38. So far as to the French practices with regard to France and the other powers of Europe. As to their principles and doctrines with regard to the constitution of states, Mr. Fox studiously, on all occasions, and indeed when no occasion calls for it, (as on the debate of the petition for reform,) brings forward and asserts their fundamental and fatal principle, pregnant with every mischief and every crime, namely, that "in every country the people is the legitimate sovereign": exactly conformable to the declaration of the French clubs and legislators:—"La souveraineté est une, indivisible, inalienable, et imprescriptible; elle appartient à la nation; aucune section du peuple ni aucun individu ne peut s'en attribuer l'exercise." This confounds, in a manner equally mischievous and stupid, the origin of a government from the people with its continuance in their hands. I believe that no such doctrine has ever been heard of in any public act of any government whatsoever, until it was adopted (I think from the writings of Rousseau) by the French Assemblies, who have made it the basis of their Constitution at home, and of the matter of their apostolate in every country. These and other wild declarations of abstract principle, Mr. Fox says, are in themselves perfectly right and true; though in some cases he allows the French draw absurd consequences from them. But I conceive he is mistaken. The consequences are most logically, though most mischievously, drawn from the premises and principles by that wicked and ungracious faction. The fault is in the foundation.

39. Before society, in a multitude of men, it is obvious that sovereignty and subjection are ideas which cannot exist. It is the compact on which society is formed that makes both. But to suppose the people, contrary to their compacts, both to give away and retain the same thing is altogether absurd. It is worse, for it supposes in any strong combination of men a power and right of always dissolving the social union; which power, however, if it exists, renders them again as little sovereigns as subjects, but a mere unconnected multitude. It is not easy to state for what good end, at a time like this, when the foundations of all ancient and prescriptive governments, such as ours, (to which people submit, not because they have chosen them, but because they are born to them,) are undermined by perilous theories, that Mr. Fox should be so fond of referring to those theories, upon all occasions, even though speculatively they might be true,—which God forbid they should! Particularly I do not see the reason why he should be so fond of declaring that the principles of the Revolution have made the crown of Great Britain elective,—why he thinks it seasonable to preach up with so much earnestness, for now three years together, the doctrine of resistance and revolution at all,—or to assert that our last Revolution, of 1688, stands on the same or similar principles with that of France. We are not called upon to bring forward these doctrines, which are hardly ever resorted to but in cases of extremity, and where they are followed by correspondent actions. We are not called upon by any circumstance, that I know of, which can justify a revolt, or which demands a revolution, or can make an election of a successor to the crown necessary, whatever latent right may be supposed to exist for effectuating any of these purposes.

40. Not the least alarming of the proceedings of Mr. Fox and his friends in this session, especially taken in concurrence with their whole proceedings with regard to France and its principles, is their eagerness at this season, under pretence of Parliamentary reforms, (a project which had been for some time rather dormant,) to discredit and disgrace the House of Commons. For this purpose these gentlemen had found a way to insult the House by several atrocious libels in the form of petitions. In particular they brought up a libel, or rather a complete digest of libellous matter, from the club called the Friends of the People. It is, indeed, at once the most audacious and the most insidious of all the performances of that kind which have yet appeared. It is said to be the penmanship of Mr. Tierney, to bring whom into Parliament the Duke of Portland formerly had taken a good deal of pains, and expended, as I hear, a considerable sum of money.

41. Among the circumstances of danger from that piece, and from its precedent, it is observable that this is the first petition (if I remember right) coming from a club or association, signed by individuals, denoting neither local residence nor corporate capacity. This mode of petition, not being strictly illegal or informal, though in its spirit in the highest degree mischievous, may and will lead to other things of that nature, tending to bring these clubs and associations to the French model, and to make them in the end answer French purposes: I mean, that, without legal names, these clubs will be led to assume political capacities; that they may debate the forms of Constitution; and that from their meetings they may insolently dictate their will to the regular authorities of the kingdom, in the manner in which the Jacobin clubs issue their mandates to the National Assembly or the National Convention. The audacious remonstrance, I observe, is signed by all of that association (the Friends of the People) who are not in Parliament, and it was supported most strenuously by all the associators who are members, with Mr. Fox at their head. He and they contended for referring this libel to a committee. Upon the question of that reference they grounded all their debate for a change in the constitution of Parliament. The pretended petition is, in fact, a regular charge or impeachment of the House of Commons, digested into a number of articles. This plan of reform is not a criminal impeachment, but a matter of prudence, to be submitted to the public wisdom, which must be as well apprised of the facts as petitioners can be. But those accusers of the House of Commons have proceeded upon the principles of a criminal process, and have had the effrontery to offer proof on each article.

42. This charge the party of Mr. Fox maintained article by article, beginning with the first,—namely, the interference of peers at elections, and their nominating in effect several of the members of the House of Commons. In the printed list of grievances which they made out on the occasion, and in support of their charge, is found the borough for which, under Lord Fitzwilliam's influence, I now sit. By this remonstrance, and its object, they hope to defeat the operation of property in elections, and in reality to dissolve the connection and communication of interests which makes the Houses of Parliament a mutual support to each other. Mr. Fox and the Friends of the People are not so ignorant as not to know that peers do not interfere in elections as peers, but as men of property; they well know that the House of Lords is by itself the feeblest part of the Constitution; they know that the House of Lords is supported only by its connections with the crown and with the House of Commons, and that without this double connection the Lords could not exist a single year. They know that all these parts of our Constitution, whilst they are balanced as opposing interests, are also connected as friends; otherwise nothing but confusion could be the result of such a complex Constitution. It is natural, therefore, that they who wish the common destruction of the whole and of all its parts should contend for their total separation. But as the House of Commons is that link which connects both the other parts of the Constitution (the Crown and the Lords) with the mass of the people, it is to that link (as it is natural enough) that their incessant attacks are directed. That artificial representation of the people being once discredited and overturned, all goes to pieces, and nothing but a plain French democracy or arbitrary monarchy can possibly exist.

