THREE MEMORIALS ON FRENCH AFFAIRS.

WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1791, 1792 AND 1793.

BY THE LATE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.

London: PRINTED FOR F. AND C. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD; SOLD ALSO BY J. HATCHARD, PICCADILLY. 1797.

PREFACE.

TO be engaged in a contention with in­gratitude and fraud, is neither pleasing nor honourable; but they who in discharging the sacred obligations of friendship are forced into it, must submit to the humiliation. They would themselves be criminal in the next de­gree, were they to consult their own personal feelings; they are bound to consider only their duty.

In the beginning of the present year, a confidential paper, written by the late Mr. Burke, was surreptitiously published in his name; and at the end of it was advertised a volume of pretended memoirs, anecdotes, and letters, of the Author. Some of his friends (he was himself at Bath, struggling with the disease which ultimately proved fatal to him) obtained an injunction from the Court of [Page 2] Chancery, on the very day of publication. By this prompt interference of the law, by the general discountenance of all liberal men, and by the bankruptcy of the bookseller, which soon followed, the sale, though not wholly stopped, was considerably checked; and the memoirs, for the time, suppressed. But scarcely is the hand that wrote, and the tongue that dictated, yet cold in death, when, before it has been practicable even to examine and ar­range the numerous papers which that admi­rable man has left behind him, and which bear impressed upon them the living traces of his great mind through his whole career of publick action, and during the previous course of severe study, by which he prepared him­self to be what he became, a new notice is thrown forth, enlarged and improved a little in the language and arrangement, but in sub­stance nearly the same with the former. It clearly comes, it can only come, from the same quarter; though perhaps the work it­self may be coloured with some more osten­sible name.

By this conduct, in addition to the turpi­tude which marked the former attempt, the [Page 3] will of the dead, regarded by all civilized na­tions with peculiar sanctity, is violated. The friends, to whose care and judgment Mr. Burke confided the selection and use of his manuscripts, are no longer at liberty to exer­cise their own discretion. They are not mas­ters even of the time, order, and method to be observed in the execution of their trust. Without a choice, they are dragged along to meet or to overtake the diversified arts of a man, who, fed by his bounty while alive, en­deavoured to disquiet the last moments of his dying benefactor, and ceases not to injure him in his grave. It is true, they have already obtained another injunction, but they are well aware, that crafty men will too often contrive to evade the law; desperate men will dare to defy it. They know, indeed, from the for­mer experiment, that no deliberate encou­ragement will be given to the thefts and fa­brications of avarice or indigence: the new system of morals has not made quite so much progress in this kingdom: but they also know that publick curiosity, strongly excited as it must be, by a promise of ‘"Mr. Burke's se­cret correspondence with the most distin­guished [Page 4] characters of Europe,"’ will demand to be indulged. It will seek irregular, if it be denied regular means of gratification. The thirst which is not permitted to drink of the fresh fountain or the clear stream, will slake itself wherever it can, at the weedy pool or the muddy ditch.

Their determination therefore is taken. It is, upon the whole, they believe, the best which their circumstances would allow; though they may be in some danger of thus furnishing genuine materials, which are in their hands alone, and which mingled up with others of a different description, may be employed to lend a fallacious credit to the idle tales of credulity and folly, or the absurd calumnies of enmity and envy.

The present publication consists of three Memorials, which were written in the years 1791, 1792, 1793, and relate to three very interesting epochs in the French Revolution. They more particularly treat of the effects, which, at those respective periods, the author imagined that event likely to produce on the [Page 5] political state of all Europe. There is reason to suppose that incorrect copies of two out of the three have been fraudulently taken.

Some other pieces are in the hands of the Printer, and will shortly appear in a second pamphlet. They relate to the conduct of our two great parties at home, with a view to French politicks.

These two publications will fill up a very important chasm in the recorded opinions of the Author. There is nothing on French af­fairs in the quarto edition of his works later than the middle of the year 1791; long before the first approach to actual hostilities between the French and the neighbouring Powers of Germany. What he afterwards published takes up the subject at the point of time, when the King's Ministers, despairing of suc­cess in the great purpose of continuing, what­ever was the immediate cause of beginning the war, had avowed a disposition to nego­ciate a peace with the French Republick.

A collection also of Mr. Burke's more im­portant [Page 6] letters, during the last years of his life, especially on the subject of France, is prepar­ing for the press. Of course it will be much more ample, than any thing which can be furnished by the person from whose scanda­lous breach of trust alone any spurious com­pilation can draw it's materials.

Many of these letters were intended, not for the press indeed, but for free circulation in manuscript; a channel, which through all the principal transactions of his political life, he used instead of the publick prints, for explain­ing, as occasion required, his principles or his conduct. Of these compositions, sometimes himself, and sometimes those around him kept copies.

Some few of his letters were preserved by him as a sort of private protest and record of his opinions, when on questions of impor­tance he had the misfortune, (such he always sincerely felt it to be) of dissenting from those with whom he generally acted. He was, from conviction, a party-man; but he ever thought that party should be subservient to [Page 7] principle, not principle to party. His princi­ples are now, unhappily for his country and the world, become mere matter of history, and whatever can elucidate them is due to the instruction of the publick.

His other letters, which passed in the un­reserved freedom of confidential intercourse, can only be obtained from the liberality of the friends to whom they were addressed, many of whom have kindly promised their contributions, and all of whom are respect­fully desired to transmit to Messrs. Riving­tons whatever they may have in that kind, which they may judge not unfit for the pub­lick eye. There is very little indeed of his correspondence (and no man wrote more) which does not contain some portion of a great body of ethicks and politicks, from which mankind may grow wiser and better.

