He saw that the able artificers in the trade and mystery of murder did not choose that their skill should be unemployed after their first work; and that they were full as ready to cut off their rivals as their enemies. This gave him one alarm, that was serious. This letter of Roland in every part of it lets out the secret of all the parties in this revolution. Plena rimarum est; hac, atque illac, perfluit. We see that none of them condemn the occasional practice of murder; provided it is properly applied; provided it is kept within the bounds which each of those parties think proper to prescribe. In this case Roland feared, that, if what was occasionally useful should become habitual, the practice might go farther than was convenient. It might involve the best friends of the last revolution, as it had done the heroes of the first revolution: he feared that it would not be confined to the La Fayettes and ClermontTonnerres, the Duponts and Barnaves; but that it might extend to the Brissots and Vergniauxs, to the Condorcets, the Petions, and to himself. Under this apprehension there is no doubt that his humane feelings were altogether unaffected.

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His observations on the massacre of the preceding day are such as cannot be passed over :Yesterday," said he, was a day upon the " events of which it is perhaps necessary to leave a veil; I know that the people with their vengeance mingled a sort of justice; they did not "take for victims all who presented themselves to "their fury; they directed it to them who had for a long time been spared by the sword of the "law, and who they believed, from the peril of "circumstances, should be sacrificed without delay. But I know that it is easy to villains and "traitors to misrepresent this effervescence, and "that it must be checked: I know that we owe "to all France the declaration, that the executive power could not foresee or prevent this excess. "I know that it is due to the constituted authori"ties to place a limit to it, or consider themselves 66 as abolished.

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In the midst of this carnage he thinks of nothing but throwing a veil over it: which was at once to cover the guilty from punishment, and to extinguish all compassion for the sufferers. He apologizes for it; in fact, he justifies it. He, who (as the reader has just seen in what is quoted from this letter) feels so much indignation at " vague "denunciations" when made against himself, and from which he then feared nothing more than the subversion of his power, is not ashamed to consider the charge of a conspiracy to massacre the Parisians brought against his master upon denunciations as vague as possible, or rather upon no denunciations, as a perfect justification of the monstrous proceedings against him. He is not ashamed * See p. 12, and p. 13, of this translation.

Carmes, who were under no criminal denunciation whatsoever," a vengeance mingled with a sort of justice;" he observes that "they had been a long time spared by the sword of the law," and calls by anticipation all those, who should represent this effervescence" in other colours, villains and traitors: he did not then foresee, how soon himself and his accomplices would be under the necessity of assuming the pretended character of this new sort of" villany and treason," in the hope of obliterating the memory of their former real villanies and treasons:-he did not foresee, that in the course of six months a formal manifesto on the part of himself and his faction, written by his confederate Brissot, was to represent this "effervescence" as another " St. Bartholomew;" and speak of it as having made humanity shudder, and sullied the Revolution for ever."

It is very remarkable that he takes upon himself to know the motives of the assassins, their policy, and even what they "believed." How could this be if he had no connexion with them? He praises the murderers for not having taken as yet all the lives of those who had, as he calls it," presented themselves as victims to their fury." He paints the miserable prisoners who had been forcibly piled upon one another in the church of the Carmelites, by his faction, as presenting themselves as victims to their fury; as if death was their choice; or, (allowing the idiom of his language to make this equivocal,) as if they were by some accident presented to the fury of their assassins: whereas he knew, that the leaders of the murderers sought these pure and innocent victims in the places where they had deposited them, and were sure to find them. The very selection, which he praises as a sort of justice tempering their fury, proves, beyond a doubt, the foresight, deliberation, and method, with which this massacre was made. He knew that circumstance on the very day of the commencement of the massacres, when, in all probability, he had begun this letter, for he presented it to the Assembly on the very next.

