of the wicked. To root out these maxims, and the examples that support them, is a wise object of years of war.

This is that war. This is that moral war. It was said by old Trivulzio, that the battle of Marignan was the battle of the giants, that all the rest of the many he had seen were those of the cranes and pygmies. This is true of the objects, at least, of the contest. For the greater part of those, which we have hitherto contended for, in comparison, were the toys of children.

The October politician is so full of charity and good nature, that he supposes, that these very robbers and murderers themselves are in a course of amelioration; on what ground I cannot conceive, except on the long practice of every crime, and by its complete success. He is an Origenist, and believes in the conversion of the devil. All that runs in the place of blood in his veins, is nothing but the milk of human kindness. He is as soft as a curd, though, as a politician, he might be supposed to be made of sterner stuff. He supposes (to use his own expression) "that the salutary truths which he inculcates, are "making their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which falsehood has long since built her strong hold. Poor truth has had a hard work of it with her little pickax. Nothing but gunpowder will do.

As a proof, however, of the progress of this sap of truth, he gives us a confession they had made not long before he wrote. "Their fraternity" (as was lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) "has been the brotherhood of Cain and Abel, "and they have organized nothing but bankruptcy and famine." A very honest confession truly; and much in the spirit of their oracle, Rousseau. Yet, what is still more marvellous than the confession, this is the very fraternity to which our author gives us such an obliging invitation to accede. There is, indeed, a vacancy in the fraternal corps; a brother and a partner is wanted. If we please, we may fill up the place of the butchered Abel; and whilst we wait the destiny of the departed brother, we may enjoy the advantages of the partnership, by entering without delay into a shop of ready-made bankruptcy and famine. These are the douceurs, by which we are invited to regicide fraternity and friendship. But still our author considers the confession as a proof, that "truth is making its way " into their bosoms." No! it is not making its way into their bosoms. It has forced its way into their mouths! The evil spirit, by which they are possessed, though essentially a liar, is forced, by the tortures of conscience, to confess the truth; to confess enough for their condemnation, but not for their amendment. Shakspeare very aptly expresses this kind of confes

VOL. V.

[5]

sion, devoid of repentance, from the mouth of an usurper, a murderer, and a regicide

"We are ourselves compelled,

"Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
"To give in evidence."

Whence is their amendment? Why, the author writes, that on their murderous insurrectionary system their own lives are not sure for an hour; nor has their power a greater stability. True. They are convinced of it, and accordingly the wretches have done all they can to preserve their lives and to secure their power; but not one step have they taken to amend the one, or to make a more just use of the other. Their wicked policy has obliged them to make a pause in the only massacres in which their treachery and cruelty had operated as a kind of savage justice, that is, the massacre of the accomplices of their crimes: They have ceased to shed the inhuman blood of their fellow murderers; but when they take any of those persons who contend for their lawful government, their property, and their religion, notwithstanding the truth, which this author says is making its way into their bosoms, it has not taught them the least tincture of mercy. This we plainly see by their massacre at Quiberon, where they put to death, with every species of contumely, and without any exception, every prisoner of war, who did not escape out of their hands. To have had property, to have been robbed of it, and to endeavour to regain it-these are crimes irremissible, to which every man, who regards his property or his life, in every country, ought well to look in all connexion with those, with whom, to have had property was an offence, to endeavour to keep it, a second offence, to attempt to regain it, a crime, that puts the offender out of all the laws of peace or war. You cannot see one of those wretches without an alarm for your life as well as your goods. They are like the worst of the French and Italian banditti, who, whenever they robbed, were sure to murder.

Are they not the very same ruffians, thieves, assassins, and regicides, that they were from the beginning? Have they diversified the scene by the least variety, or produced the face of a single new villany. Tædet harum quotidianarum formarum. Oh! but I shall be answered, it is now quite another thing: They are all changed:-You have not seen them in their state dresses :-This makes an amazing difference:-The new habit of the directory is so charmingly fancied, that it is impossible not to fall in love with so well dressed a constitution: The costume of the sansculotte constitution of 1793

was absolutely insufferable. The committee for foreign affairs were such slovens, and stunk so abominably, that no Muscadin ambassador of the smallest degree of delicacy of nerves could come within ten yards of them :-but now they are so powdered and perfumed and ribbanded and sashed and plumed, that, though they are grown infinitely more insolent in their fine cloths, even than they were in their rags (and that was enough) as they now appear, there is something in it more grand and noble, something more suitable to an awful Roman senate, receiving the homage of dependant tetrarchs. Like that senate (their perpetual model for conduct towards other nations) they permit their vassals (during their good pleasure) to assume the name of kings, in order to bestow more dignity on the suite and retinue of the sovereign republic by the nominal rank of their slaves-Ut habeant instrumenta servitutis et reges. All this is very fine, undoubtedly; and ambassadors, whose hands are almost out for want of employment, may long to have their part in this august ceremony of the republic one and indivisible. But, with great deference to the new diplomatic taste, we old people must retain some square-toed predilection for the fashions of our youth. I am afraid you will find me, my lord, again falling into my usual vanity, in valuing myself on the eminent men whose society I once enjoyed. I remember in a conversation I once had with my ever dear friend Garrick, who was the first of actors, because he was the most acute observer of nature I ever knew, I asked him, how it happened that whenever a senate appeared on the stage, the audience seemed always disposed to laughter? He said the reason was plain; the audience was well acquainted with the faces of most of the senators. They knew, that they were no other than candle snuffers, revolutionary scene-shifters, second and third mob, prompters, clerks, executioners, who stand with their ax on their shoulders by the wheel, grinners in the pantomime, murderers in tragedies, who make ugly faces under black wigs; in short, the very scum and refuse of the theatre; and it was of course, that the contrast of the vileness of the actors with the pomp of their habits naturally excited ideas of contempt and ridicule.