All these, and other such productions of his pen, as it may be thought right to print sepa­rately, will be given with all convenient speed in the octavo size, which he himself in his life-time chose for the first editions of his [Page 8] Speeches and Tracts. They will afterwards be formed, with many other original pieces of a less temporary nature, into quarto volumes; and to the whole will be prefixed a Life of the Author, accompanied with various letters and papers of a more early date, some of which were pointed out by himself as ‘"do­cuments for the history, not of his own life," he observed, "but of his times."’

It has been frequently supposed, that he was himself employed in writing such a history. But they who supposed this knew little of him. He bore too large a share, much be­yond what is commonly known, in the lite­rature and politicks of the age, to be himself the historian. Though not without a just sense of his own merits, he truly loved and practised that humility, which he has so beau­tifully called, ‘"the low, but deep and firm foundation of all real virtue."’ On princi­ple, he would never have consented to under­take a task, in performing which, to have done justice to himself he must have risked the imputation of vanity; a vice which he abhorred to a degree, that by such as were [Page 9] not intimately acquainted with his heart, might have been sometimes mistaken for vanity itself. He has left in manuscript some biographical sketches both of his son and his brother; none of himself. None are oftentatiously in­troduced in any of his works. Cicero seems to have written some of his books almost for the purpose of putting his own praises into the mouths of others, and of scattering around those numberless little intimations, which at this distance of time we gather up with so much delight, of his childhood, his education, his studies, his amusements, his manners, his relations, his friends, his houses and pleasure-grounds, the gallery of Tuscu­lum, and the oak of Arpinum; but what­ever of that kind has fallen from Mr. Burke is only to be found incidentally interspersed, where to have suppressed it would have been to betray his own fair reputation, in which his family, friends, and country, had an in­terest as well as himself: it is to be found in his public or private answers to those who had brought charges against him, and who were of a dignity to make a vindication of himself decorous, if not necessary. The rest [Page 10] must be supplied by the diligence and judg­ment of others, partly from memory and partly from information, which, it is hoped, all who in any part of his life have been in­timate with him will be so obliging to com­municate; but principally from the different sources already mentioned above, and the rich store of detached hints, loose notes, and un­finished fragments which remain in his hand­writing, relative to all the more momentous business in which he was engaged. His pen was always in his hand. He seldom thought or read without it.

In the mean time, some important parts of his conduct and character will receive light from this, and the succeeding publications. It will at once be seen, whether the senti­ments recently expressed by him were indeed the genuine conclusions of an early sagacity, anticipating calamities to come with a certainty that almost approached to inspired prediction, or nothing more than the false pretences of a tardy wisdom too late instructed by the event.

[Page 11] These papers will contain his inmost doc­trines. His countrymen have heard him in the Senate; they have read him in his deme­gorick writings designed for popular effect; they will now attend him, as it were, into the Cabinet.

The year 1791 was highly critical in the development of the French Revolution. Mr. Neckar and his colleagues had been driven with ignominy from their posts and the country. A new ministry had been patched up from the accomplices and crea­tures of the original leaders in the National Assembly. Those leaders, to secure the power which they had obtained, shewed a disposition to put a stop to those confusions, which they had themselves excited or promoted. In their turn, they were themselves attacked by a new set of bolder, more ferocious, but more con­sistent demagogues. The Priests were de­claredly persecuted; the Nobles plundered and hunted into emigration. Civil authority there was none. The army and navy were corrupted, and all discipline destroyed. The King and Queen, after a short and insecure [Page 12] interval of comparative tranquillity, were again repeatedly insulted, and their lives open­ly endangered.

In this situation of things, Mr. Burke was of opinion, that our Ambassador ought not to be an idle spectator of such scenes at the Court of a Monarch, who was in effect a prisoner; that he ought to be recalled, or to interpose the good-offices of our Court be­tween Louis the XVIth and his seditious sub­jects, agreeably to our duty under the gene­ral law of nations, and the spirit of our posi­tive treaties. On this plan he drew up ‘"Hints for a Memorial to be delivered to M. Montmorin,"’ by Lord Gower.

Whether these Hints were ever actually seen by the King's Ministers, there is no trace among his papers to shew, neither can those friends, from whom he was accustomed to conceal nothing, undertake to say from their recollection. It is probable, that they were not seen, as at that period he had no direct intercourse with Government, and events soon ensued in France, which left no room [Page 13] for such a mediation. The paper, however, will be printed at the end of this Preface: it was discovered too late to be inserted, where it ought to have stood in the body of this publication. It will bear a strong, but not the only, testimony to the Author's real prac­tical views, which have been so malignantly misrepresented, with regard to the French Revolution. However much he disapproved and contemned the false and treacherous prin­ciples, since renounced even by themselves, in which it glorified itself at it's outset; how­ever early he warned his own country of their pernicious tendency, and the steady and uniform march of their operation to break down a flourishing Monarchy into a hideous barba­rism; however feelingly his nature detested the cruelties and atrocities of all kinds, with which their progress was systematically ac­companied, for the purpose of crushing all opposition under the dominion of terrour; yet while there appeared to him a chance of any quiet termination to these miseries and horrours, his counsels were moderate, conci­liatory, and healing. The very basis of any agreement which the King of Great Britain, [Page 14] as the King of a people ‘"perfectly and solidly, because soberly, rationally and legally free,"’ could undertake to negociate, was to be the settlement, and, if required, the guarantee of a free constitution in France, but under an efficient Monarchy; both their government and their freedom being established ‘"upon principles of moderation, as the only means of securing permanence to both these bles­sings, as well as internal and external tran­quillity to the kingdom of France, and to all Europe"’ It will hereafter appear from his letters that, at a later period in the same year, he held a very similar language to the exiled French Princes and their agents, when they were preparing to assert their rights by the sword. We must now pass to the three Memorials, which form the immediate con­tents of this pamphlet.