43. Some of these gentlemen who have attacked the House of Commons lean to a representation of the people by the head,—that is, to individual representation. None of them, that I recollect, except Mr. Fox, directly rejected it. It is remarkable, however, that he only rejected it by simply declaring an opinion. He let all the argument go against his opinion. All the proceedings and arguments of his reforming friends lead to individual representation, and to nothing else. It deserves to be attentively observed, that this individual representation is the only plan of their reform which has been explicitly proposed. In the mean time, the conduct of Mr. Fox appears to be far more inexplicable, on any good ground, than theirs, who propose the individual representation; for he neither proposes anything, nor even suggests that he has anything to propose, in lieu of the present mode of constituting the House of Commons; on the contrary, he declares against all the plans which have yet been suggested, either from himself or others: yet, thus unprovided with any plan whatsoever, he pressed forward this unknown reform with all possible warmth; and for that purpose, in a speech of several hours, he urged the referring to a committee the libellous impeachment of the House of Commons by the association of the Friends of the People. But for Mr. Fox to discredit Parliament as it stands, to countenance leagues, covenants, and associations for its further discredit, to render it perfectly odious and contemptible, and at the same time to propose nothing at all in place of what he disgraces, is worse, if possible, than to contend for personal individual representation, and is little less than demanding, in plain terms, to bring on plain anarchy.

44. Mr. Fox and these gentlemen have for the present been defeated; but they are neither converted nor disheartened. They have solemnly declared that they will persevere until they shall have obtained their ends,—persisting to assert that the House of Commons not only is not the true representative of the people, but that it does not answer the purpose of such representation: most of them insist that all the debts, the taxes, and the burdens of all kinds on the people, with every other evil and inconvenience which we have suffered since the Revolution, have been owing solely to an House of Commons which does not speak the sense of the people.

45. It is also not to be forgotten, that Mr. Fox, and all who hold with him, on this, as on all other occasions of pretended reform, most bitterly reproach Mr. Pitt with treachery, in declining to support the scandalous charges and indefinite projects of this infamous libel from the Friends of the People. By the animosity with which they persecute all those who grow cold in this cause of pretended reform, they hope, that, if, through levity, inexperience, or ambition, any young person (like Mr. Pitt, for instance) happens to be once embarked in their design, they shall by a false shame keep him fast in it forever. Many they have so hampered.

46. I know it is usual, when the peril and alarm of the hour appears to be a little overblown, to think no more of the matter. But, for my part, I look back with horror on what we have escaped, and am full of anxiety with regard to the dangers which in my opinion are still to be apprehended both at home and abroad. This business has cast deep roots. Whether it is necessarily connected in theory with Jacobinism is not worth a dispute. The two things are connected in fact. The partisans of the one are the partisans of the other. I know it is common with those who are favorable to the gentlemen of Mr. Fox's party and to their leader, though not at all devoted to all their reforming projects or their Gallican politics, to argue, in palliation of their conduct, that it is not in their power to do all the harm which their actions evidently tend to. It is said, that, as the people will not support them, they may safely be indulged in those eccentric fancies of reform, and those theories which lead to nothing. This apology is not very much to the honor of those politicians whose interests are to be adhered to in defiance of their conduct. I cannot flatter myself that these incessant attacks on the constitution of Parliament are safe. It is not in my power to despise the unceasing efforts of a confederacy of about fifty persons of eminence: men, for the far greater part, of very ample fortunes either in possession or in expectancy; men of decided characters and vehement passions; men of very great talents of all kinds, of much boldness, and of the greatest possible spirit of artifice, intrigue, adventure, and enterprise, all operating with unwearied activity and perseverance. These gentlemen are much stronger, too, without doors than some calculate. They have the more active part of the Dissenters with them, and the whole clan of speculators of all denominations,—a large and growing species. They have that floating multitude which goes with events, and which suffers the loss or gain of a battle to decide its opinions of right and wrong. As long as by every art this party keeps alive a spirit of disaffection against the very Constitution of the kingdom, and attributes, as lately it has been in the habit of doing, all the public misfortunes to that Constitution, it is absolutely impossible but that some moment must arrive in which they will be enabled to produce a pretended reform and a real revolution. If ever the body of this compound Constitution of ours is subverted, either in favor of unlimited monarchy or of wild democracy, that ruin will most certainly be the result of this very sort of machinations against the House of Commons. It is not from a confidence in the views or intentions of any statesman that I think he is to be indulged in these perilous amusements.

47. Before it is made the great object of any man's political life to raise another to power, it is right to consider what are the real dispositions of the person to be so elevated. We are not to form our judgment on those dispositions from the rules and principles of a court of justice, but from those of private discretion,—not looking for what would serve to criminate another, but what is sufficient to direct ourselves. By a comparison of a series of the discourses and actions of certain men for a reasonable length of time, it is impossible not to obtain sufficient indication of the general tendency of their views and principles. There is no other rational mode of proceeding. It is true, that in some one or two perhaps not well-weighed expressions, or some one or two unconnected and doubtful affairs, we may and ought to judge of the actions or words by our previous good or ill opinion of the man. But this allowance has its bounds. It does not extend to any regular course of systematic action, or of constant and repeated discourse. It is against every principle of common sense, and of justice to one's self and to the public, to judge of a series of speeches and actions from the man, and not of the man from the whole tenor of his language and conduct. I have stated the above matters, not as inferring a criminal charge of evil intention. If I had meant to do so, perhaps they are stated with tolerable exactness. But I have no such view. The intentions of these gentlemen may be very pure. I do not dispute it. But I think they are in some great error. If these things are done by Mr. Fox and his friends with good intentions, they are not done less dangerously; for it shows these good intentions are not under the direction of safe maxims and principles.

48. Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and the gentlemen who call themselves the Phalanx, have not been so very indulgent to others. They have thought proper to ascribe to those members of the House of Commons, who, in exact agreement with the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, abhor and oppose the French system, the basest and most unworthy motives for their conduct;—as if none could oppose that atheistic, immoral, and impolitic project set up in France, so disgraceful and destructive, as I conceive, to human nature itself, but with some sinister intentions. They treat those members on all occasions with a sort of lordly insolence, though they are persons that (whatever homage they may pay to the eloquence of the gentlemen who choose to look down upon them with scorn) are not their inferiors in any particular which calls for and obtains just consideration from the public: not their inferiors in knowledge of public law, or of the Constitution of the kingdom; not their inferiors in their acquaintance with its foreign and domestic interests; not their inferiors in experience or practice of business; not their inferiors in moral character; not their inferiors in the proofs they have given of zeal and industry in the service of their country. Without denying to these gentlemen the respect and consideration which it is allowed justly belongs to them, we see no reason why they should not as well be obliged to defer something to our opinions as that we should be bound blindly and servilely to follow those of Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Grey, Mr. Courtenay, Mr. Lambton, Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Taylor, and others. We are members of Parliament and their equals. We never consider ourselves as their followers. These gentlemen (some of them hardly born when some of us came into Parliament) have thought proper to treat us as deserters,—as if we had been listed into their phalanx like soldiers, and had sworn to live and die in their French principles. This insolent claim of superiority on their part, and of a sort of vassalage to them on that of other members, is what no liberal mind will submit to bear.

