Amidst such scenes as I was yesterday condemned to describe, it were impossible but an universal corruption of manners must follow, and it has accordingly arrived. That the French should pant to be free, who can doubt, or who can blame? But it has happened to _them_, as it must to every people who are suddenly hurried into extremes, without the national mind being in any degree prepared for the change which has taken place. This people possesses not the stability of character, or the austere self-denying virtues, of the ancient republicans. Many of the present leading demagogues of the convention do not even affect a common regularity of manners; and, if the public journals, which do not spare them by name, may be believed, wallow in the most scandalous sensuality. I read the other day a description of a drunken scene between one of the Merlins and a brother deputy, which was pourtrayed with much humour. I mention this to shew you, that the editors of news-papers here are not more afraid of the executive power than on your side of the water. When I compare the present number of the convention to what it was at its institution, not three years since, and recollect the causes,----self-murder, public execution, desertion, and banishment----which have occasioned the diminution, I stand petrified with amazement and horror. What stronger proof of the depravity of this legislative assembly can be adduced than their perpetual deliberate acts of treachery towards each other, in betraying private conversations, which have passed among themselves? Their annals are full of it. How many of their members have been hurried by it to the _guillotine_; and how many more have been supplanted in the public favour by the informers!