Whilst, however, he defends these acts, he is conscious that they will appear in another light to the world. He therefore acquits the executive power, that is, he acquits himself (but only by his own assertion) of those acts "of vengeance mixed with a sort of justice," "as an excess which he could neither foresee nor prevent." He could not, he says, foresee these acts; when he tells us, the people of Paris had sagacity so well to foresee the designs of the court on the tenth of August; to foresee them so well, as to mark the precise epoch on which they were to be executed, and to contrive to anticipate them on the very day he could not foresee these events, though he declares in this very letter that victory must bring with it some excess;" that the sea roars long after the tempest." So far as to his foresight. As to his disposition to prevent, if he had foreseen, the massacres of that day; this will be judged by his

on.

care in putting a stop to the massacre then going This was no matter of foresight. He was in the very midst of it. He does not so much as pretend, that he had used any force to put a stop to it. But if he had used any, the sanction given under his hand, to a sort of justice in the murderers, was enough to disarm the protecting force.

That approbation of what they had already done had its natural effect on the executive assassins, then in the paroxysm of their fury; as well as on their employers, then in the midst of the execution of their deliberate cold-blooded system of murder. He did not at all differ from either of them in the principle of those executions, but only in the time of their duration; and that only as it affected himself. This, though to him a great consideration, was none to his confederates, who were at the same time his rivals. They were encouraged to accomplish the work they had in hand. They did accomplish it; and whilst this grave moral epistle from a grave minister, recommending a cessation of their work of " vengeance mingled with a sort of justice," was before a grave assembly, the authors of the massacres proceeded without interruption in their business for four days together; that is, until the seventh of that month, and until all the victims of the first proscription in Paris and at Versailles, and several other places, were immolated at the shrine of the grim Moloch of liberty and equality. All the priests, all the loyalists, all the first essayists and novices of revolution in 1789, that could be found, were promiscuously put to death.

Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it is curious to remark how the nerve and vigour of his style, which had spoken so potently to his sovereign, is relaxed, when he addresses himself to the sans-culottes; how that strength and dexterity of arm, with which he parries and beats down the scepter, is enfeebled and lost, when he comes to fence with the poignard! When he speaks to the populace he can no longer be direct. The whole compass of the language is tried to find synonymes and circumlocutions for massacre and murder. Things are never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess; sometimes too continued an exercise of a revolutionary power.

However, after what had passed had been praised, or excused, or pardoned, he declares loudly against such proceedings in future. Crimes had pioneered and made smooth the way for the march of the virtues; and from that time order and justice, and a sacred regard for personal property, were to become the rules for the new democracy. Here Roland and the Brissotines leagued for their own preservation, by endeavouring to preserve peace. This short story will render many of the parts of Brissot's pamphlet, in which Roland's views and intentions are so often alluded to, the more intelligible in themselves, and the more useful in their application by the English reader.

Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot, and their party, hoped to gain the bankers, mer

chants, substantial tradesmen, hoarders of assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and gentry, to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to the effects which they possessed, whether these effects were the acquisitions of fair commerce, or the gains of jobbing in the misfortunes of their country, and the plunder of their fellow citizens. In this design the party of Roland and Brissot succeeded in a great degree. They obtained a majority in the National Convention. Composed however as that Assembly is, their majority was far from steady: but whilst they appeared to gain the Convention, and many of the outlying departments, they lost the city of Paris entirely and irrecoverably; it was fallen into the hands of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. Their instruments were the sans-culottes, or rabble, who domineered in that capital, and were wholly at the devotion of those incendiaries, and received their daily pay. The people of property were of no consequence, and trembled before Marat and his janizaries. As that great man had not obtained the helm of the state, it was not yet come to his turn to act the part of Brissot and his friends, in the assertion of subordination and regular government. But Robespierre has survived both these rival chiefs, and is now the great patron of jacobin order.

To balance the exorbitant power of Paris, (which threatened to leave nothing to the National Convention, but a character as insignificant as that which the first assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis the Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders were Roland, Petion, Vergniaux, Isnard, Condorcet, &c. &c. &c. applied themselves to gain the great commercial towns, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, Nantz, and Bourdeaux. The republicans of the Brissotin description, to whom the concealed royalists, still very numerous, joined themselves, obtained a temporary superiority in these places. In Bourdeaux, on account of the activity and eloquence of some of its representatives, this superiority was the most distinguished. This last city is seated on the Garonne, or Gironde; and being the centre of a department named from that river, the appellation of Girondists was given to the whole party. These, and some other towns, declared strongly against the principles of anarchy; and against the despotism of Paris. Numerous addresses were sent to the Convention, promising to maintain its authority, which the addressers were pleased to consider as legal and constitutional, though chosen, not to compose an executive government, but to form a plan for a constitution.

