It recalls to my remembrance a
happy portion of my life, passed in your native city; then the seat
of the most amiable and polished society of the world, and of which
yourself and your venerable father were such distinguished members. But
of what scenes has it since been the theatre, and with what havoc has
it overspread the earth! Robespierre met the fate, and his memory
the execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and
perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys
the poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the sycophants--even of
science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will
be consigned; and the day will come when a just posterity will give to
their hero the only pre-eminence he has earned, that of having been the
greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of his military
life has not consigned a million of human beings to death, to poverty,
and wretchedness? What field in Europe may not raise a monument of the
murders, the burnings, the desolations, the famines, and miseries, it
has witnessed from him! And all this to acquire a reputation, which
Cartouche attained with less injury to mankind, of being fearless of God
or man.
To complete and universalize the desolation of the globe, it has been
the will of Providence to raise up, at the same time, a tyrant as
unprincipled and as overwhelming, for the ocean.
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