morality or vices of its functionaries, I will finish this man's portrait
with the following characteristic touches.

Merlin de Douai has been successively the counsel of the late Duc d'
Orleans, the friend of Danton, of Chabot, and of Hebert, the admirer of
Murat, and the servant of Robespierre. An accomplice of Rewbell, Barras,
and la Reveilliere, an author of the law of suspected persons, an
advocate of the Septembrizers, and an ardent apostle of the St.
Guillotine. Cunning as a fog and ferocious as a tiger, he has outlived
all the factions with which he has been connected. It has been his
policy to keep in continual fermentation rivalships, jealousies,
inquietudes, revenge and all other odious passions; establishing, by such
means, his influence on the terror of some, the ambition of others, and
the credulity of them all. Had I, when Merlin proposed his law
concerning suspected persons, in the name of liberty and equality, been
free and his equal, I should have said to him, "Monster, this, your
atrocious law, is your sentence of death; it has brought thousands of
innocent persons to an untimely end; you shall die by my hands as a
victim, if the tribunals do not condemn you to the scaffold as an
executioner or as a criminal."

Merlin has bought national property to the amount of fifteen million of
livress--and he is supposed to possess money nearly to the same amount,
in your or our funds. For a man born a beggar, and educated by charity,
this fortune, together with the liberal salaries he enjoys, might seem
sufficient without selling justice, protecting guilt, and oppressing or
persecuting innocence.