To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies, irregular consultations, seditious committees, and monstrous democratic assemblies [comitia, comices'] of the soldiers, and all the disorders arising from idleness, luxury, dissipation, and infubordination, I believe the most astonishing means have been used, that ever occurred to men, even in all the inventions of this prolific age. It is no less than this:—The King has promulgated in circular letters to all the regiments his direct authority and encouragement, that the several corps should join themselves with the clubs and confederations in the several municipalities, and mix with them in their feasts and civic entertainments! This jolly discipline, it seems, is to soften the ferocity of their minds; to reconcile them to their bottle companions of other descriptions; and to merge particular conspiracies in more general associations That this remedy would be pleasing to the soldiers, as they are described by Mr. de la Tour du Pin, I can readily believe; and that, however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifully submit themselves to these royal proclamations. But I should quef tion whether all this civic swearing, clubbing, and feasting, would dispose them more than at present they are disposed, to an obedience to their offi

३

Comme fa Majesté y a reconnu, non une systême d'affociations particulières, mais une rêunion de volontés de tons les François pour la liberté et la prosperité communes, ainsi pour le maintien de l'ordre publique; il a pensé qu'il convenoit que chaque regiment prit part a ces fêtes civiques pour multiplier les rapports, et referrer les liens d'union entre les citoyens et les troupes. Lest I should not be credited, I insert the words, authorising the troops to feast with the popular confederacies.

cers; or teach them better to fubmit to the auftere rules of military difcipline. It will make them admirable citizens after the French mode, but hot quite fo good foldiers after any mode. A doubt might well arife, whether the converfations at these good tables, would fit them a great deal the better for the character of mere inftruments, which this veteran officer and statesman justly obferves, the nature of things always requires an army to be.

Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in discipline, by the free conversation of the soldiers with the municipal festive societies, which is thus officially encouraged by royal authority and sanction, we may judge by the state of the municipalities themselves, furnished to us by the war minister in this very speech. He conceives good hopes of the success of his endeavours towards reftoring order for the present from the good disposition of certain regiments; but he finds something cloudy with regard to the future. As to preventing the return of confusion" for this, the administra"tion (says he) cannot be answerable to you, as long as they fee the municipalities arrogate to "themselves an authority over the troops, wwhich your institutions have reserved wholly to the mo"narch. You have fixed the limits of the military

authority and the municipal authority. You " have bounded the action, which you have per "mitted to the latter over the former, to the right "of requisition; but never did the letter or the spirit of your decrees authorise the commons in "these municipalities to break the officers, to try X 4 "them,

"them, to give orders to the soldiers, to drive "them from the posts committed to their guard, to "ftop them in their marches ordered by the King,

or, in a word, to enslave the troops to the caprice er of each of the cities or even market towns "through which they are to pass."

Such is the character and disposition of the municipal society which is to reclaim the soldiery, to bring them back to the true principles of military subordination, and to render them machines in the hands of the supreme power of the country! Such are the distempers of the French troops! Such is their cure! As the army is, so is the navy. The municipalities supersede the orders of the assembly, and the seamen in their turn supersede the orders of the municipalities. From my heart I pity the condition of a respectable servant of the public, like this war minister, obliged in his old age to pledge the assembly in their civic cups, and to enter with an hoary head into all the fantastick vagaries of these juvenile politicians. Such schemes are not like propositions coming from a man of fifty years wear and tear amongst mankind. They seem rather such as ought to be expected from those grand compounders in politics, who shorten the road to their degrees in the state; and have a certain inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon all subjects; upon the credit of which one of their doctors has thought fir, with great applause, and greater success, to caution the assembly not to attend to old men, or to any persons who valued themselves upon their experience. I suppose all the ministers of state must

qua

lify, and take this test; wholly abjuring the errors and heresies of experience and observation. Every man has his own relish. But I think, if I could not attain to the wisdom, I would at least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration; but at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to be regenerated by them; nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their barbarous metaphysics. Si isti mihi largiantur ut repueriscam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde recusem!

The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system, which they call a constitution, cannot be laid open without discovering the utter infufficiency and mischief of every other part with which it comes in contact, or that bears any the remotest relation to it. You cannot propose a remedy for the incompetence of the crown, without displaying the debility of the assembly. You cannot deliberate on the confusion of the army of the state, without disclosing the worse disorders of the armed municipalities. The military lays open the civil, and the civil betrays the military anarchy. I wish every body carefully to peruse the eloquent speech (such it is) of Mons. de la Tour du Pin. He attributes the salvation of the municipalities to the good behaviour of some of the troops. These troops are to preserve the well-disposed part of those municipalities, which is confessed to be the weakest, from the pillage of the worst disposed, which is the strongest. But the municipalities affect a sovereignty and

will command those troops which are necessary for their protection. Indeed they must command them or court them. The municipalities, by the neceffity of their situation, and by the republican powers they have obtained, must, with relation to the military, be the masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or each successively; or they must make a jumble of all together, according to circumstances. What government, is there to coerce the army but the municipality, or the municipality but the army? To preserve concord where authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, the assembly attempts to cure the distempers by the distempers themselves; and they hope to preserve themselves from a purely military democracy, by giving it a debauched interest in the municipal.

DI

If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in the municipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, ah elective attraction will draw them to the lowest and most desperate part. With them will be their habits, affections, and sympathies. The military confpiracies, which are to be remedied by civic confederacies; the rebellious municipalities, which are to be rendered obedient by furnishing them with the means of seducing the very armies of the state that are to keep them in order; all these chimeras of a monstrous and portentous policy; must aggravate the confusions from which they have arisen. There must he blood, The want of common judgment manifested in the construction of all their descriptions of forces, and in all their kinds of civil and judicial authorities, will make it flow. Disorders may be quieted in one time and in one part,

N

าย

They