Monday July 7th: I remained at New-York in order to get a little
recruited and refreshed. I lodged at my brother in Law Coll: W. S.
Smith’s.— At dinner this day at his house 3I met M.
Talleyrand, the ci-devant bishop of Autun, Mr: Beaumetz member
of the constituent national assembly of France, and Mr: De la Colombe,
who was aid de-Camp to M. de la
Fayette, was with him when he left his own army, and made
his own escape from the Austrians in disguise.
Talleyrand and Beaumetz
have both been Presidents of the constituent assembly in France. the
former was the intimate friend of Mirabeau; great promoters of the revolution and among the
first victims of it. The former a man of high birth and a bishop, first
made the motion for the confiscation of the ecclesiastical property.
They are now here in banishment. Excluded from France, by the prevalence
of a party, different from that to which they belong: excluded from
England for the part which they have borne in the french revolution;
this Country of universal Liberty, this asylum from the most opposite
descriptions of oppression is the only one in which they can find
rest.
Talleyrand is reserved and distant. Beaumetz more sociable and communicative. It is natural to look with reverence or at least with curiosity upon men who have been so highly and so recently conspicuous upon the most splendid theatre of human affairs. If indeed success is the criterion of political excellence, not one individual that has been hitherto actively engaged in the progress of the french revolutions has been equal to the situation in which he has been placed— The parties have successively destroyed one another, and in the general wreck it is not easy to distinguish between those 4whose fall has been the effect of their own incapacity, and those who have been only unfortunate.
Perhaps there never has been a period in the history of mankind, when Fortune has sported so wantonly with Reputation, as of late in France. The tide of popularity has ebbed and flowed with nearly the same frequency as that of the Ocean, though not with the same regularity. Neckar, Bailly, La Fayette, Mirabeau, Barnave, Pethion, Condorcet, Brissot, Danton and innumerable others have in their turns been at one moment the idols and at the next the victims of the popular clamour. In the distribution of fame as in every thing else they have been always in extremes. And no doubt among the great number whom it has pleased the Sovereign people, to adore for a moment, there must be many very undeserving of their worship— Many ordinary characters adapted only to the mediocrity of calm & quiet times, and whom nothing but the rapid circulation of a revolutionary period could ever have raised to be seen upon the surface. Whether the Gentlemen of whom I am now speaking are of this description, it becomes not me to say.