nations of men fhould frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their paffions brought into fubjection. This can only be done by a power out of themfelves. In this fenfe, the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.'-Thus, for inftance, when a minister of ftate fees any man such a flave of paffion as to find fault with him, with his favourite, or with his miftrefs, he knows directly that he wants to be fhut up in the Baftille. Accordingly, to indulge the poor man in the exercife of his undoubted privileges, he conducts him thither, by means of a thort, but comprehenfive, bill of rights, called a lettre de cachet: which perhaps, if the minifter is fo confiderate as to inquire into the full extent of the good man's wants, and fo humane as to allow him the plenary enjoyment of his rights, he kindly converts into an act of fettlement for life.

If antiquity, prefeription, inheritance, be the only just foundation of lawful government, we would advise Mr. Burke, if he looks for favour, not to promulgate his fyftem too freely within found of St. James's. We fufpect that it would not yet be thoroughly relifhed there. Be this as it may; certain it is, that such a scrannel pipe must have grated very harfh notes to the acoustic nerves of William the Third. To be ferious: we think the ground of ancient ufage is full as dangerous as, and perhaps lefs tenable than, that of divine right. If natural rights were to be deftroyed, as falte and fictitious, we apprehend that focial, municipal, rights would all fall to the earth for want of fupport. If the rights of man be the offspring of convention and compact, they muft of courfe be very different in different focieties. In fome countries, the great body of the people might be faid to have few or no rights at all. In fine, it appears to us that the principles of civil government will never quietly fettle, unless they reft on the choice, or acquiefcence, of the people.

Quitting the pretended rights of his countrymen, Mr. B. paffes over to the real wrongs of their neighbours; and he no fooner croffes the Channel, than he throws off the brown bob, and plain broad-cloth of British argument, to array himself in the powdered bag, and embroidered filk, of French declamation. We will introduce him to our readers thus arrayed in his finery:

Remember that your parliament of Paris told your king, that in calling the ftates together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal excefs of their zeal in providing for the fupport of the throne. It is right that thefe men fhould hide their heads. It is right that they should bear their part in the ruin which their counfel has brought on their fovereign and their country. Such fan uine declarations tend to lul authority afleep; to encourage it rafhly to REV. Nov. 1799.

Z

engage

engage in perilous adventures of untried policy; to neglect thofe provifions, preparations, and precautions, which diftinguish bene volence from imbecillity; and without which no man can answer for the falutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of thefe, they have feen the medicine of the state ccrrupted into its poifon. They have seen the French rebel against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and infult, than ever any people has been known to rife against the most illegal ufurper, or the mott fanguinary tyrant. Their refiftance was made to conceffion; their revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at an hand holding out graces, favours, and immunities.

• This was unnatural. The reft is in order. They have found their punishment in their fuccefs. Laws overturned; tribunals fubverted; induftry without vigour; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a ftate not relieved; civil and military anarchy made the conftitution of the kingdom; every thing human and divine facrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the confequence; and to crown all, the paper fecurities of new, precarious, tottering power, the difcredited paper fecurities of impoverished fraud, and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the fupport of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized fpecies that reprefent the lafting conventional credit of mankind, which difappeared and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whofe creatures and reprefentatives they are, was fyftematically fubverted.

Were all thefe dreadful things neceffary? were they the inevitable refults of the defperate itruggle of determined patriots, compelled to wade through blood and tumult to the quiet fhore of a tranquil and profperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which fhock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war; they are the fad but inftructive monuments of rafh and ignorant counfel in time of profound peace. They are the difplay of inconfiderate and prefumptuous, because unrefifted and irrefiftible authority. The perfons who have thus fquandered away the precious treasure of their crimes, the perfons who have made this prodigal and wild waste of public evils (the laft ftake reserved for the ultimate ranfom of the ftate) have met in their progrefs with little, or rather with no oppofition at all. Their whole march was more like a triumphal proceffion than the progrefs of a war. Their pioneers have gone before them, and demolished and laid every thing level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood have they fhed in the cause of the country they have ruined. They have made no facrifices to their projects of greater confequence than their fhoe-buckles, whilft they were imprisoning their king, murdering their fellow citizens, and bathing in tears, and plunging in poverty and diftrefs, thousands of worthy men and worthy families. Their cruelty has not even been the bafe refult of fear. It has been the effect of their fenfe of perfect fafety, in authorizing treafons, robberies, rapes, affaffinations, flaughters, and burnings throughout their haraffed land.'

Perfectly

Perfectly unaccountable as this fond election of evil' appears, Mr. B. is not in the leaft furprized at it, when he con→ fiders the compofition of the National Affembly, and the materials of which it is conftituted. He finds the third eftate to confift of obfcure provincial advocates; of ftewards of petty local jurifdictions; country attornies; notaries; and the whole train of the minifters of municipal litigation; the fomentors and conductors of the petty war of village vexation: mixed with a handful of country clowns, unable to read and write; about as many traders; and a tolerable number of phyficians; and ftock-jobbers. The clergy is made up of mere country curates: [our readers, who are converfant with the French language, need not to be reminded of the advantage here taken of the word curés, which anfwers to our rectors, or vicars:] men who never had feen the ftate, fo much as in a picture; and, laftly, the nobleffe are, many of them at least, renegadoes, and refugees from their order; while the virtuous few are wholly incapable of refifting the preponderating weight of the combined bodies clerical and chicane.