49. The society of the Liberty of the Press, the Whig Club, and the Society for Constitutional Information, and (I believe) the Friends of the People, as well as some clubs in Scotland, have, indeed, declared, "that their confidence in and attachment to Mr. Fox has lately been confirmed, strengthened, and increased by the calumnies" (as they are called) "against him." It is true, Mr. Fox and his friends have those testimonies in their favor, against certain old friends of the Duke of Portland. Yet, on a full, serious, and, I think, dispassionate consideration of the whole of what Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan and their friends have acted, said, and written, in this session, instead of doing anything which might tend to procure power, or any share of it whatsoever, to them or to their phalanx, (as they call it,) or to increase their credit, influence, or popularity in the nation, I think it one of my most serious and important public duties, in whatsoever station I may be placed for the short time I have to live, effectually to employ my best endeavors, by every prudent and every lawful means, to traverse all their designs. I have only to lament that my abilities are not greater, and that my probability of life is not better, for the more effectual pursuit of that object. But I trust that neither the principles nor exertions will die with me. I am the rather confirmed in this my resolution, and in this my wish of transmitting it, because every ray of hope concerning a possible control or mitigation of the enormous mischiefs which the principles of these gentlemen, and which their connections, full as dangerous as their principles, might receive from the influence of the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, on becoming their colleagues in office, is now entirely banished from the mind of every one living. It is apparent, even to the world at large, that, so far from having a power to direct or to guide Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Grey, and the rest, in any important matter, they have not, through this session, been able to prevail on them to forbear, or to delay, or mitigate, or soften, any one act, or any one expression, upon subjects on which they essentially differed.

50. Even if this hope of a possible control did exist, yet the declared opinions, and the uniform line of conduct conformable to those opinions, pursued by Mr. Fox, must become a matter of serious alarm, if he should obtain a power either at court or in Parliament or in the nation at large, and for this plain reason: he must be the most active and efficient member in any administration of which he shall form a part. That a man, or set of men, are guided by such not dubious, but delivered and avowed principles and maxims of policy, as to need a watch and check on them in the exercise of the highest power, ought, in my opinion, to make every man, who is not of the same principles and guided by the same maxims, a little cautious how he makes himself one of the traverses of a ladder to help such a man, or such a set of men, to climb up to the highest authority. A minister of this country is to be controlled by the House of Commons. He is to be trusted, not controlled, by his colleagues in office: if he were to be controlled, government, which ought to be the source of order, would itself become a scene of anarchy. Besides, Mr. Fox is a man of an aspiring and commanding mind, made rather to control than to be controlled, and he never will be nor can be in any administration in which he will be guided by any of those whom I have been accustomed to confide in. It is absurd to think that he would or could. If his own opinions do not control him, nothing can. When we consider of an adherence to a man which leads to his power, we must not only see what the man is, but how he stands related. It is not to be forgotten that Mr. Fox acts in close and inseparable connection with another gentleman of exactly the same description as himself, and who, perhaps, of the two, is the leader. The rest of the body are not a great deal more tractable; and over them, if Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan have authority, most assuredly the Duke of Portland has not the smallest degree of influence.

51. One must take care that a blind partiality to some persons, and as blind an hatred to others, may not enter into our minds under a color of inflexible public principle. We hear, as a reason for clinging to Mr. Fox at present, that nine years ago Mr. Pitt got into power by mischievous intrigues with the court, with the Dissenters, and with other factious people out of Parliament, to the discredit and weakening of the power of the House of Commons. His conduct nine years ago I still hold to be very culpable. There are, however, many things very culpable that I do not know how to punish. My opinion on such matters I must submit to the good of the state, as I have done on other occasions,—and particularly with regard to the authors and managers of the American war, with whom I have acted, both in office and in opposition, with great confidence and cordiality, though I thought many of their acts criminal and impeachable. Whilst the misconduct of Mr. Pitt and his associates was yet recent, it was not possible to get Mr. Fox of himself to take a single step, or even to countenance others in taking any step, upon the ground of that misconduct and false policy; though, if the matters had been then taken up and pursued, such a step could not have appeared so evidently desperate as now it is. So far from pursuing Mr. Pitt, I know that then, and for some time after, some of Mr. Fox's friends were actually, and with no small earnestness, looking out to a coalition with that gentleman. For years I never heard this circumstance of Mr. Pitt's misconduct on that occasion mentioned by Mr. Fox, either in public or in private, as a ground for opposition to that minister. All opposition, from that period to this very session, has proceeded upon the separate measures as they separately arose, without any vindictive retrospect to Mr. Pitt's conduct in 1784. My memory, however, may fail me. I must appeal to the printed debates, which (so far as Mr. Fox is concerned) are unusually accurate.