In the Convention, measures were taken to obtain an armed force from the several departments to maintain the freedom of that body, and to provide for the personal safety of the members; neither of which, from the fourteenth of July 1789, to this hour, have been really enjoyed by their assemblies sitting under any denomination.

This scheme, which was well conceived, had not the desired success. Paris, from which the Convention did not dare to move, though some threats of such a departure were from time to time thrown out, was too powerful for the party of the Gironde. Some of the proposed guards, but neither with regularity nor in force, did indeed arrive; they were debauched as fast as they came; or were sent to the frontiers. The game played by the revolutionists in 1789, with respect to the French guards of the unhappy king, was now played against the departmental guards, called together for the protection of the revolutionists. Every part of their own policy comes round, and strikes at their own power and their own lives.

The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in taking the alarm. They had just reason to apprehend, that if they permitted the smallest delay, they should see themselves besieged by an army collected from all parts of France. Violent threats were thrown out against that city in the assembly. Its total destruction was menaced. A very remarkable expression was used in these debates, "that in future times it might be enquired, on "what part of the Seine Paris had stood." The faction which ruled in Paris, too bold to be intimidated, and too vigilant to be surprised, instantly armed themselves. In their turn, they accused the Girondists of a treasonable design to break the republick one and indivisible (whose unity they contended could only be preserved by the supremacy of Paris) into a number of confederate commonwealths. The Girondin faction on this account received also the name of federalists.

Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities. Paris, the mother of equality, was herself to be equalised. Matters were come to this alternative; either that city must be reduced to a mere member of the federative republick, or, the Convention, chosen, as they said, by all France, was to be brought regularly and systematically under the dominion of the common-hall, and even of any one of the sections of Paris.

In this awful contest, thus brought to issue, the great mother club of the jacobins was entirely in the Parisian interest. The Girondins no longer dared to shew their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths at least of the jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great patriarchal jacobiniere of Paris, to which they were (to use their own term) affiliated. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive, had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to interfere; and they chose to interfere in every thing, and on every occasion. All hope of gaining them to the support of property, or to the acknowledgment of any law but their own will, was evidently vain, and hopeless. Nothing but an armed insurrection against their anarchical authority could answer the purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured by rebellion, as it had been caused by it.

As a preliminary to this attempt on the jacobins and the commons of Paris, which it was hoped would be supported by all the remaining property

| of France, it became absolutely necessary to prepare a manifesto, laying before the publick the whole policy, genius, character, and conduct, of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which all those concerned in this Revolution, were, at the several periods of their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and under these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of his party, which he executed with no small ability; and in this manner the whole mystery of the French Revolution was laid open in all its parts.

It is almost needless to mention to the reader the fate of the design to which this pamphlet was to be subservient. The jacobins of Paris were more prompt than their adversaries. They were the readiest to resort to what La Fayette calls the most sacred of all duties, that of insurrection. Another æra of holy insurrection commenced the thirtyfirst of last May. As the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on insurrection, and of that rebellion improving upon rebellion, the sacred, irresponsible character of the members of the Convention was laughed to scorn. They had themselves shewn, in their proceedings against the late king, how little the most fixed principles are to be relied upon, in their revolutionary constitution. The members of the Girondin party in the Convention were seized upon, or obliged to save themselves by flight. The unhappy author of this piece with twenty of his associates suffered together on the scaffold, after a trial, the iniquity of which puts all description to defiance.

The English reader will draw from this work of Brissot, and from the result of the last struggles of this party, some useful lessons. He will be enabled to judge of the information of those who have undertaken to guide and enlighten us, and who, for reasons best known to themselves, have chosen to paint the French Revolution and its consequences in brilliant and flattering colours.-They will know how to appreciate the liberty of France, which has been so much magnified in England. They will do justice to the wisdom and goodness of their sovereign and his parliament, who have put them in a state of defence, in the war audaciously made upon us, in favour of that kind of liberty. When we see (as here we must see) in their true colours, the character and policy of our enemies, our gratitude will become an active principle. It will produce a strong and zealous cooperation with the efforts of our government, in favour of a constitution under which we enjoy advantages, the full value of which, the querulous weakness of human nature requires sometimes the opportunity of a comparison, to understand and to relish.

