opposing the sense, the courage, and the resources, of England, to the deepest, the most craftily devised, the best combined, and the most extensive design, that ever was carried on, since the beginning of the world, against all property, all order, all religion, all law, and all real freedom. The reader is requested to attend to the part of this pamphlet which relates to the conduct of the jacobins, with regard to the Austrian Netherlands, which they call Belgia, or Belgium. It is from page seventy-two to page eighty-four of this translation. Here the views and designs upon all their neighbours are fully displayed. Here the whole mystery of their ferocious politicks is laid open with the utmost clearness. Here the manner, in which they would treat every nation, into which they could introduce their doctrines and influence, is distinctly marked. We see that no nation was out of danger, and we see what the danger was with which every nation was threatened. The writer of this pamphlet throws the blame of several of the most violent of the proceedings on the other party. He and his friends, at the time alluded to, had a majority in the National Assembly. He admits that neither he nor they ever publickly opposed these measures; but he attributes their silence to a fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain, that that, whether from fear, or from approbation, they never discovered any dislike of those proceedings till Dumourier was driven from the Netherlands. But whatever their motive was, it is plain that the most violent is, and since the Revolution has always been, the predominant party. If Europe could not be saved without our interposition, (most certainly it could not) I am sure there is not an Englishman, who would not blush to be left out of the general effort made in favour of the general safety. But we are not secondary parties in this war; we are principals in the danger, and ought to be principals in the exertion. If any Englishman asks whether the designs of the French assassins are confined to the spot of Europe which they actually desolate, the citizen Brissot, the author of this book, and the author of the declaration of war against England, will give him his answer. He will find in this book, that the republicans are divided into factions, full of the most furious and destructive animosity against each other: but he will find also that there is one point in which they perfectly agree that they are all enemies alike to the government of all other nations, and only contend with each other about the means of propagating their tenets, and extending their empire by conquest. year, It is true, that, in this present work, which the author professedly designed for an appeal to foreign nations and posterity, he has dressed up the philosophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he could to make her appearance in publick; but through every disguise her hideous figure may be distinctly seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to see her in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him to a private letter of Brissot, written towards the end of the last and quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet du Pan. "We must," (says our philosopher) "set fire to the four corners of Europe;" in that alone is our safety. "Dumourier cannot "suit us. I always distrusted him. Miranda is "the general for us: he understands the revo"lutionary power, he has courage, lights, &c.*" Here every thing is fairly avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal conflagration of Europe; the only real dissatisfaction with Dumourier is a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of that preference which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without assigning his reasons, is declared to be the superior fitness of that foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and destruction.--On the other hand, if there * See the translation of Mallet Du Pan's work, printed for Owen, page 53. can can be any man in this country so hardy as to undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers of France; and if it should be said in their favour, that it is not just to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have actually tried and condemned him on the very same charges among others; we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of this part of his book against them: it comes from among themselves. Camille Desmoulins published the "History of the Brissotins" in answer to this very address of Brissot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last Holy Revolution of the thirty-first of May; and the flagitious orthodoxy of his writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by the jacobin club, when they saved him from that guillotine "which he grazed." In the beginning of his work he displays "the task of glory," as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention. All is summed up in two points: "to create the French republick, and to disorga"nize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants, by the eruption of the volcanick principles of equality." The coincidence is exact; the proof is complete and irresistible. * See the translation of the History of the Brissotins, by Camille Desmoulins, printed for Owen, p. 2. In a cause like this, and in a time like the present, there is no neutrality. They who are not actively, and with decision and energy, against jacobinism, are its partisans. They who do not dread it, love it. It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing made to produce a powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of jacobinism, such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded either with enthusiastick admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation, resentment, and horrour. Another great lesson may be taught by this book, and by the fortune of the author, and his party: I mean a lesson drawn from the consequences of engaging in daring innovations, from a hope that we may be able to limit their mischievous operation at our pleasure, and by our policy to secure ourselves against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to the world. This lesson is taught through almost all the important pages of history; but never has it been taught so clearly and so awfully as at this hour. The revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious death, under the sentence of the revólutionary tribunal (a tribunal composed of those with whom they had triumphed in the total destruction of the ancient government) were by no means ordinary men, or without very considerable 1 |