So it was at Paris on the inaugural day of the constitution for the present year. The foreign ministers were ordered to attend at this investiture of the directory;-for so they call the managers of their burlesque government. The diplomacy, who were a sort of strangers, were quite awe struck with "the pride, "pomp, and circumstance" of this majestic senate; whilst the sansculotte gallery instantly recognized their old insurrectionary acquaintance, burst out into a horse laugh at their absurd

finery, and held them in infinitely greater contempt, than whilst they prowled about the streets in the pantaloons of the last year's constitution, when their legislators appeared honestly, with their daggers in their belts, and their pistols peeping out of their side pocket holes, like a bold brave banditti, as they are. The Parisians (and I am much of their mind) think that a thief with a crape on his visage, is much worse than a barefaced knave; and that such robbers richly deserve all the pepalties of all the black acts. In this their thin diguise, their comrades of the late abdicated sovereign Canaille hooted and hissed them; and from that day have no other name for them, than what is not quite so easy to render into English, impossible to make it very civil English: it belongs indeed to the language of the Halles; but, without being instructed in that dialect, it was the opinion of the polite Lord Chesterfield, that no man could be a complete master of French. Their Parisian brethren called them gueux plumées, which, though not elegant, is expressive and characteristic:-"feathered scoundrels" I think comes the nearest to it in that kind of English. But we are now to understand, that these Gueux, for no other reason, that I can divine, except their red and white cloaths, form at last a state, with which we may cultivate amity, and have a prospect of the blessings of a secure and permanent peace. In effect then, it was not with the men, or their principles, or their politics, that we quarrelled, Our sole dislike was to the cut of their cloaths.

But to pass over their dresses-Good God! in what habits did the representatives of the crowned heads of Europe appear, when they came to swell the pomp of their humiliation, and attended in solemn function this inauguration of regicide? That would be the curiosity. Under what robes did they cover the disgrace and degradation of the whole college of kings? What warehouses of masks and dominos furnished a cover to the nakedness of their shame? The shop ought to be known; it will soon have a good trade. Were the dresses of the ministers of those lately called potentates, who attended on that occasion, taken from the wardrobe of that property man at the opera, from whence my old acquaintance Anacharsis Clools, some years ago, equipped a body of ambassadors, whom he conducted, as from all the nations of the world, to the bar of what was called the Constituent Assembly. Among those mock ministers, one of the most conspicuous figures was the representative of the British nation, who unluckily was wanting at the late ceremony. In the face of all the real ambassadors of the sovereigns of Europe was this ludicrous representation of their

several subjects, under the name of oppressed sovereigns,* exhibited to the assembly; that assembly received an harangue in the name of those sovereigns against their kings, delivered by this Cloots, actually a subject of Prussia, under the name of Ambassador of the Human Race. At that time there was only a feeble reclamation from one of the ambassadors of these tyrants and oppressors. A most gracious answer was given to the ministers of the oppressed sovereigns: and they went so far on that occasion as to assign them, in that assumed character, a box at one of their festivals.

I was willing to indulge myself in a hope, that this second appearance of ambassadors was only an insolent mummery of the same kind; but alas! Anacharsis himself, all fanatic as he was, could not have imagined, that his opera procession should have been the prototype of the real appearance of the representatives of all the sovereigns of Europe themselves to make the same prostration that was made by those who dared to represent their people in a complaint against them. But in this the French republic has followed, as they always affect to do, and have hitherto done with success, the example of the ancient Romans, who shook all governments by listening to the complaints of their subjects, and soon after brought the kings themselves to answer at their bar. At this last ceremony the ambassadors had not Cloots for their Cotterel.-Pity that Cloots had not had a reprieve from the guillotine 'till he had compleated his work! But that engine fell before the curtain had fallen upon all the dignity of the earth.

On this their gaudy day the new regicide directory sent for that diplomatic rabble, as bad as themselves in principle, but infinitely worse in degradation. They called them out by a sort of roll of their nations, one after another, much in the manner in which they called wretches out of their prison to the guillotine. When these ambassadors of infamy appeared before them, the chief director, in the name of the rest, treated each of them with a short, affected, pedantic, insolent theatric laconium; a sort of epigram of contempt. When they had thus insulted them in a style and language which never before was heard, and which no sovereign would for a moment endure from another, supposing any of them frantic enough to use it, to finish their outrage, they drummed and trumpeted the wretches out of their hall of audience.

Among the objects of this insolent buffoonery was a person supposed to represent the king of Prussia. To this worthy re

Souvereins Opprimées-See the whole proceeding in the process verbal of the National Assembly.