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to the ground of this security in the attachment of the people to their constitution, and their satisfaction in the discreet portion of liberty which it measures out to them. Upon this I have said all I have to say, in the appeal I have published. That security is something, and not inconsiderable. But if a storm arises I should not much rely upon it.

Objection to

system.

There are other views of things the stability which may be used to give us a perof the French fect (though in my opinion a delusive) assurance of our own security. The first of these is from the weakness and ricketty nature of the new system in the place of its first formation. It is thought that the monster of a commonwealth cannot possibly live-that at any rate the ill contrivance of their fabrick will make it fall in pieces of itself that the Assembly must be bankrupt, and that this bankruptcy will totally destroy that system, from the contagion of which apprehensions are entertained.

For my part I have long thought that one great cause of the stability of this wretched scheme of things in France was an opinion that it could not stand; and, therefore, that all external measures to destroy it were wholly useless.

As to the bankruptcy, that event Bankruptcy. has happened long ago, as much as it is ever likely to happen. As soon as a nation compels a creditor to take paper currency in discharge of his debt, there is a bankruptcy. The compulsory paper has in some degree answered; not because there was a surplus from church lands, but because faith has not been kept with the clergy. As to the holders of the old funds, to them the payments will be dilatory, but they will be made, and whatever may be the discount on paper, whilst paper is taken, paper will be issued.

cruel hand on all men who have lived by the bounty, the justice, or the abuses, of the old government, they have lessened many expences. The royal establishment, though excessively and ridiculously great for their scheme of things, is reduced at least one half; the estates of the king's brothers, which under the ancient government had been in truth royal revenues, go to the general stock of the confiscation; and as to the crown lands, though, under the monarchy, they never yielded two hundred and fifty thousand a year, by many they are thought at least worth three times as much.

As to the ecclesiastical charge, whether as a compensation for losses, or a provision for religion, of which they made at first a great parade, and entered into a solemn engagement in favour of it, it was estimated at a much larger sum than they could expect from the church property, movable or immovable: they are completely bankrupt as to that article. It is just what they wish; and it is not productive of any serious inconvenience. The non-payment produces discontent and occasional sedition; but is only by fits and spasms, and amongst the country people who are of no consequence. These seditions furnish new pretexts for non-payment to the church establishment, and help the Assembly wholly to get rid of the clergy, and indeed of any form of religion, which is not only their real, but avowed object.

They are embarrassed indeed in the Want of money highest degree, but not wholly rehow supplied. sourceless. They are without the species of money. Circulation of money is a great convenience, but a substitute for it may be found. Whilst the great objects of production and consumption, corn, cattle, wine, and the like, exist in a country, the means of giving them circulation, with more or less convenience, cannot be wholly wanting. The great confiscation of the church and of the crown lands, and of the appendages of the princes, for the purchase of all which their paper is always received at par, gives means of continually destroying and continually creating, and this perpetual destruction and renovation feeds the speculative market, and prevents, and will prevent, till that fund of confiscation begins to fail, a total depreciation.

As to the rest, they have shot out Resources. three branches of revenue to supply all those which they have destroyed, that is, the Universal Register of all Transactions, the heavy and universal Stamp Duty, and the new Territorial Impost, levied chiefly on the reduced estates of the gentlemen. These branches of the revenue, especially as they take assignats in payment, answer their purpose in a considerable degree, and keep up the credit of their paper; for as they receive it in their treasury, it is in reality funded upon all their taxes and future resources of all kinds, as well as upon the church estates. As this paper is become in a manner the only visible maintenance of the whole people, the dread of a bankruptcy is more apparently connected with the delay of a counter-revolution, than with the duration of this republick; because the interest of the new republick manifestly leans upon it; and, instantially exists in France; I mean the several my opinion, the counter-revolution cannot exist along with it. The above three projects ruined some ministers under the old government, merely for having conceived them. They are the salvation of the present rulers.

