before Fructidor, are annihilated; instead of a general peace, which might have been concluded, every channel of honourable accommoda, tion has been shut up, by fwearing to proceed in a war of extermination with the English nation, in rufhing into a whirlpool of political circumstances, which may engender new coalitions against France, raife up new enemies in different parts of the world, and may throw a doubt upon the political character of the Republic, which had been fo honourably acknowledged by every power. No excufe can be found for continually, and without the leaft neceffity, risking the ftrength of our country, as at a game of chance, though we should be always fuccefsful. He who fhould veft his whole fortune in a lottery must be confidered as an ideot, and I should not confider him with more favour, though he should be a gainer in the weak and hazardous enterprize; efpecially if he were to continue his folly; but if this fortune fhould not be his own, and that he fhould poffefs nothing more than the adminiftration of it; and if, inftead of increasing it gradu. ally by prudent means, and employing its revenues for urgent necef fities, he fhould expend it at the gaming table, I should then accuse him not only of folly, but breach of confidence and treafon." Pp. 175-177.

The mildness of the republican government is well displayed in the following paffage :

"There never was a king who made fuch an oftentatious and ty rannical display of kingly power as each of our republican directors; never did any monarch equal them in watching the moft trifling actions of his fubjects. Never did the former monarchs of France treat their parliaments with the contempt which the Directory have manifefted to the legislative bodies. Cromwell himself did not reduce the Parliament of England to fimilar ignominy. The national reprefentation could not be reduced to a more abject state than that of being converted, under the cannon of the Directory, into a revolutionary tribunal. What is become of the folemn engagements en. tered into by the reprefentatives of the people? Where is the man who will hereafter dare to exert himself in defending the rights of thefe very people, and will have the courage to condemn thofe who waste the contributions raised by their own arbitrary exactions? Where is the man who will venture to oppofe himself to those who make peace or war without his participation; who at midnight violate the afylum of the peaceful citizen, and fend him to Cayenne, which is become the feat of those baftilles that have been established by the Republic? If there fhould be a man poffeffed of a degree of courage equal to fuch a conduct, let me afk, whether he would not be involved in the first confpiracy which the directors may find effential to the execution of their grand projects? But to be reduced to applaud fuch a feene of bafenefs, is to fink into a state of ignominy that is fcarce exceeded by the vile courtier, who, when the tyrant of Afia had pierced the heart of his fon with an arrow, compared the kill of the royal affaffin with that of Apollo." Pp. 185-187.

The

The characters of Barras, Reubel, and La Réveillère, are not ill drawn; and there is a curious anecdote related of the latter, who, when Doulcet, one of the profcribed members of the councils, at the revolution of Sept. 1797, was excepted by the councils from the decree of banifhment, recommended to have him afaffinated; but our extracts have already exceeded all proportion to the importance of the work. The tranfiation, from which nearly the whole of them have been taken, is generally fpirited and correct; and it is preceded by a well-written preface, evidently from the pen of the editor of the Intercepted Letters from Egypt,

ART. VIII. Tableau Hiftorique et Politique, &c. i.e, An Hiftorical and Political View of the Loffes fuftained by the French, by Means of the Revolution, in respect of their Population, Agriculture, Colonies, Manufactures, and Trade, By Sir Francis D'Ivernois. 8vo. Pp. 502. Price 7s. Elmley, London. 1799.

THE us for mer productions on the fubject of French

HE author modeftly offers this book to the public, as well

finance, as containing merely a collection of materials for the Hiftory of the French Revolution. Had it really no other merit than this, it would be entitled to confiderable commendation. To reduce to order the chaos of the revolutionary fyftem of finance, to prefent, in a clear point of view, and within a moderate compafs, an immense number of documents and facts, felected with judgement, to make them the subject of calculations, generally exact, and to deduce from them fatiffactory conclufions, tending to display the means of restoring focial order, was a work that required an equal portion of fagacity and refolution; and whoever shall undertake to write the general history of this eventful period, will lie under infinite obligations to the author, for his mafterly abridgement of the most difficult part of it. It were, indeed, to be wifhed, that the notes, which occupy one half of the book, had formed a part of the text. Such an arrangement would certainly have given more method and precifion to the work, and have produced a greater effect on the mind of the reader. The author, indeed, was fully aware of this defect, and has anticipated the reproach which it was calculated to incur, by obferving, that the information contained in the notes did not reach him, until he was far advanced in his work, and that, if he had waited to alter the arrangement of the chapters, the publication would have been delayed beyond that crisis which

3C4

muft

muft fix the fate of the civilized world for feveral centuries to come; and, in that cafe, his object would have been defeated.

Sir Francis has taken, at once, for the motto and the subject of his book, an affertion contained in a meffage from the Directory to the Councils, on the 19th of June, 1797-The Refources of the Republic remain entire.

"The more I reflected," he fays, "the more was I convinced, that the fate of the Continent depended on the truth or falfehood of this affertion, and that a view of the internal ftate of France, of the impoverishment of the country, would be a more instructive work than a mere account of the fifcal operations of the Directory. In a word, it appeared to me that an impartial and profound analysis of her internal refources might tend to defpel the charm which attaches to all her enterprizes an idea of real and permanent power; and to enlighten fuch nations as are fo blind as not to fee, that, by walking in her footsteps, they devote themselves to the pangs and fufferings of extreme mifery."