Our confidence in those who watch for the publick will not be lessened. We shall be sensible that to alarm us in the late circumstances of our affairs, was not for our molestation, but for our security. We shall be sensible that this alarm was

not ill-timed-and that it ought to have been given, as it was given, before the enemy had time fully to mature and accomplish their plans, for reducing us to the condition of France, as that condition is faithfully and without exaggeration described in the following work. We now have our arms in our hands; we have the means of opposing the sense, the courage, and the resources, of England to the deepest, the most craftily devised, the best combined, and the most extensive design, that ever was carried on, since the beginning of the world, against all property, all order, all religion, all law, and all real freedom.

The reader is requested to attend to the part of this pamphlet which relates to the conduct of the jacobins, with regard to the Austrian Netherlands, which they call Belgia or Belgium. It is from page seventy-two to page eighty-four of this translation. Here the views and designs upon all their neighbours are fully displayed. Here the whole mystery of their ferocious politicks is laid open with the utmost clearness. Here the manner, in which they would treat every nation, into which they could introduce their doctrines and influence, is distinctly marked. We see that no nation was out of danger, and we see what the danger was with which every nation was threatened. The writer of this pamphlet throws the blame of several of the most violent of the proceedings on the other party. He and his friends, at the time alluded to, had a majority in the National Assembly. He admits that neither he nor they ever publickly opposed these measures; but he attributes their silence to a fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain, that, whether from fear, or from approbation, they never discovered any dislike of those proceedings till Dumourier was driven from the Netherlands. But whatever their motive was, it is plain that the most violent is, and since the Revolution has always been, the predominant party.

If Europe could not be saved without our interposition, (most certainly it could not,) I am sure there is not an Englishman who would not blush to be left out of the general effort made in favour of the general safety. But we are not secondary parties in this war; we are principals in the danger, and ought to be principals in the exertion. If any Englishman asks whether the designs of the French assassins are confined to the spot of Europe which they actually desolate, the citizen Brissot, the author of this book, and the author of the declaration of war against England, will give him his answer. He will find in this book, that the republicans are divided into factions, full of the most furious and destructive animosity against each other: but he will find also that there is one point in which they perfectly agree -that they are all enemies alike to the government of all other nations, and only contend with each other about the means of propagating their tenets, and extending their empire by conquest.

See the translation of Mallet du Pan's work, printed for Owen, page 53.

It is true, that, in this present work, which the author professedly designed for an appeal to foreign nations and posterity, he has dressed up the philosophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he could to make her appearance in publick; but through every disguise her hideous figure may be distinctly seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to see her in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him to a private letter of Brissot, written towards the end of the last year, and quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet du Pan. "We must" (says our philosopher) set fire to the four corners of Europe;" in that alone is our safety. "Dumourier cannot suit us. I always distrusted him. Miranda is "the general for us: he understands the revolutionary power, he has courage, lights, &c."* Here every thing is fairly avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal conflagration of Europe; the only real dissatisfaction with Dumourier is a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of that preference which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without assigning his reasons, is declared to be the superiour fitness of that foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and destruction.-On the other hand, if there can be any man in this country so hardy as to undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers of France; and if it should be said in their favour, that it is not just to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have actually tried and condemned him on the very same charges among others; we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of this part of his book against them: it comes from among themselves. Camille Desmoulins published the "History of the Brissotins" in answer to this very address of Brissot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last Holy Revolution of the thirty-first of May; and the flagitious orthodoxy of his writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by the jacobin club, when they saved him from that guillotine "which he grazed." In the beginning of his work he displays "the task of glory," as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention. All is summed up in two points: "to create the French republick, and to disorga"nize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants, "by the eruption of the volcanick principles of equality." The coincidence is exact; the proof is complete and irresistible.

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In a cause like this, and in a time like the present, there is no neutrality. They who are not actively, and with decision and energy, against jacobinism, are its partisans. They who do not dread it, love it. It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing made to produce a powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of jacobinism, such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded either with en† See the translation of the History of the Brissotins, by Camille Desmoulins, printed for Owen, p. 2.