powers." Although one would think that this. advice would stand condemned on the first proposition, yet as it has been made popular, and has been proceeded upon practically, I think it right to give it a full consideration.

And first, I have asked myself who these Frenchmen are, that, in the state their own country has been for these last five years, of all the people of Europe, have alone not been able to form a decided opinion, or have been unwilling to act a decided part?

Looking over all the names I have heard of in this great Revolution in all human affairs, I find no man of any distinction who has remained in that more than stoical apathy, but the prince de Conti. This mean, stupid, selfish, swinish, and cowardly animal, universally known and despised as such, has indeed, except in one abortive attempt to elope, been perfectly neutral. However his neutrality, which it seems would qualify him for trust, and on a competition must set aside the prince de Condé, can be of no sort of service. His moderation has not been able to keep him from a jail. The allied powers must draw him from that jail, before they can have the full advantage of the exertions of this great naturalist.

Except him, I do not recollect a man of rank or talents, who by his speeches or his votes, by his pen or by his sword, has not been active on this

scene.

1

scene. The time indeed could admit no neutrality in any person worthy of the name of man. There were originally two great divisions in France; the one is that which overturned the whole of the government in church and state, and erected a republick on the basis of atheism. Their grand engine was the jacobin club, a sort of secession from which, but exactly on the same principles, begat another short-lived one, called the Club of Eighty-Nine*, which was chiefly guided by the court rebels, who, in addition to the crimes of which they were guilty in common with the others, had the merit of betraying a gracious master, and a kind benefactor. Subdivisions of this faction, which since we have seen, do not in the least differ from each other in their principles, their dispositions, or the means they have employed. Their only quarrel has been about power in that quarrel, like wave succeeding wave, one faction has got the better and expelled the other. Thus La Fayette for a while got the better of Orleans; and Orleans afterwards prevailed over La Fayette. Brissot overpowered Orleans; Barrere and Robespierre, and their faction, mastered them both, and cut off their heads. All who were not royalists have been listed in some

* The first object of this club was the propagation of jacobin principles.

or

or other of these divisions. If it were of any use to settle a precedence, the elder ought to have his rank. The first authors, plotters, and contrivers, of this monstrous scheme seem to be entitled to the first place in our distrust and abhorrence. I have seen some of those who are thought the best among the original rebels; and I have not neglected the means of being informed concerning the others. I can very truly say, that I have not found by observation, or inquiry, that any sense of the evils produced by their projects has produced in them, or any one of them, the smallest degree of repentance. Disappointment and mortification undoubtedly they feel: but to them, repentance is a thing impossible. They are atheists. This wretched opinion, by which they are possessed even to the height of fanaticism, leading them to exclude from their ideas of a commonwealth the vital principle of the physical, the moral, and the political world, engages them in a thousand absurd contrivances to fill up this dreadful void. Incapable of innoxious repose, or honourable action, or wise speculation, in the lurking holes of a foreign land, into which (in a common ruin) they are driven to hide their heads amongst the innocent victims of their madness, they are at this very hour as busy in the confection of the dirt-pies of their imaginary constitutions, as if

they

they had not been quite fresh from destroying, by their impious and desperate vagaries, the finest country upon earth.

It is, however, out of these, or of such as these, guilty and impenitent, despising the experience of others, and their own, that some people talk of choosing their negociators with those jacobins, who they suppose may be recovered to a sounder mind. They flatter themselves, it seems, that the friendly habits formed during their original partnership of iniquity, a similarity of character, and a conformity in the ground-work of their principles, might facilitate their conversion, and gain them over to some recognition of royalty. But surely this is to read human nature very ill. The several sectaries in this schism of the jacobins are the very last men in the world to trust each other. Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence. The last quarrels are the sorest; and the injuries received or offered by your own associates are ever the most bitterly resented. The people of France, of every name and description, would a thousand times sooner listen to the prince de Condé, or to the archbishop of Aix, or the bishop of St. Pol, or to Monsieur de Cazalès, than to La Fayette, or Dumourier, or the vicompte de Noailles, or the bishop of Autun, or Necker, or his disciple Lally Tolendal. Against the first description they

have

have not the smallest animosity beyond that of a merely political dissension. The others they regard as traitors.

The first description is that of the Christian royalists, men who as earnestly wished for re formation, as they opposed innovation, in the fun damental parts of their church and state. Their part has been very decided. Accordingly they are to be set aside in the restoration of church and state. It is an odd kind of disqualification where the restoration of religion and monarchy is the question. If England should (God forbid it should) fall into the same misfortune with France, and that the court of Vienna should undertake the restoration of our monarchy, I think it would be extraordinary to object to the admission of Mr. Pitt, or lord Grenville, or Mr. Dundas, into any share in the management of that business, because in a day of trial they have stood up firmly and manfully, as I trust they always will do, and with distinguished powers, for the monarchy and the legitimate constitution of their country. I am sure if I were to suppose myself at Vienna at such a time, I should, as a man, as an Englishman, and as a royalist, protest in that case, as I do in this, against a weak and ruinous principle of proceeding, which can have no other tendency than to make those, who wish to support the Crown, meditate too profoundly on the consequences of the part they M

VOL. VII.

take