It is more especially to the meditations of ftatefmen, and, particularly, of the neutral powers, that the author fubmits this collection of facts, which are but imperfectly known, but which demonftrate, beyond the reach of doubt, that the deplorable inactivity of the northern potentates must inevitably expofe them to the fame fate which has been experienced by the Southern States. This falutary threat, as may be feen at the conclufion of the book, is chiefly addreffed to the King of Pruflia, whofe neutrality fufpends, at this moment, the total fubverfion of the revolutionary government.

The depopulation of France forms the first item in the account of her loffes. In ordinary wars, an army is reduced one-third in the courfe of a campaign. In the revolutionary war must be added, to the common caufes of deftruction, winter campaigns; the unufual intemperance and infubordination of the troops; the fcarcity of hofpitals; the wretched management of the few which they had; the want of wholefome food, neceffary medicines, and of experienced physicians, all of whom either died of epidemic diforders, or refigned from want of pay, and were replaced by quacks. It was particularly in the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 more detructive to the French than any recorded in modern hiftory, that these causes operated in the most dreadful manner.

In order to fix the extent of this lofs, the author lays it down as a fact, proved by the most authentic documents, that, at the beginning of 1795, the French armies amounted to 1,200,000 effective men, and that, in July, 1798, they did not

exceed 400,000, fo that they must have loft 800,000 men, without including those who perished in the deftructive campaigns of 1793 and 1794. The republican armies were renewed three times by the national guards. Hence it follows, that France has facrificed more troops than all the combined powers together, and that she has loft no lefs than 2,500,000 men, the death of one million and a half of whom proceeded from caufes peculiar to the revolution. And yet the Directory have had the effrontery to declare that France never was engaged in a war in which the loft fewer men!

Add to this black catalogue, the numbers that perished in the interior, by the lamp-cord, the guillotine, the malfacres of aristocrats, in 1789; in infurrectionary tumults; the icehoufe, at Avignon; the grape-fhot, at Lyon; the drowningboats, at Nantes; the murders of September; by banishment, imprisonment, and famine; and from poverty and grief. Add alfo the number of emigrants; 30,000 farmers, who fled their country, from Alface alone, in 1793; the 400,000 lives* that were lot in La Vendée; and at the fieges of Toulon, Lyon, and other places; and they will give, at the lowest calculation, an additional million of victims.

But the population of France has fuffered ftill lefs from the number of men whom the revolution has destroyed, than from the number of children whofe births it has prevented, or who have perished, after they came into the world, from the inability of their parents to fupport them. Formerly the foldiers were taken from the moft lazy, indolent, and profligate claffes of people, that were to be found in large towns, and that were already fo poor that celibacy was almoft a neceffary confequence of their fituation. But the population which the revolution has facrificed, during the laft feven years, on the field of battle, was taken indifcriminately from every clafs of fociety, without any exception of perfons in eafy circumtances who were moft difpofed to enter into the state of marriage, and beft able to support the expence of rearing and educating a numerous family. This was the clafs particularly calculated to repair the breaches made by the war in the population of the country; and yet it has been mowed down. by thoufands, in the bloom of life; in maturity of strength and vigour, (between 18 and 35,) at the period best suited for the propagation of the fpecies.

*We have feen a calculation (we believe in "The Banditti Un matked") which extends the number of lives loft, during the war in La Vendée, to 600,000.-REVIEWER,

"From

"From all thefe circumftances," fays the author, "I infer, that the population of France has already been reduced one-eighth fince the revolution, and that this reduction will continue to increase, more or lefs, progreffively, until the numerical proportion between the two fexes be nearly established."

Sir Francis D'Ivernois next enquires whether the revolution does not contain within itself the means of repairing the loffes which it has occafioned. Its principal means are, the augmentation of falaries, which, by meliorating the condition of the labouring class, tends to render marriages more frequent and more fertile; the confiderable reduction of the number of domeftics, refident in towns, and living in a state of celibacy, who henceforth, living in the country, will be induced to marry; and the vacuum produced by the numbers that have perished, which will give the furvivors additional means of fubfiftence, produce a prodigious increase of industry, and impart eafe to the rifing generation. But thefe caufes cannot be expected to produce their natural effects under a popular defpotifm, which is far more deftructive than the defpotifm of an individual. Whatever measures are adopted, the population of France will never be reftored to its former ftate but under a temperate government, determined to refpect property, capable of protecting it, and interested in maintaining peace, abroad and at home. Such government is too incompatible with the views of the prefent rulers of that diftracted country to admit a hope of its speedy establish

ment.

The multiplicity of fmall landed proprietors, who have purchased portions of the estates of the clergy and the emigrants, does not appear to the author to be a more efficacious means of re-peopling the country than thofe before noticed, because fo extenfive an ufurpation can never be confirmed without a civil war. Here he adverts to what paffed before the laft revolution, in Sept. 1797, when a number of perfons, who had acquired property in this manner, had already felt the neceffity, and expreffed the with, of reftoring their portion of the national theft; and he quotes the example of Ireland, where, according to him, the defcendants of thofe proprietors, whofe eftates were confifcated in the civil wars, still retain the hope of recovering the property of their ancestors by the fword. What foundation he has for this affertion we cannot pretend to decide.

But, admitting that the means of re-peopling the country, produced by the revolution, were as real as they are fallacious, itill they would be prevented from producing their full effects, by the immorality of the revolutionary fyftem of legislation;

by