In the fame sportive vein of humour, the right honourable anti-revolutionift cafts a retrofpective eye on Great Britain; and fees Dr. Price exulting on the unhallowed success of these ragged reformers. He has, fortunately enough for his purpofe, hit on fuch an odd co-incidence of circumftances, as to make it appear, at first fight, as if there really were fome ground of truth, for the parallel which he draws between the conduct and principles of the Doctor, and of the famous Hugh Peters. Speaking of the French revolution, and of its effect on Doctor Price, he fays:

This infpires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pifgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious ftate of France, as in a bird eye landfcape of a promifed land, he breaks out into the following rapture:

"What an eventful period is this! I am thankful that I have lived to it; I could almost fay, Lord, now lettest thou thy fervant depart in peace, for mine eyes have feen thy falvation.I have lived to fee a diffufion of knowledge, which has undermined fuperftition and error. I have lived to fee the rights of men better underflood than ever; and nations panting for liberty which feemed to have loft the idea of it.-I have lived to fee Thirty Millions of People, indig 'nant and refolute, fpurning at flavery, and demanding liberty with an irresistible voice. Their King led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch furrendering himself to his fubjects."

Before I proceed further, I have to remark, that Dr. Price feems rather to over-value the great acquifitions of light which he has obtained and diffused in this age. The laft century appears to

me to have been quite as much enlightened. It had, though in a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of Dr. Price, and fome of the great preachers of that period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the triumph of France. On the trial of the Rev. Hugh Peters for high treafon, it was depofed, that when King Charles was brought to London for his trial, the Apoftle of Liberty in that day conducted the triumph. "I saw," fays the witness, his majesty in the coach with fix horfes, and Peters riding before the king triumphing." Dr. Price, when he talks as if he had made a difcovery, only follows a precedent; for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this precurfor, the fame Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very triumphantly chofen his place,) faid, "I have prayed and preached these twenty years; and now I may fay with old Simeon, Lord, now letteft thou thy fervant depart in peace, for mine eyes have feen thy Salvation*.' Peters had not the fruits of his prayer; for he neither departed fo foon as he wished, nor in peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of his followers may be in this country) himself a facrifice to the triumph which he led as Pontiff.'

This fample of Mr. Burke's comic powers fhall be contrafted with a scene from his tragedy. Our readers, we believe, will join with us in allowing it to be an affecting feene, and well wrought up. How much it may be indebted for its effect to the strong colouring of the artist, must be decided by those who were fpectators of the reality. As it ftands, the ftouteft heart of the most refolute and hardened foe to tyranny, unless it be a heart of flint, muft fympathize with the royal pair. The National Affembly, as a body, deeply deplored, and did all in their power to prevent, the fhocking outrage. The whole nation, we truft, excepting the very dregs who were the actors in the horrid spectacle, in the moment of their ungoverned fury, execrated the bufinefs; and yet Mr. Burke fuppofes, that a humane minifter of the gofpel, in this country, when he talks of a triumph, alludes to the tranfactions of this particular day-but to the scene:

Hiftory will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confufion, alarm, difmay, and flaughter, lay down, under the pledged fecurity of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of refpite, and troubled melancholy repofe. From this fleep the queen was firft ftartled by the voice of the centinel at her door, who cried out to her, to fave herself by flight-that this was the laft proof of fidelity he could give-that they were upon him, and he was dead. Inftantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and affaffins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred ftrokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this perfecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped

State Trials, vol. ii. p. 360. 363.❜

to

to feek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.

This king, to fay no more of him, and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the fanctuary of the moft fplendid palace in the world, which they left fwimming in blood, polluted by maffacre, and strewed with fcattered limbs and mutilated carcafes. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unrefifted, promifcuous flaughter, which was made, of the gentlemen of birth and family who compofed the king's body guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon fpears, and led the proceffion; whilft the royal captives who followed in the train were lowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and fhrilling fcreams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the faries of hell, in the abufed fhape of the vileft of women. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the flow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to fix hours, they were, under a guard, compofed of thofe very foldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Baftile for kings.'

After this whirlwind of the paffions, we are confident that our judicious readers will applaud us for not breaking in on their feelings, with the low farce about Lord George Gordon; with which Mr. B. clofes his evening's entertainment :-but many of our readers, and particularly our fair friends, (whom, though we are not fo brim-full of chivalry and gallantry as Mr. B., we highly respect, and are always happy to oblige,) would never forgive us, if we were to leave out the charming interlude:

It is now fixteen or feventeen years fince I faw the queen of France, then the dauphinefs, at Verfailles; and furely never lighted on this orb, which the hardly feemed to touch, a more delightful vifion. I faw her juft above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated fphere fhe juft began to move in,-glittering like the morning ftar, full of life, and fplendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart muft I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream that, when the added titles of veneration to those of enthufiaftic, diftant, refpectful love, that the fhould ever be obliged to carry the fharp antidote against difgrace concealed in that bofom; little did I dream that I fhould have lived to fee fuch difafters fallen upon her in a sation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand fwords muft have leaped from their fcabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with infylt. But the age of chivalry is gone.-That of fophifters, conomifts,

23