52. Whatever might have been in our power at an early period, at this day I see no remedy for what was done in 1784. I had no great hopes even at the time. I was therefore very eager to record a remonstrance on the journals of the House of Commons, as a caution against such a popular delusion in times to come; and this I then feared, and now am certain, is all that could be done. I know of no way of animadverting on the crown. I know of no mode of calling to account the House of Lords, who threw out the India Bill in a way not much to their credit. As little, or rather less, am I able to coerce the people at large, who behaved very unwisely and intemperately on that occasion. Mr. Pitt was then accused, by me as well as others, of attempting to be minister without enjoying the confidence of the House of Commons, though he did enjoy the confidence of the crown. That House of Commons, whose confidence he did not enjoy, unfortunately did not itself enjoy the confidence (though we well deserved it) either of the crown or of the public. For want of that confidence, the then House of Commons did not survive the contest. Since that period Mr. Pitt has enjoyed the confidence of the crown, and of the Lords, and of the House of Commons, through two successive Parliaments; and I suspect that he has ever since, and that he does still, enjoy as large a portion, at least, of the confidence of the people without doors as his great rival. Before whom, then, is Mr. Pitt to be impeached, and by whom? The more I consider the matter, the more firmly I am convinced that the idea of proscribing Mr. Pitt indirectly, when you cannot directly punish him, is as chimerical a project, and as unjustifiable, as it would be to have proscribed Lord North. For supposing that by indirect ways of opposition, by opposition upon measures which do not relate to the business of 1784, but which on other grounds might prove unpopular, you were to drive him from his seat, this would be no example whatever of punishment for the matters we charge as offences in 1784. On a cool and dispassionate view of the affairs of this time and country, it appears obvious to me that one or the other of those two great men, that is, Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, must be minister. They are, I am sorry for it, irreconcilable. Mr. Fox's conduct in this session has rendered the idea of his power a matter of serious alarm to many people who were very little pleased with the proceedings of Mr. Pitt in the beginning of his administration. They like neither the conduct of Mr. Pitt in 1784, nor that of Mr. Fox in 1793; but they estimate which of the evils is most pressing at the time, and what is likely to be the consequence of a change. If Mr. Fox be wedded, they must be sensible that his opinions and principles on the now existing state of things at home and abroad must be taken as his portion. In his train must also be taken the whole body of gentlemen who are pledged to him and to each other, and to their common politics and principles. I believe no king of Great Britain ever will adopt, for his confidential servants, that body of gentlemen, holding that body of principles. Even if the present king or his successor should think fit to take that step, I apprehend a general discontent of those who wish that this nation and that Europe should continue in their present state would ensue,—a discontent which, combined with the principles and progress of the new men in power, would shake this kingdom to its foundations. I do not believe any one political conjecture can be more certain than this.

53. Without at all defending or palliating Mr. Pitt's conduct in 1784, I must observe, that the crisis of 1793, with regard to everything at home and abroad, is full as important as that of 1784 ever was, and, if for no other reason, by being present, is much more important. It is not to nine years ago we are to look for the danger of Mr. Fox's and Mr. Sheridan's conduct, and that of the gentlemen who act with them. It is at this very time, and in this very session, that, if they had not been strenuously resisted, they would not only have discredited the House of Commons, (as Mr. Pitt did in 1784, when he persuaded the king to reject their advice, and to appeal from them to the people,) but, in my opinion, would have been the means of wholly subverting the House of Commons and the House of Peers, and the whole Constitution actual and virtual, together with the safety and independence of this nation, and the peace and settlement of every state in the now Christian world. It is to our opinion of the nature of Jacobinism, and of the probability, by corruption, faction, and force, of its gaining ground everywhere, that the question whom and what you are to support is to be determined. For my part, without doubt or hesitation, I look upon Jacobinism as the most dreadful and the most shameful evil which ever afflicted mankind, a thing which goes beyond the power of all calculation in its mischief,—and that, if it is suffered to exist in France, we must in England, and speedily too, fall into that calamity.

54. I figure to myself the purpose of these gentlemen accomplished, and this ministry destroyed. I see that the persons who in that case must rule can be no other than Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Grey, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Thurlow, Lord Lauderdale, and the Duke of Norfolk, with the other chiefs of the Friends of the People, the Parliamentary reformers, and the admirers of the French Revolution. The principal of these are all formally pledged to their projects. If the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam should be admitted into that system, (as they might and probably would be,) it is quite certain they could not have the smallest weight in it,—less, indeed, than what they now possess, if less were possible: because they would be less wanted than they now are; and because all those who wished to join them, and to act under them, have been rejected by the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam themselves; and Mr. Fox, finding them thus by themselves disarmed, has built quite a new fabric, upon quite a new foundation. There is no trifling on this subject. We see very distinctly before us the ministry that would be formed and the plan that would be pursued. If we like the plan, we must wish the power of those who are to carry it into execution; but to pursue the political exaltation of those whose political measures we disapprove and whose principles we dissent from is a species of modern politics not easily comprehensible, and which must end in the ruin of the country, if it should continue and spread. Mr. Pitt may be the worst of men, and Mr. Fox may be the best; but, at present, the former is in the interest of his country, and of the order of things long established in Europe: Mr. Fox is not. I have, for one, been born in this order of things, and would fain die in it. I am sure it is sufficient to make men as virtuous, as happy, and as knowing as anything which Mr. Fox, and his friends abroad or at, home, would substitute in its place; and I should be sorry that any set of politicians should obtain power in England whose principles or schemes should lead them to countenance persons or factions whose object is to introduce some new devised order of things into England, or to support that order where it is already introduced, in France,—a place in which if it can be fixed, in my mind, it must have a certain and decided influence in and upon this kingdom.

This is my account of my conduct to my private friends. I have already said all I wish to say, or nearly so, to the public. I write this with pain and with an heart full of grief.

The French Revolution has been the subject of various speculations and various histories. As might be expected, the royalists and the republicans have differed a good deal in their accounts of the principles of that Revolution, of the springs which have set it in motion, and of the true character of those who have been, or still are, the principal actors on that astonishing scene.

They who are inclined to think favorably of that event will undoubtedly object to every state of facts which comes only from the authority of a royalist. Thus much must be allowed by those who are the most firmly attached to the cause of religion, law, and order, (for of such, and not of friends to despotism, the royal party is composed,)—that their very affection to this generous and manly cause, and their abhorrence of a Revolution not less fatal to liberty than to government, may possibly lead them in some particulars to a more harsh representation of the proceedings of their adversaries than would be allowed by the cold neutrality of an impartial judge. This sort of error arises from a source highly laudable; but the exactness of truth may suffer even from the feelings of virtue. History will do justice to the intentions of worthy men, but it will be on its guard against their infirmities; it will examine with great strictness of scrutiny whatever appears from a writer in favor of his own cause. On the other hand, whatever escapes him, and makes against that cause, comes with the greatest weight.

In this important controversy, the translator of the following work brings forward to the English tribunal of opinion the testimony of a witness beyond all exception. His competence is undoubted. He knows everything which concerns this Revolution to the bottom. He is a chief actor in all the scenes which he presents. No man can object to him as a royalist: the royal party, and the Christian religion, never had a more determined enemy. In a word, it is BRISSOT. It is Brissot, the republican, the Jacobin, and the philosopher, who is brought to give an account of Jacobinism, and of republicanism, and of philosophy.

