Note 446 — Front matter (continued 11)

There is no exaggeration in the following account of the condition of France at this time: "Since France had become Republican every species of evil had accumulated upon its devoted head. Famine, a total cessation of commerce, civil war, attended by its usual accompaniments—conflagration, robbery, pillage, and murder. Justice was interrupted; the sword of the law wielded by iniquity; property spoliated; confiscation rendered the order of the day; the scaffold permanently erected; calumnious denunciations held in the highest estimation. Nothing was wanting to the general desolation."—Hist. de la Conv., vol. ii., p. 215, 216.