The King of France in the April of that year was prevented by the populace, with every kind of menace and outrage, from going to his Palace at St. Cloud. He complained to the National Assembly. The result was that he was compelled to sanction a circular [Page 15] letter, which was soon after sent by M. Montmorin to all foreign Courts, announcing the new Constitution of France, it's nature, and principles. This was followed by new indignities and encreased licentiousness, by the flight to Montmedi, the actual custody of the Royal Family, the mockery of revising the Constitution, and the final acceptance of it by the King, which was notified in another cir­cular letter from M. Montmorin. By these two official communications, unprecedented in diplomacy, the right of considering the in­ternal Constitution of France was not only given to other States, if they had no such right before, but their attention was directly called to the subject. Nor was the purpose of the communications concealed. It was professedly to lead to similar Revolutions in other countries. When the first of these ex­traordinary dispatches was originally submit­ted to the Assembly, long before any concert of Princes against France, it was enthusiasti­cally applauded as ‘"a splendid example of a great King proclaiming afar the liberty of all people."’ It was, in fact, a general defi­ance to all the old Governments of Europe.

[Page 16] Mr. Burke had particular means of know­ing the dispositions of the continental Powers. His son during that summer was at Coblentz, though not at the expence, nor with the for­mal authority, yet with the knowledge and approbation of Government. He was early convinced that the Declaration signed at Pil­nitz by the Emperor and the King of Prussia was in a manner extorted by the Count d'Ar­tois, and was never designed to be carried into serious effect. The King of Prussia refused to stir, till the Emperor should have put him­self in motion: and the Emperor hesitated to move from a real or pretended distrust of this country. In general, the neighbouring Potentates seemed for a long time blind to the peril of their situation, and when the au­dacity of Brissot's faction, as soon as he had established his ascendency in the second As­sembly, made them reluctantly open their eyes, they were struck with a sudden dread, from which they sought refuge in submis­sion.

At home Mr. Burke found as little agree­ment with his views. Those [...]ers of [Page 17] Opposition, who in reality did not differ much from him, naturally wished to avoid as long as they could, any question that might preci­pitate a direct breach with some others of the same party, who from a long connexion stood high in their confidence, and were dear to their affections. Between Ministers and him­self he believed there was a more essential difference. He understood them to think (as he afterwards told one of them) ‘"that the new principles might be encouraged; that they might triumph over every interior and exterior resistance, and even overturn other States, as they had that of France, without any sort of hazard, that they would extend in their consequences to this kingdom."’ His own opinion thus early was, that there never existed a crisis so important to the world; that the power of France, which the preced­ing year had seen in a manner annihilated by her internal anarchy, now appeared more for­midable than ever; that all hope of a quiet settlement to the disorders of that distracted country was gone; that the more furious part of the Jacobin faction, who from the first had been eager to disturb the peace of all [Page 18] Europe, was daily encreasing in strength and solidity; and as France had not then re-esta­blished her army after it's dissolution by de­crees and intrigues, while the northern powers had not yet begun to disband their forces after the Turkish war, that every thing was to be gained to the former, every thing lost to the latter by delay.

Under these impressions he wrote the Me­morial of December 1791. It was sent to some of the leaders of Opposition, and to the Mini­sters, by one of whom it was communicated to the King. The style and the topicks are those of a statesman addressing statesmen. It takes it's rise from M. Montmorin's two letters. It points out the features and character which distinguish this Revolution from most others of ancient or modern times: it delineates with a masterly hand the political map of Europe, and marks with wonderful precision the track which the new principles were likely to pursue in their progress: it combats the supposition that the Revolution would fall by it's own weak­ness, by internal force, or the discredit of it's paper money: it considers the dispo­sitions [Page 19] of the neighbouring powers, who were most interested in stopping the course of the mischief, and the general leaning of all Kings, Ambassadors, and Ministers of State in these days; but it modestly professes only to make a case without offering advice, to shew the nature of the evil, without suggest­ing a remedy. His country, the world, and posterity, will now be able to judge how far his speculations on this great question of poli­ticks were just: ‘"the paper," he conceived at the time, "did not meet the ideas of Mi­nisters."’

The invasion of France by the Duke of Brunswick in 1792, after the French had declared war, and been repulsed in an attack on the Netherlands, excited the most sanguine hopes of many. Mr. Burke, it is known to those who conversed with him, and will ap­pear by some of his letters, always distrusted the event. Besides the incalculable difference which time had made, he saw a radical error in not giving more importance and lead to the exiled Princes and Nobility of France. He had from the first a settled conviction that neither [Page 20] insurrections of the Royalists within, nor a foreign force from without, could separately avail. There was no sound hope, in his judg­ment, but from a well-combined, and cordial co-operation of both. On the disastrous and ig­nominious retreat of the Duke of Brunswick, he hastily threw down his thoughts in an unformal manner, and submitted them to the consideration of those who had seen the for­mer paper. He now proceeded further, and intimated in general terms, what he thought should be done for the safety of Europe. Upon all maxims of ancient policy, upon all views of the actual circumstances, he was decided in his opinion, that England should interpose as the protectress of the balance of power. It was essential, he thought, that she should be the presiding soul of that concert, which seemed to be now indispensable; that she should govern it's counsels, and direct it's efforts; she should negociate and confederate, exhort on one side, and remonstrate on the other; she should not precipitate a war, but risk it, and firmly meet it, for the safety of Europe. But before this paper had been com­municated to those for whose use it was in­tended, [Page 21] the French Convention ventured on decrees and acts directly striking at this coun­try, and her old ally Holland. A sort of un­official negociation ensued, which ended in a declaration of war by the French Republick against Great Britain and Holland. Thus forced separately into open hostility, Ministers were under the necessity of joining the Powers already in arms, on their own conditions. They could not take that lead which, Mr. Burke believed, might have been conceded to them as the price of their voluntary interpo­sition.