It is worthy of observation, that this his account of the genius of Jacobinism and its effects is not confined to the period in which that faction came to be divided within itself. In several, and those very important particulars, Brissot's observations apply to the whole of the preceding period before the great schism, and whilst the Jacobins acted as one body; insomuch that the far greater part of the proceedings of the ruling powers since the commencement of the Revolution in France, so strikingly painted, so strongly and so justly reprobated by Brissot, were the acts of Brissot himself and his associates. All the members of the Girondin subdivision were as deeply concerned as any of the Mountain could possibly be, and some of them much more deeply, in those horrid transactions which have filled all the thinking part of Europe with the greatest detestation, and with the most serious apprehensions for the common liberty and safety.

A question will very naturally be asked,—What could induce Brissot to draw such a picture? He must have been sensible it was his own. The answer is,—The inducement was the same with that which led him to partake in the perpetration of all the crimes the calamitous effects of which he describes with the pen of a master,—ambition. His faction, having obtained their stupendous and unnatural power by rooting out of the minds of his unhappy countrymen every principle of religion, morality, loyalty, fidelity, and honor, discovered, that, when authority came into their hands, it would be a matter of no small difficulty for them to carry on government on the principles by which they had destroyed it.

The rights of men and the new principles of liberty and equality were very unhandy instruments for those who wished to establish a system of tranquillity and order. They who were taught to find nothing to respect in the title and in the virtues of Louis the Sixteenth, a prince succeeding to the throne by the fundamental laws, in the line of a succession of monarchs continued for fourteen hundred years, found nothing which could bind them to an implicit fidelity and dutiful allegiance to Messrs. Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet, Anacharsis Clootz, and Thomas Paine.

In this difficulty, they did as well as they could. To govern the people, they must incline the people to obey. The work was difficult, but it was necessary. They were to accomplish it by such materials and by such instruments as they had in their hands. They were to accomplish the purposes of order, morality, and submission to the laws, from the principles of atheism, profligacy, and sedition. Ill as the disguise became them, they began to assume the mask of an austere and rigid virtue; they exhausted all the stores of their eloquence (which in some of them were not inconsiderable) in declamations against tumult and confusion; they made daily harangues on the blessings of order, discipline, quiet, and obedience to authority; they even showed some sort of disposition to protect such property as had not been confiscated. They who on every occasion had discovered a sort of furious thirst of blood and a greedy appetite for slaughter, who avowed and gloried in the murders and massacres of the 14th of July, of the 5th and 6th of October, and of the 10th of August, now began to be squeamish and fastidious with regard to those of the 2nd of September.

In their pretended scruples on the sequel of the slaughter of the 10th of August, they imposed upon no living creature, and they obtained not the smallest credit for humanity. They endeavored to establish a distinction, by the belief of which they hoped to keep the spirit of murder safely bottled up and sealed for their own purposes, without endangering themselves by the fumes of the poison which they prepared for their enemies.

Roland was the chief and the most accredited of the faction. His morals had furnished little matter of exception against him. Old, domestic, and uxorious, he led a private life sufficiently blameless. He was therefore set up as the Cato of the republican party, which did not abound in such characters.

This man, like most of the chiefs, was the manager of a newspaper, in which he promoted the interest of his party. He was a fatal present made by the revolutionists to the unhappy king, as one of his ministers under the new Constitution. Amongst his colleagues were Clavière and Servan. All the three have since that time either lost their heads by the axe of their associates in rebellion, or, to evade their own revolutionary justice, have fallen by their own hands.

These ministers were regarded by the king as in a conspiracy to dethrone him. Nobody who considers the circumstances which preceded the deposition of Louis the Sixteenth, nobody who attends to the subsequent conduct of those ministers, can hesitate about the reality of such a conspiracy. The king certainly had no doubt of it; he found himself obliged to remove them; and the necessity, which first obliged him to choose such regicide ministers constrained him to replace them by Dumouriez the Jacobin, and some others of little efficiency, though of a better description.

A little before this removal, and evidently as a part of the conspiracy, Roland put into the king's hands, as a memorial, the most insolent, seditious, and atrocious libel that has probably ever been penned. This paper Roland a few days after delivered to the National Assembly,[2] who instantly published and dispersed it over all France; and in order to give it the stronger operation, they declared that he and his brother ministers had carried with them the regret of the nation. None of the writings which have inflamed the Jacobin spirit to a savage fury ever worked up a fiercer ferment through the whole mass of the republicans in every part of France.

Under the thin veil of prediction, he strongly recommends all the abominable practices which afterwards followed. In particular, he inflamed the minds of the populace against the respectable and conscientious clergy, who became the chief objects of the massacre, and who were to him the chief objects of a malignity and rancor that one could hardly think to exist in an human heart.

We have the relics of his fanatical persecution here. We are in a condition to judge of the merits of the persecutors and of the persecuted: I do not say the accusers and accused; because, in all the furious declamations of the atheistic faction against these men, not one specific charge has been made upon any one person of those who suffered in their massacre or by their decree of exile.

The king had declared that he would sooner perish under their axe (he too well saw what was preparing for him) than give his sanction to the iniquitous act of proscription under which those innocent people were to be transported.

On this proscription of the clergy a principal part of the ostensible quarrel between the king and those ministers had turned. From the time of the authorized publication of this libel, some of the manoeuvres long and uniformly pursued for the king's deposition became more and more evident and declared.

The 10th of August came on, and in the manner in which Roland had predicted: it was followed by the same consequences. The king was deposed, after cruel massacres in the courts and the apartments of his palace and in almost all parts of the city. In reward of his treason to his old master, Roland was by his new masters named Minister of the Home Department.

