The revolution of this country has advanced thus far without
encountering any thing which deserves to be called a difficulty. There
have been riots in a few instances, in three or four different places,
in which there may have been a dozen or twenty lives lost. The exact
truth is not be got at. A few days ago, a much more serious riot took
place in this city, in which it became necessary for the troops to
engage in regular action with the mob, and probably about one hundred of
the latter were killed. Accounts vary from twenty to two hundred. They
were the most abandoned banditti of Paris, and never was a riot more
unprovoked and unpitied. They began, under a pretence that a paper
manufacturer had proposed in an assembly, to reduce their wages to
fifteen sous a day. They rifled his house, destroyed every thing in his
magazines and shops, and were only stopped in their career of mischief,
by the carnage above mentioned. Neither this nor any other of the riots,
have had a professed connection with the great national reformation
going on. They are such as have happened every year since I have been
here, and as will continue to be produced by common incidents.
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