As the Assembly has laid a most unsparing and

But all consideration of publick Monied intercredit in France is of little avail at est not neces present. The action indeed of the sary to them. monied interest was of absolute necessity at the beginning of this Revolution; but the French republick can stand without any assistance from that description of men, which, as things are now circumstanced, rather stands in need of assistance itself from the power which alone sub

districts and municipal republicks, and the several clubs which direct all their affairs and appoint all their magistrates. This is the power now paramount to every thing, even to the Assembly itself called National, and that to which tribunals, priesthood, laws, finances, and both descriptions of mili

tary power are wholly subservient, so far as the military power of either description yields obedience to any name of authority.

The world of contingency and political combination is much larger than we are apt to imagine. We never can say what may or may not happen, without a view to all the actual circumstances. Experience, upon other data than those, is of all things the most delusive. Prudence in new cases can do nothing on grounds of retrospect. A constant vigilance and attention to the train of things as they successively emerge, and to act on what they direct, are the only sure courses. The physician that let blood, and by blood-letting cured one kind of plague, in the next added to its ravages. That power goes with property is not universally true, and the idea that the operation of it is certain and invariable may mislead us very fatally.

Power separated from

Whoever will take an accurate view of the state of those republicks, and property. of the composition of the present Assembly deputed by them, (in which Assembly there are not quite fifty persons possessed of an income amounting to 1007. sterling yearly,) must discern clearly, that the political and civil power of France is wholly separated from its property of every description; and of course that neither the landed nor the monied interest possesses the smallest weight or consideration in the direction of any publick concern. The whole kingdom is directed by the refuse of its chicane, with the aid of the bustling, presumptuous young clerks of counting-houses and shops, and some intermixture of young gentlemen of the same character in the several towns. The rich peasants are bribed with church lands; and the poorer of that description are, and can be, counted for nothing. They may rise in ferocious, ill-directed tumults -but they can only disgrace themselves and signalize the triumph of their adversaries. Effect of the The truly active citizens, that is, the above descriptions, are all concerned in intrigue respecting the various objects in their local or their general government. The rota, which the French have established for their National Assembly, holds out the highest objects of ambition to such vast multitudes as, in an unexampled measure, to widen the bottom of a new species of interest merely political, and wholly unconnected with birth or property. This scheme of a rota, though it enfeebles the state considered as one solid body, and indeed wholly disables it from acting as such, gives a great, an equal, and a diffusive strength to the democratick scheme. Seven hundred and fifty people, every two years, raised to the supreme power, has already produced at least fifteen hundred bold, acting politicians; a great number for even so great a country as France. These men never will quietly settle in ordinary occupations, nor submit to any scheme which must reduce them to an entirely private condition, or to the exercise of a steady, peaceful, but obscure and unimportant, industry. Whilst

rota.

they sit in the Assembly they are denied offices of trust and profit--but their short duration makes this no restraint-during their probation and apprenticeship they are all salaried with an income to the greatest part of them immense; and, after they have passed the novitiate, those who take any sort of lead are placed in very lucrative offices, according to their influence and credit, or appoint those who divide their profits with them.

This supply of recruits to the corps of the highest civil ambition goes on with a regular progression. In very few years it must amount to many thousands. These, however, will be as nothing in comparison to the multitude of municipal officers, and officers of district and department, of all sorts, who have tasted of power and profit, and who hunger for the periodical return of the meal. To these needy agitators, the glory of the state, the general wealth and prosperity of the nation, and the rise or fall of publick credit, are as dreams; nor have arguments deduced from these topicks any sort of weight with them. The indifference with which the Assembly regards the state of their colonies, the only valuable part of the French commerce, is a full proof how little they are likely to be affected by any thing but the selfish game of their own ambition, now universally diffused.

sistance.

