must find in his breast, or must conjure up in it, an energy not to be expected, perhaps not always to be wished for, in well ordered states. The lawful prince must have, in every thing but crime, the character of an usurper. He is gone, if he imagines himself the quiet possessor of a throne. He is to contend for it as much after an apparent conquest as before. His task is to win it; he must leave posterity to enjoy and to adorn it. No velvet cushions for him. He is to be always (I speak nearly to the letter) on horseback. This opinion is the result of much patient thinking on the subject, which I conceive no event is likely to alter.

A valuable friend of mine, who I hope will conduct these affairs, so far as they fall to his share, with great ability, asked me what I thought of acts of general indemnity and oblivion, as a means of settling France, and reconciling it to monarchy. Before I venture upon any opinion of my own in this matter, I totally disclaim the interference of foreign powers in a business that properly belongs to the government which we have declared legal. That government is likely to be the best judge of what is to be done towards the security of that kingdom, which it is their duty and their interest to provide for by such measures of justice or of lenity, as at the time they should find best. But if we weaken it, not only by ar

bitrary

bitrary limitations of our own, but preserve such persons in it as are disposed to disturb its future peace, as they have its past, I do not know how a more direct declaration can be made of a disposition to perpetual hostility against a government. The persons saved from the justice of the native magistrate by foreign authority will owe nothing to his clemency. He will, and must, look to those to whom he is indebted for the power he has of dispensing it. A jacobin faction, constantly fostered with the nourishment of foreign protection, will be kept alive.

This desire of securing the safety of the actors in the present scene is owing to more laudable motives. Ministers have been made to consider the brothers of the late merciful king, and the nobility of France, who have been faithful to their honour and duty, as a set of inexorable and remorseless tyrants. How this notion has been infused into them I cannot be quite certain. I am sure it is not justified by any thing they have done. Never were the two princes guilty, in the day of their power, of a single hard or ill-natured act. No one instance of cruelty on the part of the gentlemen ever came to my ears. It is true that the English jacobins, (the natives have not thought of it), as an excuse for their infernal system of murder, have so represented them. It is on this principle, that the massacres in the month

of

of September 1792 were justified by a writer in the Morning Chronicle. He says, indeed, that "the whole French nation is to be given up to "the hands of an irritated and revengeful no

blesse:"-and, judging of others by himself and his brethren, he says, "Whoever succeeds in a “civil war will be cruel. But here the emigrants,

66

flying to revenge in the cars of military vic

tory, will almost insatiably call for their victims "and their booty; and a body of emigrant trai"tors were attending the king of Prussia, and "the duke of Brunswick, to suggest the most

sanguinary counsels." So says this wicked jacobin; but so cannot say the king of Prussia nor the duke of Brunswick, who never did receive any sanguinary counsel; nor did the king's brothers, or that great body of gentlemen who attended those princes, commit one single cruel action, or hurt the person or property of one individual. It would be right to quote the instance. It is like the military luxury attributed to those unfortunate sufferers in our common cause.

If these princes had shewn a tyrannick disposition, it would be much to be lamented. We have no others to govern France. If we screened the body of murderers from their justice, we should only leave the innocent in future to the mercy of men of fierce and sanguinary dispositions, of which, in spite of all our intermeddling in their constitu

tion, we could not prevent the effects. But as we have much more reason to fear their feeble lenity than any blamable rigour, we ought, in my opinion, to leave the matter to themselves.

If, however, I were asked to give an advice merely as such-here are my ideas. I am not for a total indemnity, nor a general punishment. And first, the body and mass of the people never ought to be treated as criminal. They may become an object of more or less constant watchfulness and suspicion, as their preservation may best require, but they can never become an object of punishment. This is one of the few fundamental and unalterable principles of politicks.

To punish them capitally would be to make massacres. Massacres only increase the ferocity of men, and teach them to regard their own lives and those of others as of little value; whereas the great policy of government is to teach the people to think both of great importance in the eyes of God and the state, and never to be sacrificed or even hazarded to gratify their passions, or for any thing but the duties prescribed by the rules of morality, and under the direction of publick law and publick authority. To punish them with lesser penalties would be to debilitate the commonwealth, and make the nation miserable, which it is the business of government to render happy and flourishing.

As

As to crimes too, I would draw a strong line of limitation. For no one offence, politically an offence of rebellion, by council, contrivance, persuasion, or compulsion, for none properly a military offence of rebellion, or any thing done by open hostility in the field, should any man at all be called in question; because such seems to be the proper and natural death of civil dissensions. The offences of war are obliterated by peace.

Another class will of course be included in the indemnity, namely, all those who by their activity in restoring lawful government shall obliterate their offences. The offence previously known, the acceptance of service is a pardon for crimes. I fear that this class of men will not be very

numerous.

So far as to indemnity. But where are the objects of justice, and of example, and of future security to the publick peace? They are naturally pointed out, not by their having outraged political and civil laws, nor their having rebelled against the state, as a state, but by their having rebelled against the law of nature, and outraged man as man. In this list, all the regicides in general, all those who laid sacrilegious hands on the king, who without any thing in their own rebellious mission to the convention to justify them, brought him to his trial and unanimously voted him guilty; all those who had a share in the cruel murder of the queen, and the detestable proceed

ings