The massacres of the 2nd of September were begotten by the massacres of the 10th of August. They were universally foreseen and hourly expected. During this short interval between the two murderous scenes, the furies, male and female, cried out havoc as loudly and as fiercely as ever. The ordinary jails were all filled with prepared victims; and when they overflowed, churches were turned into jails. At this time the relentless Roland had the care of the general police;—he had for his colleague the bloody Danton, who was Minister of Justice; the insidious Pétion was Mayor of Paris; the treacherous Manuel was Procurator of the Common Hall. The magistrates (some or all of them) were evidently the authors of this massacre. Lest the national guard should, by their very name, be reminded of their duty in preserving the lives of their fellow-citizens, the Common Council of Paris, pretending that it was in vain to think of resisting the murderers, (although in truth neither their numbers nor their arms were at all formidable,) obliged those guards to draw the charges from their muskets, and took away their bayonets. One of their journalists, and, according to their fashion, one of their leading statesmen, Gorsas, mentions this fact in his newspaper, which he formerly called the Galley Journal. The title was well suited to the paper and its author. For some felonies he had been sentenced to the galleys; but, by the benignity of the late king, this felon (to be one day advanced to the rank of a regicide) had been pardoned and released at the intercession of the ambassadors of Tippoo Sultan. His gratitude was such as might naturally have been expected; and it has lately been rewarded as it deserved. This liberated galley-slave was raised, in mockery of all criminal law, to be Minister of Justice: he became from his elevation a more conspicuous object of accusation, and he has since received the punishment of his former crimes in proscription and death.

It will be asked, how the Minister of the Home Department was employed at this crisis. The day after the massacre had commenced, Roland appeared; but not with the powerful apparatus of a protecting magistrate, to rescue those who had survived the slaughter of the first day: nothing of this. On the 3rd of September, (that is, the day after the commencement of the massacre,[3]) he writes a long, elaborate, verbose epistle to the Assembly, in which, after magnifying, according to the bon-ton of the Revolution, his own integrity, humanity, courage, and patriotism, he first directly justifies all the bloody proceedings of the 10th of August. He considers the slaughter of that day as a necessary measure for defeating a conspiracy which (with a full knowledge of the falsehood of his assertion) he asserts to have been formed for a massacre of the people of Paris, and which he more than insinuates was the work of his late unhappy master,—who was universally known to carry his dread of shedding the blood of his most guilty subjects to an excess.

"Without the day of the 10th," says he, "it is evident that we should have been lost. The court, prepared for a long time, waited for the hour which was to accumulate all treasons, to display over Paris the standard of death, and to reign there by terror. The sense of the people, (le sentiment,) always just and ready when their opinion is not corrupted, foresaw the epoch marked for their destruction, and rendered it fatal to the conspirators." He then proceeds, in the cant which has been applied to palliate all their atrocities from the 14th of July, 1789, to the present time:—"It is in the nature of things," continues he, "and in that of the human heart, that victory should bring with it some excess. The sea, agitated by a violent storm, roars long after the tempest; but everything has bounds, which ought at length to be observed."

In this memorable epistle, he considers such excesses as fatalities arising from the very nature of things, and consequently not to be punished. He allows a space of time for the duration of these agitations; and lest he should be thought rigid and too scanty in his measure, he thinks it may be long. But he would have things to cease at length. But when? and where?—When they may approach his own person.

"Yesterday," says he, "the ministers were denounced: vaguely, indeed, as to the matter, because subjects of reproach were wanting; but with that warmth and force of assertion which strike the imagination and seduce it for a moment, and which mislead and destroy confidence, without which no man should remain in place in a free government. Yesterday, again, in an assembly of the presidents of all the sections, convoked by the ministers, with the view of conciliating all minds, and of mutual explanation, I perceived that distrust which suspects, interrogates, and fetters operations."

In this manner (that is, in mutual suspicions and interrogatories) this virtuous Minister of the Home Department, and all the magistracy of Paris, spent the first day of the massacre, the atrocity of which has spread horror and alarm throughout Europe. It does not appear that the putting a stop to the massacre had any part in the object of their meeting, or in their consultations when they were met. Here was a minister tremblingly alive to his own safety, dead to that of his fellow-citizens, eager to preserve his place, and worse than indifferent about its most important duties. Speaking of the people, he says "that their hidden enemies may make use of this agitation" (the tender appellation which he gives to horrid massacre) "to hurt their best friends and their most able defenders. Already the example begins: let it restrain and arrest a just rage. Indignation carried to its height commences proscriptions which fall only on the guilty, but in which error and particular passions may shortly involve the honest man."

He saw that the able artificers in the trade and mystery of murder did not choose that their skill should be unemployed after their first work, and that they were full as ready to cut off their rivals as their enemies. This gave him one alarm that was serious. This letter of Roland, in every part of it, lets out the secret of all the parties in this Revolution. Plena rimarum est; hoc atque illac perfluit. We see that none of them condemn the occasional practice of murder,—provided it is properly applied,—provided it is kept within the bounds which each of those parties think proper to prescribe. In this case Roland feared, that, if what was occasionally useful should become habitual, the practice might go further than was convenient. It might involve the best friends of the last Revolution, as it had done the heroes of the first Revolution: he feared that it would not be confined to the La Fayettes and Clermont-Tonnerres, the Duponts and Barnaves, but that it might extend to the Brissots and Vergniauds, to the Condorcets, the Pétions, and to himself. Under this apprehension there is no doubt that his humane feelings were altogether unaffected.

His observations on the massacre of the preceding day are such as cannot be passed over. "Yesterday," said he, "was a day upon the events of which it is perhaps necessary to leave a veil. I know that the people with their vengeance mingled a sort of justice: they did not take for victims all who presented themselves to their fury; they directed it to them who had for a long time been spared by the sword of the law, and who they believed, from the peril of circumstances, should be sacrificed without delay. But I know that it is easy to villains and traitors to misrepresent this effervescence, and that it must be checked; I know that we owe to all France the declaration, that the executive power could not foresee or prevent this excess; I know that it is due to the constituted authorities to place a limit to it, or consider themselves as abolished."