After the first successes of 1793, Mr. Burke was cursorily informed in a conversation with one of the King's Ministers, that they pur­posed to issue a declaration of the motives, objects, and end of the war. Sometime in the subsequent autumn, he heard again of the same design. He doubted the prudence and expediency of the measure, especially at that time, just after our retreat from Dunkirk. He sought, but was not able to obtain, a con­ference on the subject.

[Page 22] He had recourse, therefore, to his pen. This was the origin of the third memorial. Accordingly at the head of one of the co­pies found in his possession, it was called, ‘"Thoughts respectfully submitted on the proposed Manifesto;"’ though it was en­dorsed with the present title. He had not, however, proceeded far before he learnt that the Declaration was to be immediately issued. He desired it might be delayed a single day, that he might have an opportunity of previ­ously stating his doubts; but was told that no alteration could be admitted, as the paper had been approved by the allied Courts.

The Memorial in consequence lay for some time unfinished. But some agents of the Royalists of Britanny and Poitou having about that period prevailed on Mr. Burke to second their representations to Government with his influence, and the surrender of Toulon having made an opening in their favour, he re­sumed what he had laid aside, and completed it upon a more comprehensive plan. It seems in it's style and spirit to approach more near­ly, [Page 23] than either of the other two Memorials, to the animation and decision of his own former publications. It begins by stating the time to be that of calamity and defeat. When it proceeds to the main consideration, it paints with a firm but rapid pencil the miserable situation of France under the reign of Robers­pierre and terrour, the full effects of which Mr. Burke confesses himself not to have fore­seen. The whole nation was divided into the oppressors and the oppressed. He then argues that the very success of the Allies on their own plan would not restore France to a condition safe for herself and for Europe, and he ultimately ventures to give his own ad­vice. Perhaps, if there is any passage in it more especially deserving of attention than another, it is the noble scheme of awful, but discriminating justice, tempered with enlight­ened mercy, which he recommends and en­forces, in the event of the Monarchy, and ancient orders of the State being once more restored in France. The Memorial concludes with an emphatick protest against what he al­ways considered as the great, fruitful source [Page 24] of every miscarriage, the great leading mis­take, that of conducting the war, by prece­dent, as a common war against a common enemy, for the usual objects of ordinary ap­peals to arms, and searching history for les­sons of civil prudence, to be derived from former Revolutions, which resembled this portent of our times in nothing but the name.

In every one of these three Memorials reference is made to the writers on the law of nations; and in one or two places Vattel is expressly named. It has been thought pro­per, therefore, to subjoin an Appendix, con­sisting of passages from that eminent publicist, which were found among Mr. Burke's pa­pers, drawn out for his private use under dis­tinct heads, as they are here printed, and il­lustrated in his hand-writing with marginal comments and short notes, which are here preserved. Some few notes have been added to complete his plan. Even these are not wholly without his authority. They are the faint vestiges of much discourse had with him at different times on the effect and application [Page 25] of the extracts. A genius like his, rich in so much natural and acquired wealth, might be supposed to have been confident in itself. Yet this was the laborious and accurate method which to the end of his life he was habitu­ated to pursue, in collecting and digesting the best information upon every subject that oc­cupied his mind; working upon all, and ever mingling up with it something of his own.

In explaining and connecting the history of the three Memorials, nothing, it is hoped, has been said, which can be construed to im­ply a censure on those who direct the affairs of this kingdom. They may have formed to themselves a wiser system of action, and been defeated in it by accidents, which could nei­ther be foreseen nor controuled; they may have unwillingly compromised in their coun­sels with the irresistible force of circum­stances, and been compelled to adopt a system which they knew to be imperfect; they may even, by attempting less, have actually done more. These are questions too extensive and important for this place. All that it seems [Page 26] proper to say here, is simply, that whatever may have been their system, and the merits of that system, it was not that of Mr. Burke. And thus much is due to his memory, and to truth. Whatever has been the failure of the war, it is in no manner to be ascribed to him: the time and mode of beginning it were not his choice: the plan of operations for con­ducting it was not his suggestion: and the declaration of principles, on which it has been justified, was not made by his advice, nor with his concurrence. Neither did he flatter those in power by a silent acquiescence in a course of policy which he did not ap­prove. According to his practice, in more in­stances than one, during his opposition to Lord North's Administration, ‘"he chose ra­ther," as he has said, "respectfully to state a doubt to Ministers whilst a measure was depending, than to reproach them after­wards with it's consequences."’

