Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/70

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THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

by their parents to offer the nation the contents of their money-boxes, a girl of twelve giving her watch, pensioners renouncing their annuities, and officers handing in their decorations; but to allow speechifying at the bar was ruinous to business, and eventually to freedom of deliberation. Frenchmen resident abroad sent or brought their contributions, and Englishmen, like other foreigners, caught the infection.

Bryan Edwards, M.P., the historian of the West Indies, forwarded a quarter of his French revenues (December 1789). Samuel Swinton, proprietor of the Courier de l'Europe, for which Brissot formerly wrote, offered 415 francs, the profits of the sale of the paper in France in 1789, and promised a larger sum next year; but there is no record of a second remittance. Nicholas Gay, F.R.S., waited on the Assembly (January 1792) to present 1000 francs towards the war. Amidst the plaudits which greeted his eulogy of the Constitution, a deputy objected to money being accepted from foreigners; but another deputy replied that Gay generally spent the winter in France, and might be considered naturalised, while a third remarked that all free men were brothers. Gay, too liberal even for his ample means, the author in 1799 of a pamphlet against the union with Ireland, died at Margate in 1803. Jones—probably the Hugh Jones, wine merchant, destined to imprisonment under the