In the midst of this carnage he thinks of nothing but throwing a veil over it,—which was at once to cover the guilty from punishment, and to extinguish all compassion for the sufferers. He apologizes for it; in fact, he justifies it. He who (as the reader has just seen in what is quoted from this letter) feels so much indignation at "vague denunciations," when made against himself, and from which he then feared nothing more than the subversion of his power, is not ashamed to consider the charge of a conspiracy to massacre the Parisians, brought against his master upon denunciations as vague as possible, or rather upon no denunciations, as a perfect justification of the monstrous proceedings against him. He is not ashamed to call the murder of the unhappy priests in the Carmes, who were under no criminal denunciation whatsoever, a "vengeance mingled with a sort of justice"; he observes that they "had been a long time spared by the sword of the law," and calls by anticipation all those who should represent this "effervescence" in other colors villains and traitors: he did not than foresee how soon himself and his accomplices would be under the necessity of assuming the pretended character of this new sort of "villany and treason", in the hope of obliterating the memory of their former real villanies and treasons; he did not foresee that in the course of six months a formal manifesto on the part of himself and his faction, written by his confederate Brissot, was to represent this "effervescence" as another "St. Bartholomew" and speak of it as "having made humanity shudder, and sullied the Revolution forever."[4]

It is very remarkable that he takes upon himself to know the motives of the assassins, their policy, and even what they "believed." How could this be, if he had no connection with them? He praises the murderers for not having taken as yet all the lives of those who had, as he calls it, "presented themselves as victims to their fury." He paints the miserable prisoners, who had been forcibly piled upon one another in the Church of the Carmelites by his faction, as presenting themselves as victims to their fury,—as if death was their choice, or (allowing the idiom of his language to make this equivocal) as if they were by some accident presented to the fury of their assassins: whereas he knew that the leaders of the murderers sought these pure and innocent victims in the places where they had deposited them and were sure to find them. The very selection, which he praises as a sort of justice tempering their fury, proves beyond a doubt the foresight, deliberation, and method with which this massacre was made. He knew that circumstance on the very day of the commencement of the massacres, when, in all probability, he had begun this letter,—for he presented it to the Assembly on the very next.

Whilst, however, he defends these acts, he is conscious that they will appear in another light to the world. He therefore acquits the executive power, that is, he acquits himself, (but only by his own assertion,) of those acts of "vengeance mixed with a sort of justice," as an "excess which he could neither foresee nor prevent." He could not, he says, foresee these acts, when he tells us the people of Paris had sagacity so well to foresee the designs of the court on the 10th of August,—to foresee them so well as to mark the precise epoch on which they were to be executed, and to contrive to anticipate them on the very day: he could not foresee these events, though he declares in this very letter that victory must bring with it some excess,—that "the sea roars long after the tempest." So far as to his foresight. As to his disposition to prevent, if he had foreseen, the massacres of that day,—this will be judged by his care in putting a stop to the massacre then going on. This was no matter of foresight: he was in the very midst of it. He does not so much as pretend that he had used any force to put a stop to it. But if he had used any, the sanction given under his hand to a sort of justice in the murderers was enough to disarm the protecting force.

That approbation of what they had already done had its natural effect on the executive assassins, then in the paroxysm of their fury, as well as on their employers, then in the midst of the execution of their deliberate, cold-blooded system of murder. He did not at all differ from either of them in the principle of those executions, but only in the time of their duration,—and that only as it affected himself. This, though to him a great consideration, was none to his confederates, who were at the same time his rivals. They were encouraged to accomplish the work they had in hand. They did accomplish it; and whilst this grave moral epistle from a grave minister, recommending a cessation of their work of "vengeance mingled with a sort of justice," was before a grave assembly, the authors of the massacres proceeded without interruption in their business for four days together,—that is, until the seventh of that month, and until all the victims of the first proscription in Paris and at Versailles and several other places were immolated at the shrine of the grim Moloch of liberty and equality. All the priests, all the loyalists, all the first essayists and novices of revolution in 1789, that could be found, were promiscuously put to death.

Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it is curious to remark how the nerve and vigor of his style, which had spoken so potently to his sovereign, is relaxed when he addresses himself to the sans-culottes,—how that strength and dexterity of arm, with which he parries and beats down the sceptre, is enfeebled and lost when he comes to fence with the poniard. When he speaks to the populace, he can no longer be direct. The whole compass of the language is tried to find synonymes and circumlocutions for massacre and murder. Things are never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess, sometimes too continued an exercise of a revolutionary power.

However, after what had passed had been praised, or excused, or pardoned, he declares loudly against such proceedings in future. Crimes had pioneered and made smooth the way for the march of the virtues, and from that time order and justice and a sacred regard for personal property were to become the rules for the new democracy. Here Roland and the Brissotins leagued for their own preservation, by endeavoring to preserve peace. This short story will render many of the parts of Brissot's pamphlet, in which Roland's views and intentions are so often alluded to, the more intelligible in themselves, and the more useful in their application by the English reader.

Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot, and their party hoped to gain the bankers, merchants, substantial tradesmen, hoarders of assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and gentry to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to the effects which they possessed, whether these effects were the acquisitions of fair commerce, or the gains of jobbing in the misfortunes of their country and the plunder of their fellow-citizens. In this design the party of Roland and Brissot succeeded in a great degree. They obtained a majority in the National Convention. Composed, however, as that assembly is, their majority was far from steady. But whilst they appeared to gain the Convention, and many of the outlying departments, they lost the city of Paris entirely and irrecoverably: it was fallen into the hands of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. Their instruments were the sans-culottes, or rabble, who domineered in that capital, and were wholly at the devotion of those incendiaries, and received their daily pay. The people of property were of no consequence, and trembled before Marat and his janizaries. As that great man had not obtained the helm of the state, it was not yet come to his turn to act the part of Brissot and his friends in the assertion of subordination and regular government. But Robespierre has survived both these rival chiefs, and is now the great patron of Jacobin order.

To balance the exorbitant power of Paris, (which threatened to leave nothing to the National Convention but a character as insignificant as that which the first Assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis the Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders were Roland, Pétion, Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet, &c., &c., &c., applied themselves to gain the great commercial towns, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes, and Bordeaux. The republicans of the Brissotin description, to whom the concealed royalists, still very numerous, joined themselves, obtained a temporary superiority in all these places. In Bordeaux, on account of the activity and eloquence of some of its representatives, this superiority was the most distinguished. This last city is seated on the Garonne, or Gironde; and being the centre of a department named from that river, the appellation of Girondists was given to the whole party. These, and some other towns, declared strongly against the principles of anarchy, and against the despotism of Paris. Numerous addresses were sent to the Convention, promising to maintain its authority, which the addressers were pleased to consider as legal and constitutional, though chosen, not to compose an executive government, but to form a plan for a Constitution. In the Convention measures were taken to obtain an armed force from the several departments to maintain the freedom of that body, and to provide for the personal safety of the members: neither of which, from the 14th of July, 1789, to this hour, have been really enjoyed by their assemblies sitting under any denomination.