In truth, he who never used any solicita­tion to advance his own personal interests, was indefatigable in soliciting support to that [Page 27] cause, which he considered as the common interest of mankind. There was no person of rank or eminence in Europe with whom he had any occasion of correspondence, that he did not endeavour to conciliate, confirm, or animate on the side of religion, morals, and social order, connected with moderated liberty. He applied to each the several to­picks which were best suited to his circum­stances, his condition, his prejudices, or his wants, but all centered in one point. If to the people he again and again recommended, and inculcated, and enforced, with all the varied beauty and energy of his fascinating elo­quence, a principle of obedience, submission, and respect to their lawful Rulers of every denomination; to Princes and to all men in the exercise of authority he did not spare to recount, in the calmer tone of more argu­mentative discussion, the faults and errors to which their stations render them peculiarly liable, to impress upon them the necessity of that union between Mercy and Justice, without which one degenerates into weakness, and the other into cruelty; and to admonish [Page 28] them, for their own tranquillity and happi­ness, to protect, not oppress, their people, to improve, not impair, the legal security of the subject in his person and property, according to the true nature of their respective govern­ments, for the great end of all government. Founding, as he always did, his political on his moral philosophy, he told the different classes of society, not of their extreme rights, but of their duties, the root of which is in the rights of others. He ardently loved his country and wished her prosperity: yet he has not scrupled to say, that ‘"he dreaded our own power and our own ambition; he dreaded our being too much dreaded."’ He constantly prosessed a jealousy of France as the natural rival and enemy of England; yet he was not less alarmed at her weakness, when, in the moment of the Monarchy being dissolved, she seemed to leave a chasm in the map of Europe, than afterwards at her terrific power, when the monstrous republic of Bris­sot and Roberspierre grew too big for her an­cient limits; nor was he without his fears of her being again reduced too low, if the Allies [Page 29] had succeeded in what he believed to be their system of dismembering her. In general, men see that side only, which is nearest to them, in the order of things, by which they are surrounded, and in which they are carried along; but the clear and penetrating sight of his mind comprehended in one view all the parts of the immense whole, which varying from moment to moment, yet continuing through centuries essentially the same, ex­tends around and above to every civilized peo­ple in every age, and unites and incorporates the present with the generations which are past. To preserve that whole unbroken to a late posterity, he knew no other way than by resisting all mad or wicked attempts to de­stroy any of the great prominent parts. Not that he was the enemy of resormations. Quite the reverse. But he would allow the honour of that name to no changes which affected the very substance of the thing: those he approved, those he called true reforma­tions, which patiently seeking the degree of perfection alone attainable by man, and or­dained to be only the slow result of long ex­perience [Page 30] and much meditation, put the hap­piness of none to the hazard, while they bet­ter the condition of all. If, like the early sages of Greece, he were to be characterized by some peculiar sentiment, it should be that to which he desired to give the currency of a proverb—to innovate is not to reform.

This Preface has been drawn by degrees into an unexpected length. Much of Mr. Burke's character may have been here antici­pated, which might have come with more propriety and force, hereafter. But on the spot where every object, to which the eye can be directed, is full of his image, it was impossible that many little remembrances of his opinions and habits, which must involun­tarily arise in the bosom, should not run over on the paper. They will not be the least in­teresting part to those who enjoyed the bles­sing of an intimacy with him; and when the name of a deceased friend has been already forged to a despicable libel against him, when intelligence has been received, even while this Preface has been passing under the press, [Page 31] of new artifices, which have been practised through the country, to solicit a party-sup­port to an insidious attack upon his fame, that some correct notion of such a man should be early given, seemed to be of moment to the cause of public virtue.

Beaconsfield, Sept. 2, 1797.

HINTS FOR A MEMORIAL TO BE DELIVERED TO MONSIEUR DE M. M.
[WRITTEN IN THE EARLY PART OF 1791.]

THE King my Master, from his sincere desire of keeping up a good correspondence with his Most Christian Majesty, and the French na­tion, has for some time beheld with concern, the condition into which that sovereign and nation have fallen.

Notwithstanding the reality and the warmth of those sentiments, his Britannick Majesty has hither­to forborne in any manner to take a part in their affairs; in hopes, that the common interest of King and subjects would render all parties sensible of the necessity of settling, their government and their freedom, upon principles of moderation; as the only means of securing permanence to both [Page 2] these blessings, as well as internal and external tranquillity, to the Kingdom of France, and to all Europe.

His Britannick Majesty finds, to his great re­gret, that his hopes have not been realized. He finds, that confusions and disorders have rather increased than diminished, and that they now threaten to proceed to dangerous extremities.

In this situation of things, the same regard to a neighbouring Sovereign living in friendship with Great Britain, the same spirit of good-will to the Kingdom of France, the same regard to the gene­ral tranquillity, which have caused him to view with concern, the growth and continuance of the present disorders, have induced the King of Great Britain to interpose his good offices towards a re­concilement of those unhappy differences. This his Majesty does with the most cordial regard to the good of all descriptions concerned, and with the most perfect sincerity, wholly removing from his Royal mind, all memory of every circumstance which might impede him in the execution of a plan of benevolence which he has so much at heart.

His Majesty, having always thought it his great­est glory, that he rules over a people, perfectly [Page 3] and solidly, because soberly, rationally, and legally free, can never be supposed to proceed in offering thus his Royal mediation, but with an unaffected desire and full resolution, to consider the settlement of a free constitution in France, as the very basis of any agreement between the Sovereign and those of his subjects who are unhappily at variance with him; to guarantee it to them, if it should be de­sired, in the most solemn and authentick manner, and to do all that in him lies to procure the like guarantee from other powers.

His Britannick Majesty, in the same manner, assures the most Christian King, that he knows too well, and values too highly, what is due to the dignity and rights of crowned Heads, and to the implied faith of treaties which have always been made with the Crown of France, ever to listen to any proposition by which that Monarchy shall be despoiled of all its rights, so essential for the sup­port of the consideration of the Prince, and the concord and welfare of the people.

If unfortunately, a due attention should not be paid to these his Majesty's benevolent and neigh­bourly offers, or, if any circumstances should pre­vent the Most Christian King from acceding, (as his Majesty has no doubt he is well disposed to do) to this healing mediation in favour of himself and [Page 4] all his subjects, his Majesty has commanded me to take leave of this Court, as not conceiving it to be suitable to the dignity of his Crown, and to what he owes to his faithful people, any longer to keep a publick Minister at the Court of a Sove­reign who is not in possession of his own liberty.