It is true, amidst all these turbulent Impracticameans of security to their system, bility of revery great discontents every where prevail. But they only produce misery to those who nurse them at home; or exile, beggary, and in the end confiscation, to those who are so impatient as to remove from them. Each municipal republick has a committee, or something in the nature of a committee of research. In these petty republicks the tyranny is so near its object, that it becomes instantly acquainted with every act of every man. It stifles conspiracy in its very first movements. Their power is absolute and uncontroulable. No stand can be made against it. These republicks are besides so disconnected, that very little intelligence of what happens in them is to be obtained, beyond their own bounds, except by the means of their clubs, who keep up a constant correspondence, and who give what colour they please to such facts as they choose to communicate out of the track of their correspondence. They all have some sort of communication, just as much or as little as they please, with the centre. By this confinement of all communication to the ruling faction, any combination, grounded on the abuses and discontents in one, scarcely can reach the other. There is not one man, in any one place, to head them. The old government had so much abstracted the nobility from the cultivation of provincial interest, that no man in France exists, whose power, credit, or consequence, extends to two districts, or who is capable of uniting them in any design, even if any man could assemble ten men together, without being sure of a speedy lodging in a prison. One must not judge of the state of France by

what has been observed elsewhere. It does not | of Spain, the king of Sardinia, and the republick in the least resemble any other country. Ana- of Berne, are very diligent in using defensive logical reasoning from history or from recent experience in other places is wholly delusive.

In my opinion there never was seen so strong a government internally as that of the French municipalities. If ever any rebellion can arise against the present system, it must begin, where the Revolution which gave birth to it did, at the capital. Paris is the only place in which there is the least freedom of intercourse. But even there, so many servants as any man has, so many spies and irreconcilable domestick enemies.

Gentlemen are But that place being the chief seat fugitives. of the power and intelligence of the ruling faction, and the place of occasional resort for their fiercest spirits, even there a revolution is not likely to have any thing to feed it. The leaders of the aristocratick party have been drawn out of the kingdom by order of the princes, on the hopes held out by the emperour and the king of Prussia at Pilnitz; and as to the democratick factions in Paris, amongst them there are no leaders possessed of an influence for any other purpose but that of maintaining the present state of things. The moment they are seen to warp, they are reduced to nothing. They have no attached armyno party that is at all personal.

measures.

If they were to guard against an invasion from France, the merits of this plan of a merely defensive resistance might be supported by plausible topicks; but as the attack does not operate against these countries externally, but by an internal corruption (a sort of dry rot); they, who pursue this merely defensive plan, against a danger which the plan itself supposes to be serious, cannot possibly escape it. For it is in the nature of all defensive measures to be sharp and vigorous under the impressions of the first alarm, and to relax by degrees; until at length the danger, by not operating instantly, comes to appear as a false alarm; so much so that the next menacing appearance will look less formidable, and will be less provided against. But to those who are on the offensive it is not necessary to be always alert. Possibly it is more their interest not to be so. For their unforeseen attacks contribute to their success. In the mean time a system of French conspiracy is gaining ground in every country. This system happening to be founded on principles the most delusive indeed, but the most flattering to the natural propensities of the unthinking multitude, and to the speculations of all those who think, without thinking very profoundly, must daily extend its influence. A predominant inclination towards it appears in all those who have no religion, when otherwise their disposition leads them to be advocates even for despotism. Hence Hume, though I cannot say that he does not throw out some expressions of disapprobation on the proceedings of the levellers

The French

party how composed.

It is not to be imagined because a political system is, under certain aspects, very unwise in its contrivance, and very mischievous in its effects, that it therefore can have no long duration. Its very defects may tend to its stability, because they are agreeable to its nature. The very faults in the constitution of Poland made it last; the veto which destroyed all its energy preserved its life. What can be conceived so monstrous as the repub-in the reign of Richard the Second, yet affirms that lick of Algiers? and that no less strange republick of the Mamalukes in Egypt? They are of the worst form imaginable, and exercised in the worst manner, yet they have existed as a nuisance on the earth for several hundred years.