This scheme, which was well conceived, had not the desired success. Paris, from which the Convention did not dare to move, though some threats of such a departure were from time to time thrown out, was too powerful for the party of the Gironde. Some of the proposed guards, but neither with regularity nor in force, did indeed arrive: they were debauched as fast as they came, or were sent to the frontiers. The game played by the revolutionists in 1789, with respect to the French guards of the unhappy king, was now played against the departmental guards, called together for the protection of the revolutionists. Every part of their own policy comes round, and strikes at their own power and their own lives.

The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in taking the alarm. They had just reason to apprehend, that, if they permitted the smallest delay, they should see themselves besieged by an army collected from all parts of France. Violent threats were thrown out against that city in the Assembly. Its total destruction was menaced. A very remarkable expression was used in these debates,—"that in future times it might be inquired on what part of the Seine Paris had stood." The faction which ruled in Paris, too bold to be intimidated and too vigilant to be surprised, instantly armed themselves. In their turn, they accused the Girondists of a treasonable design to break the republic one and indivisible (whose unity they contended could only be preserved by the supremacy of Paris) into a number of confederate commonwealths. The Girondin faction on this account received also the name of Federalists.

Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities. Paris, the mother of equality, was herself to be equalized. Matters were come to this alternative: either that city must be reduced to a mere member of the federative republic, or the Convention, chosen, as they said, by all France, was to be brought regularly and systematically under the dominion of the Common Hall, and even of any one of the sections of Paris.

In this awful contest, thus brought to issue, the great mother club of the Jacobins was entirely in the Parisian interest. The Girondins no longer dared to show their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths at least of the Jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great patriarchal Jacobinière of Paris, to which they were (to use their own term) affiliated. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive, had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to interfere: and they chose to interfere in everything, and on every occasion. All hope of gaining them to the support of property, or to the acknowledgment of any law but their own will, was evidently vain and hopeless. Nothing but an armed insurrection against their anarchical authority could answer the purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured by rebellion, as it had been caused by it.

As a preliminary to this attempt on the Jacobins and the commons of Paris, which it was hoped would be supported by all the remaining property of France, it became absolutely necessary to prepare a manifesto, laying before the public the whole policy, genius, character, and conduct of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which all those concerned in this Revolution were, at the several periods of their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and under these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of his party, which he executed with no small ability; and in this manner the whole mystery of the French Revolution was laid open in all its parts.

It is almost needless to mention to the reader the fate of the design to which this pamphlet was to be subservient. The Jacobins of Paris were more prompt than their adversaries. They were the readiest to resort to what La Fayette calls the most sacred of all duties, that of insurrection. Another era of holy insurrection commenced the 31st of last May. As the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on insurrection, and of that rebellion improving upon rebellion, the sacred, irresponsible character of the members of the Convention was laughed to scorn. They had themselves shown in their proceedings against the late king how little the most fixed principles are to be relied upon, in their revolutionary Constitution. The members of the Girondin party in the Convention were seized upon, or obliged to save themselves by flight. The unhappy author of this piece, with twenty of his associates, suffered together on the scaffold, after a trial the iniquity of which puts all description to defiance.

The English reader will draw from this work of Brissot, and from the result of the last struggles of this party, some useful lessons. He will be enabled to judge of the information of those who have undertaken to guide and enlighten us, and who, for reasons best known to themselves, have chosen to paint the French Revolution and its consequences in brilliant and flattering colors. They will know how to appreciate the liberty of France, which has been so much magnified in England. They will do justice to the wisdom and goodness of their sovereign and his Parliament, who have put them into a state of defence, in the war audaciously made upon us in favor of that kind of liberty. When we see (as here we must see) in their true colors the character and policy of our enemies, our gratitude will become an active principle. It will produce a strong and zealous coöperation with the efforts of our government in favor of a Constitution under which we enjoy advantages the full value of which the querulous weakness of human nature requires sometimes the opportunity of a comparison to understand and to relish.

Our confidence in those who watch for the public will not be lessened. We shall be sensible that to alarm us in the late circumstances of our affairs was not for our molestation, but for our security. We shall be sensible that this alarm was not ill-timed,—and that it ought to have been given, as it was given, before the enemy had time fully to mature and accomplish their plans for reducing us to the condition of France, as that condition is faithfully and without exaggeration described in the following work. We now have our arms in our hands; we have the means of 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 their views and designs upon all their neighbors are fully displayed. Here the whole mystery of their ferocious politics 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 publicly opposed these measures; but he attributes their silence to a fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain, that, whether from fear or from approbation, they never discovered any dislike of those proceedings till Dumouriez 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 favor 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.

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 public; 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 year, 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. "Dumouriez cannot suit us. I always distrusted him. Miranda is the general for us: he understands the revolutionary power; he has courage, lights," &c.[5] Here everything is fairly avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal conflagration of Europe; the only real dissatisfaction with Dumouriez 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 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 favor, 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 31st 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 Republic; to disorganize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants by the eruption of the volcanic principles of equality."[6] The coincidence is exact; the proof is complete and irresistible.

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 enthusiastic admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation, resentment, and horror.

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 an 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 revolutionary 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 talents and resources. But with all their talents and resources, and the apparent momentary extent of their power, we see the fate of their projects, their power, and their persons. We see before our eyes the absurdity of thinking to establish order upon principles of confusion, or with the materials and instruments of rebellion to build up a solid and stable government.

Such partisans of a republic amongst us as may not have the worst intentions will see that the principles, the plans, the manners, the morals, and the whole system of France is altogether as adverse to the formation and duration of any rational scheme of a republic as it is to that of a monarchy, absolute or limited. It is, indeed, a system which can only answer the purposes of robbers and murderers.

The translator has only to say for himself, that he has found some difficulty in this version. His original author, through haste, perhaps, or through the perturbation of a mind filled with a great and arduous enterprise, is often obscure. There are some passages, too, in which his language requires to be first translated into French,—at least into such French as the Academy would in former times have tolerated. He writes with great force and vivacity; but the language, like everything else in his country, has undergone a revolution. The translator thought it best to be as literal as possible, conceiving such a translation would perhaps be the most fit to convey the author's peculiar mode of thinking. In this way the translator has no credit for style, but he makes it up in fidelity. Indeed, the facts and observations are so much more important than the style, that no apology is wanted for producing them in any intelligible manner.