THOUGHTS ON FRENCH AFFAIRS, &c. &c.
WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 1791.

IN all our transactions with France, and at all periods, we have treated with that State on the footing of a Monarchy. Monarchy was considered in all the external relations of that kingdom with every Power in Europe as it's legal and constitu­tional Government, and that in which alone it's federal capacity was vested.

Montmo­rin's Letter.It is not yet a year since Monsieur de Mont­morin, formally, and with as little respect as can be imagined, to the King, and to all crowned heads, announced a total revolution in that coun­try. He has informed the British Ministry that it's frame of Government is wholly altered; that he is one of the Ministers of the new system; and in ef­fect, that the King is no longer his master (nor does he even call him such) but the ‘"first of the Ministers"’ in the new system.

[Page 2] Acceptance of the Con­stitution ra­tified.The second notification was that of the King's acceptance of the new Constitution; accompanied with fanfaronades in the modern style of the French bureaus, things which have much more the air and character of the saucy declamations of their clubs, than the tone of regular office.

It has not been very usual to notify to foreign Courts, any thing concerning the internal arrange­ments of any State. In the present case, the cir­cumstance of these two notifications, with the observations with which they are attended, does not leave it in the choice of the Sovereigns of Chris­tendom to appear ignorant either of this French Revolution, or (what is more important) of it's principles.

We know that very soon after this Manifesto of Monsieur de Montmorin, the King of France, in whose name it was made, found himself obliged to fly, with his whole family: leaving behind him a Declaration, in which he disavows and annuls that Constitution, as having been the effect of force on his person and usurpation on his authority. It is equally notorious that this unfortunate Prince was with many circumstances of insult and outrage brought back prisoner, by a deputation of the pre­tended National Assembly, and afterwards suspend­ed by their authority, from his Government. Un­der [Page 3] equally notorious constraint, and under me­naces of total deposition, he has been compelled to accept what they call a Constitution, and to agree to whatever else the usurped power which holds him in consinement, thinks proper to impose.

His next brother, who had fled with him, and his third brother, who had fled before him, all the Princes of his blood, who remained faithful to him, and the flower of his Magistracy, his Clergy, and his Nobility, continue in foreign countries, pro­testing against all acts done by him in his present situation, on the grounds upon which he had him­self protested against them at the time of his flight; with this addition, that they deny his very com­petence, (as on good grounds they may) to abro­gate the Royalty, or the ancient constitutional Orders of the Kingdom. In this protest they are joined by three hundred of the late Assembly it­self, and in effect, by a great part of the French Nation. The new Government (so far as the people dare to disclose their sentiments) is disdain­ed, I am persuaded, by the greater number; who as M. de la Fayette complains, and as the truth is, have declined to take any share in the new elec­tions to the National Assembly, either as candi­dates or electors.

[Page 4] In this state of things (that is in the case of a divided kingdom) by *the law of nations, Great Britain, like every other Power, is free to take any part she pleases. She may decline, with more or less formality, according to her discretion, to ac­knowledge this new system; or she may recognize it as a Covernment de facto, setting aside all dis­cussion of it's original legality, and considering the ancient Monarchy as at an end. The law of na­tions leaves our Court open to it's choice. We have no direction but what is found in the well­understood policy of the King and kingdom.

This Declaration of a new species of Government, on new principles (such it professes itself to be) is a real crisis in the politicks of Europe. The con­duct which prudence ought to dietate to Great-Britain, will not depend (as hitherto our connexion or quarrel with other States has for some time de­pended) upon merely external relations; but, in a great measure also upon the system which we may think it right to adopt for the internal government of our own country.

If it be our policy to assimilate our Govern­ment to that of France, we ought to prepare for this change, by encouraging the schemes of au­thority established there. We ought to wink at [Page 5] the captivity and deposition of a Prince, with whom, if not in close alliance, we were in friend­ship. We ought to fall in with the ideas of Mons. Montmorin's circular Manifesto; and to do busi­ness of course with the functionaries who act under the new power, by which that King to whom his Majesty's Minister has been sent to reside, has been deposed and imprisoned. On that idea we ought also to with-hold all sorts of direct or indirect countenance from those who are treating in Ger­many for the re-establishment of the French Mo­narchy and the ancient Orders of that State. This conduct is suitable to this policy.

The question is, whether this policy be suitable to the interests of the Crown and subjects of Great Britain. Let us therefore a little consider the true nature and probable effects of the Revolution which, in such a very unusual manner, has been twice diplomatically announced to his Majesty.

Difference between this Revolution and others.There have been many internal revolutions in the Government of countries, both as to persons and forms, in which the neighbouring States have had little or no concern. Whatever the Govern­ment might be with respect to those persons and those forms, the stationary interests of the nation concerned, have most commonly influenced the new Governments in the same manner in which [Page 6] they influenced the old; and the Revolution, turning on matter of local grievance or of local accommodation, did not extend beyond it's ter­ritory.

Nature of the French Revolution.The present Revolution in France seems to me to be quite of another character and description; and to bear little resemblance or analogy to any of those which have been brought about in Europe, upon principles merely political. It is a Revolu­tion of doctrine and theoretick dogma. It has a much greater resemblance to those changes which have been made upon religious grounds, in which a spi­rit of proselytism makes an essential part.

The last Revolution of doctrine and theory which has happened in Europe, is the Reformation. It is not for my purpose to take any notice here of the merits of that Revolution, but to state one only of it's effects.

