.--I have given these instances
not as any way remarkable, and only that you may form some idea of the
pretexts which have served to cover France with prisons, and to conduct
so many of its inhabitants to the scaffold.
It is impossible to reflect on a country in such a situation, without
abhorring the authors of it, and dreading the propagation of their
doctrines. I hope they neither have imitators nor admirers in England;
yet the convention in their debates, the Jacobins, and all the French
newspapers, seem so sanguine in their expectation, and so positive in
their assertions of an English revolution, that I occasionally, and in
spite of myself, feel a vague but serious solicitude, which I should not
have supposed the apprehension of any political evil could inspre. I
know the good sense and information of my countrymen offer a powerful
resource against the love of change and metaphysical subtilties; but, it
is certain, the French government have much depended on the spirit of
party, and the zeal of their propagandistes. They talk of a British
convention, of a conventional army, and, in short, all France seem
prepared to see their neighbours involved in the same disastrous system
with themselves. The people are not a little supported in this error by
the extracts that are given them from your orators in the House of
Commons, which teem with nothing but complaints against the oppression of
their own country, and enthusiastic admiration of French liberty. We
read and wonder--collate the Bill of Rights with the Code
Revolutionnaire, and again fear what we cannot give credit to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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