From all these considerations, and many more that crowd upon me, three conclusions have long since arisen in my mind

First, that no counter-revolution is Conclusions. to be expected in France, from internal causes solely.

Secondly, that the longer the present system exists, the greater will be its strength; the greater its power to destroy discontents at home, and to resist all foreign attempts in favour of these dis

contents.

Thirdly, that as long as it exists in France, it will be the interest of the managers there, and it is in the very essence of their plan, to disturb and distract all other governments, and their endless succession of restless politicians will continually stimulate them to new attempts. Proceeding of Princes are generally sensible that princes; de- this is their common cause; and two fensive plans. of them have made a publick declaration of their opinion to this effect. Against this common danger, some of them, such as the king

the doctrines of John Ball were" conformable to "the ideas of primitive equality, which are engraven in the hearts of all men."

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Boldness formerly was not the character of atheists as such. They were even of a character nearly the reverse: they were formerly like the old Epicureans, rather an unenterprising race. But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious. They are sworn enemies to kings, nobility, and priesthood. We have seen all the academicians at Paris, with Condorcet, the friend and correspondent of Priestley, at their head, the most furious of the extravagant republicans.

Condorcet.

The late Assembly, after the last captivity of the king, had actually chosen this Condorcet by a majority in the ballot, for preceptor to the dauphin, who was to be taken out of the hands and direction of his parents, and to be delivered over to this fanatick atheist, and furious democratick republican. His untractability to these leaders, and his figure in the club of jacobins, which at that time they wished to bring under, alone prevented that part of the arrangement, and others in the same style, from being carried into execution. Whilst he was candidate for this office he produced his title to it by

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promulgating the following ideas of the title of his royal pupil to the crown. In a paper written by him, and published with his name, against the reestablishment, even of the appearance of monarchy under any qualifications, he says: "Jusqu'à ce "moment ils [l'Assemblée Nationale] n'ont rien préjugé encore. En se reservant de nommer un gouverneur au dauphin, ils n'ont pas proDoctrine of "noncé que cet enfant dût regner; the French. "mais seulement qu'il étoit possible que la constitution l'y destinât; ils ont voulu 66 que l'éducation, effaçant tout ce que les prestiges du Trône ont pu lui inspirer de préjugés sur les droits prétendus de sa naissance, qu'elle "lui fit connoître de bonne heure, et l'Egalité "naturelle des hommes, et la Souveraineté du "peuple; qu'elle lui apprit à ne pas oublier que "c'est du peuple qu'il tiendra le titre de roi, et que le peuple n'a pas même le droit de renoncer " à celui de l'en depouiller.

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"Ils ont voulu que cette éducation le rendit également digne, par ses lumières, et ses vertus, "de recevoir avec resignation, le fardeau dangereux d'une couronne, ou de la déposer avec joie entre le mains de ses frères, qu'il sentit que le "devoir, et la gloire du roi d'un peuple libre, est "de båter le moment de n'être plus qu'un citoyen "ordinaire.

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"Ils ont voulu que l'inutilité d'un roi, la né"cessité de chercher les moyens de remplacer un "pouvoir fondé sur les illusions, fut une des pre"mières vérités offertes à sa raison; l'obligation “d'y concourir luimême un des premières devoirs "de sa morale; et le desir de n'être plus affran"chi du joug de la loi, par une injurieuse invio"labilité, le premier sentiment de son cœur. Ils "n'ignorent pas que dans ce moment il s'agit bien "moins de former un roi que de lui apprendre à "savoir, à vouloir ne plus l'être."

All former attempts, grounded on these rights of men, had proved unfortunate. The success of this last makes a mighty difference in the effect of the doctrine. Here is a principle of a nature, to the multitude, the most seductive, always existing before their eyes, as a thing feasible in practice. After so many failures, such an enterprise, previous to the French experiment, carried ruin to the contrivers, on the face of it; and if any enthusiast was so wild as to wish to engage in a scheme of that nature, it was not easy for him to find followers: now there is a party almost in all countries, ready made, animated with success, with a sure ally in the very centre of Europe. There is no cabal so obscure in any place, that they do not protect, cherish, foster, and endeavour to raise it into importance at home and abroad. From the lowest, this intrigue will creep up to the highest. Ambition, as well as enthusiasm, may find its account in the party and in the principle.

ministers.