It's effects.That effect was to introduce other interests into all countries, than those which arose from their loca­lity and natural circumstances. The principle of the Reformation was such, as by it's essence, could not be local or confined to the country in which it had it's origin. For instance, the doctrine of ‘"Justi­fication by Faith or by Works,"’ which was the ori­ginal basis of the Reformation, could not have one [Page 7] of it's alternatives true as to Germany, and false as to every other country. Neither are questions of theoretick truth and falsehood governed by cir­cumstances any more than by places. On that occasion, therefore, the spirit of proselytism ex­panded itself with great elasticity upon all sides; and great divisions were every where the result.

These divisions however, in appearance merely dogmatick, soon became mixed with the political; and their effects were rendered much more intense from this combination. Europe was for a long time divided into two great factions, under the name of Catholick and Protestant, which not only often alienated State from State, but also divided almost every State within itself. The warm parties in each State were more affectionately attached to those of their own doctrinal interest in some other country than to their fellow citizens, or to their natural Government, when they or either of them happened to be of a different persuasion. These factions, wherever they prevailed, if they did not abselutely destroy, at least weakened and distracted the locality of patriotism. The publick affections came to have other motives and other ties.

It would be to repeat the history of the two last centuries to exemplify the effects of this Revo­lution.

[Page 8] Although the principles to which it gave rise, did not operate with a perfect regularity and con­stancy, they never wholly ceased to operate. Few wars were made, and few treaties were entered into in which they did not come in for some part. They gave a colour, a character, and direction to all the politicks of Europe.

New system of Politicks.These principles of internal, as well as external division and coalition, are but just now extin­guished. But they who will examine into the true character and genius of some late events, must be satisfied that other sources of faction, combining parties among the inhabitants of different coun­tries into one connexion, are opened, and that from these sources are likely to arise effects full as important as those which had formerly arisen from the jarring interests of the religious sects. The intention of the several actors in the change in France, is not a matter of doubt. It is very openly prosessed.

In the modern world, before this time, there has been no instance of this spirit of general political faction, separated from religion, pervading several countries, and forming a principle of union be­tween the partizans in each. But the thing is not less in human nature. The antient world has fur­nished [Page 9] a strong and striking instance of such a ground for faction, full as powerful and full as mis­chievous as our spirit of religious system had ever been, exciting in all the States of Greece (Euro­pean and Asiatick) the most violent animosities, and the most cruel and bloody persecutions and pro­scriptions. These ancient factions in each com­monwealth of Greece, connected themselves with those of the same description in some other States; and secret cabals and publick alliances were carried on and made, not upon a conformity of general po­litical interests, but for the support and aggran­dizement of the two leading States which headed the Aristocratick and Democratick Factions. For, as in later times, the King of Spain was at the head of a Catholick, and the King of Sweden of a Protes­tant interest, France, (though Catholick, acting sub­ordinately to the latter,) in the like manner the Lacedemonians were every where at the head of the Aristocratick interests, and the Athenians of the Democratick. The two leading Powers kept alive a constant cabal and conspiracy in every State, and the political dogmas concerning the constitu­tion of a Republick, were the great instruments by which these leading States chose to aggrandize themselves. Their choice was not unwise; be­cause the interest in opinions (merely as opinions, and without any experimental reference to their effects) when once they take strong hold of the [Page 10] mind, become the most operative of all interests, and indeed very often supercede every other.

I might further exemplify the possibility of a political sentiment running through various states and combining factions in them, from the history of the middle ages in the Guelfs and Ghibellines. These were political factions originally in favour of the Emperor and the Pope, with no mixture of re­ligious dogmas; or if any thing religiously doc­trinal they had in them originally, it very soon dis­appeared; as their first political objects disappeared also, though the spirit remained. They became no more than names to distinguish factions; but they were not the less powerful in their operation, when they had no direct point of doctrine, either religious or civil, to assert. For a long time, how­ever, those factions gave no small degree of influ­ence to the foreign Chiefs in every commonwealth in which they existed. I do not mean to pursue further the track of these parties. I allude to this part of history only, as it furnishes an instance of that species of faction which broke the locality of publick affections, and united descriptions of citi­zens more with strangers than with their country­men of different opinions.

French fun­damental principle.The political dogma, which upon the new French system, is to unite the factions of different [Page 11] nations, turns is this, ‘"That the majority told, by the head, of the taxable people in every country, is the perpetual, natural, unceasing, indefeasible sovereign; that this majority is perfectly master of the form, as well as the administration of the state, and that the magistrates, under whatever names they are called, are only functionaries to obey the orders, (general as laws or particular as decrees) which that majority may make; that this is the only natural government; that all others are tyranny and usurpation."’

Practical project.In order to reduce this dogma into practice, the Republicans in France, and their associates in other countries, make it always their business, and often their publick profession, to destroy all traces of an­tient establishments, and to form a new common-wealth in each country, upon the basis of the French Rights of Men. On the principle of these rights, they mean to institute in every country, and as it were, the germe of the whole, parochial governments, for the purpose of what they call equal representation. From them is to grow, by some media, a general council and representative of all the parochial governments. In that representative is to be vested the whole national power; totally abolishing hereditary name and office, levelling all conditions of men, (except where money must make a difference) breaking all connexion between ter­ritory [Page 12] and dignity, and abolishing every species of nobility, gentry, and church establishments; all their priests, and all their magistrates being only creatures of election, and pensioners at will.

Knowing how opposite a permanent landed in­terest is to that scheme, they have resolved, and it is the great drift of all their regulations, to reduce that description of men to a mere peasantry, for the sustenance of the towns, and to place the true effec­tive government in cities, among the tradesmen, bankers, and voluntary clubs of bold, presuming young persons;—advocates, attornies, notaries, managers of newspapers, and those cabals of lite­rary men, called academies. Their Republick is to have a first functionary, (as they call him) under the name of King, or not, as they think fit. This officer, when such an officer is permitted, is how­ever, neither in fact nor name, to be considered as sovereign, nor the people as his subjects. The very use of these appellations is offensive to their ears.