The ministers of other kings, like Character of those of the king of France, (not one of whom was perfectly free from this guilt, and some of whom were very deep in it,) may themselves be the persons to foment such a disposition and such a faction. Hertzberg, the king of Prussia's late minister, is so much of what is called a philosopher, that he was of a faction with that sort of politicians in every thing, and in every place. Even when he defends himself from the imputation of giving extravagantly into these principles, he still considers the Revolution of France as a great publick good, by giving credit to their fraudulent declaration of their universal benevolence, and love of peace. Nor are his Prussian majesty's present ministers at all disinclined to the same system. Their ostentatious preamble to certain late edicts demonstrates (if their actions had not been sufficiently explanatory of their cast of mind) that they are deeply infected with the same distemper of dangerous, because plausible, though trivial and shallow speculation.

Such are the sentiments of the man who has occasionally filled the chair of the National Assembly, who is their perpetual secretary, their only standing officer, and the most important by far. He leads them to peace or war. He is the great Ministers, turning their backs on the reputation theme of the republican faction in England. which properly belongs to them, aspire at the These ideas of M. Condorcet, are the principles of glory of being speculative writers. The duties of those to whom kings are to entrust their successors, these two situations are, in general, directly opand the interests of their succession. This man posite to each other. Speculators ought to be would be ready to plunge the poniard in the heart neutral. A minister cannot be so. He is to of his pupil, or to whet the axe for his neck. Of support the interest of the publick as connected all men, the most dangerous is a warm, hot-headed, with that of his master. He is his master's zealous atheist. This sort of man aims at domi- trustee, advocate, attorney, and steward-and he nion, and his means are, the words he always has is not to indulge in any speculation which conin his mouth," L'égalité naturelle des hommes, et tradicts that character, or even detracts from its "la souveraineté du peuple." efficacy. Necker had an extreme thirst for this

Until now, they (the National Assembly) have prejudged nothing. Reserving to themselves a right to appoint a preceptor to the dauphin, they did not declare that this child was to reign; but only that possibly the constitution might destine him to it: they willed that while education should efface from his mind all the prejudices arising from the delusions of the throne respecting his pretended birth-right, it should also teach him not to forget, that it is from the people he is to receive the title of king, and that the people do not even possess the right of giving up their power to take it from him.

They willed that this education should render him worthy by his knowledge, and by his virtues, both to receive with submission the dangerous burden of a crown, and to resign it

with pleasure into the hands of his brethren: that he should be conscious that the hastening of that moment when he is to be only a common citizen constitutes the duty and the glory of a free people.

They willed that the uselessness of a king, the necessity of seeking means to establish something in lieu of a power founded on illusions, should be one of the first truths offered to his reason; the obligation of conforming himself to this, the first of his moral duties; and the desire of no longer being freed from the yoke of the law, by an injurious inviolability, the first and chief sentiment of his heart. They are not ignorant that in the present moment the object is less to form a king than to teach him that he should know how to wish no longer to be such.

sort of glory; so had others; and this pursuit of a misplaced and misunderstood reputation was one of the causes of the ruin of these ministers, and of their unhappy master. The Prussian ministers in foreign courts have (at least not long since) talked the most democratick language with regard to France, and in the most unmanaged terms. Corps diplo- The whole corps diplomatique, with matique. very few exceptions, leans that way. What cause produces in them a turn of mind, which at first one would think unnatural to their situation, it is not impossible to explain. The discussion would however be somewhat long and somewhat invidious. The fact itself is indisputable, however they may disguise it to their several courts. This disposition is gone to so very great a length in that corps, in itself so important, and so important as furnishing the intelligence which sways all cabinets, that if princes and states do not very speedily attend with a vigorous controul | to that source of direction and information, very serious evils are likely to befall them.

Sovereigns

tions.

But indeed kings are to guard their disposi- against the same sort of dispositions in themselves. They are very easily alienated from all the higher orders of their subjects, whether civil or military, laick or ecclesiastical. It is with persons of condition that sovereigns chiefly come into contact. It is from them that they generally experience opposition to their will. It is with their pride and impracticability, that princes are most hurt; it is with their servility and baseness, that they are most commonly disgusted; it is from their humours and cabals, that they find their affairs most frequently troubled and distracted. But of the common people, in pure monarchical governments, kings know little or nothing; and therefore being unacquainted with their faults, (which are as many as those of the great, and much more decisive in their effects when accompanied with power,) kings generally regard them with tenderness and favour, and turn their eyes towards that description of their subjects, particularly when hurt by opposition from the higher orders. It was thus that the king of France (a perpetual example to all sovereigns) was ruined. I have it from very sure information (and indeed it was obvious enough from the measures which were taken previous to the assembly of the states, and afterwards,) that the king's counsellors had filled him with a strong dislike to his nobility, his clergy, and the corps of his magistracy. They represented to him, that he had tried them all severally, in several ways, and found them all untractable. That he had twice called an assembly, (the notables,) composed of the first men of the clergy, the nobility, and the magistrates; that he had himself named every one member in those assemblies, and that, though so picked out, he had not, in this their collective state, found them more disposed to a compliance with his will than they had been separately. That there remained for him, with the least prospect of advantage to his authority in the states general,

which were to be composed of the same sorts of men, but not chosen by him, only the tiers état. In this alone he could repose any hope of extricating himself from his difficulties, and of settling him in a clear and permanent authority. They represented, (these are the words of one of my informants,)"That the royal authority compressed "with the weight of these aristocratick bodies, "full of ambition, and of faction, when once unloaded, would rise of itself, and occupy its "natural place without disturbance or controul :" that the common people would protect, cherish, and support, instead of crushing it. "The people" (it was said)" could entertain no objects "of ambition;" they were out of the road of intrigue and cabal; and could possibly have no other view than the support of the mild and parental authority by which they were invested, for the first time collectively, with real importance in the state, and protected in their peaceable and useful employments.

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King of France.

This unfortunate king (not without a large share of blame to himself) was deluded to his ruin by a desire to humble and reduce his nobility, clergy, and his corporate magistracy; not that I suppose he meant wholly to eradicate these bodies, in the manner since effected by the democratick power; I rather believe that even Necker's designs did not go to that extent. With his own hand, however, Louis the XVIth pulled down the pillars which upheld his throne; and this he did, because he could not bear the inconveniences which are attached to every thing human; because he found himself cooped up, and in durance, by those limits which nature prescribes to desire and imagination; and was taught to consider as low and degrading, that mutual dependence which Providence has ordained that all men should have on one another. He is not at this minute perhaps cured of the dread of the power and credit likely to be acquired by those who would save and rescue him. He leaves those who suffer in his cause to their fate; and hopes by various, mean, delusive intrigues, in which I am afraid he is encouraged from abroad, to regain, among traitors and regicides, the power he has joined to take from his own family, whom he quietly sees proscribed before his eyes, and called to answer to the lowest of his rebels, as the vilest of all criminals.

Emperour.

It is to be hoped that the emperour may be taught better things by this fatal example. But it is sure that he has advisers who endeavour to fill him with the ideas which have brought his brother-in-law to his present situation. Joseph the Second was far gone in this philosophy, and some, if not most, who serve the emperour, would kindly initiate him into all the mysteries of this free-masonry. They would persuade him to look on the National Assembly not with the hatred of an enemy, but with the jealousy of a rival. They would make him desirous of doing, in his own dominions, by a royal despotism, what has been done in France by a democratick.

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