Particans of the French system.This system, as it has first been realized, dogma­tically as well as practically, in France, makes France the natural head of all factions formed on a similar principle, wherever they may prevail, as much as Athens was the head and settled ally of all democratick factions, wherever they existed. The other system has no head.

[Page 13] This system has very many partizans in every country in Europe, but particularly in England, where they are already formed into a body, com­prehending most of the dissenters of the three lead­ing denominations; to these are readily aggre­gated all who are dissenters in character, temper, and disposition, though not belonging to any of their congregations—that is, all the restless people who resemble them, of all ranks and all parties—Whigs, and even Tories—the whole race of half-bred speculators;—all the Atheists, Deists, and So­cinians;—all those who hate the Clergy, and envy the Nobility;—a good many among the monied people;—the East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to their wealth. These latter have united themselves into one great, and in my opinion; formidable Club*, which, though now quiet, may be brought into action with consi­derable unanimity and force.

Formerly few, except the ambitious great, or the desperate and indigent, were to be feared as instru­ments in revolutions. What has happened in France teaches us, with many other things, that there are more causes than have commonly been [Page 14] taken into our consideration, by which Govern­ment may be subverted. The monied men, mer­chants, principal tradesmen, and men of letters (hitherto generally thought the peaceable and even timid part of society) are the chief actors in the French Revolution. But the fact is, that as money increases and circulates, and as the circulation of news, in politicks and letters, becomes more and more diffused, the persons who diffuse this money, and this intelligence, become more and more im­portant. This was not long undiscovered. Views of ambition were in France, for the first time, pre­sented to these classes of men. Objects in the State, in the Army, in the system of civil offices of every kind. Their eyes were dazzled with this new prospect. They were, as it were, electrified and made to lose the natural spirit of their situa­tion. A bribe, great without example in the his­tory of the world, was held out to them—the whole government of a very large kingdom.

[...] England.There are several who are persuaded that the same thing cannot happen in England, because here, (they say) the occupations of merchants, tradesmen and manufacturers, are not held as de­grading situations. I once thought that the low estimation in which commerce was held in France, might be reckoned among the causes of the late revolution: and I am still of opinion, that the ex­clusive [Page 15] spirit of the French nobility, did irritate the wealthy of other classes. But I found long since, that persons in trade and business were by no means despised in France in the manner I had been taught to believe. As to men of letters, they were so far from being despised or neglected, that there was no country perhaps in the universe, in which they were so highly esteemed, courted, caressed, and even feared; tradesmen naturally were not so much sought in society (as not furnishing so largely to the fund of conversation as they do to the reve­nues of the state) but the latter description got for­ward every day. Literary in­terest.M. Bailly, who made himself the popular Mayor on the rebellion of the Bastile, and is a principal actor in the revolt, before the change possessed a pension or office under the Crown, of six hundred pound English, a year, for that coun­try, no contemptible provision: And this he ob­tained solely as a man of letters, and on no other title. Monied in­terest.As to the monied men—whilst the Monar­chy continued, there is no doubt, that merely as such, they did not enjoy the privileges of nobility, but nobility was of so easy an acquisition, that it was the fault or neglect of all of that description, who did not obtain it's privileges, for their lives at least, in virtue of office. It attached under the royal government to an innumerable multitude of places, real and nominal, that were vendible; and such nobility were as capable of every thing as [Page 16] their degree of influence or interest could make them, that is, as nobility of no considerable rank or consequence. M. Necker, so far from being a French gentleman, was not so much as a French­man born, and yet we all know the rank in which he stood on the day of the meeting of the States.

Mercantile interest.As to the mere matter of estimation of the mer­cantile or any other class, this is regulated by opi­nion and prejudice. In England a security against the envy of men in these classes, is not so very complete as we may imagine. We must not im­pose upon ourselves. What institutions and man­ners together had done in France, manners alone do here. It is the natural operation of things where there exists a Crown, a Court, splendid Or­ders of Knighthood, and an Hereditary Nobility;—where there exists a fixed, permanent, landed Gen­try, continued in greatness and opulence by the law of primogeniture, and by a protection given to family settlements;—where there exists a stand­ing Army and Navy;—where there exists a Church Establishment. which bestows on learning and parts an interest combined with that of Religion and the State;—in a country where such things exist, wealth, new in it's acquisition, and precarious in it's duration, can never rank first, or even near the first; though wealth has it's natural weight, further, than as it is balanced and even preponde­rated [Page 17] amongst us as amongst other nations, by ar­tificial institutions and opinions growing out of them. At no period in the history of England have so few Peers been taken out of trade or from families newly created by commerce. In no pe­riod has so small a number of noble families en­tered into the counting-house. I can call to mind but one in all England, and his is of near fifty years standing. Be that as it may, it appears plain to me from my best observation, that envy and ambition may by art, management and disposition, be as much excited amongst these descriptions of men in England, as in any other country; and that they are just as capable of acting a part in any great change.

Progress of the French Spirit.—It's course.What direction the French spirit of proselytism is likely to take, and in what order it is likely to prevail in the several parts of Europe, it is not easy to determine. The seeds are sown almost every where, chiefly by newspaper circulations, infinitely more efficacious and extensive than ever they were. And they are a more important in­strument than generally is imagined. They are a part of the reading of all, they are the whole of the reading of the far greater number. There are thirty of them in Paris alone. The language dif­fuses them more widely than the English, though the English too are much read. The writers of [Page 18] these papers indeed, for the greater part, are either unknown or in contempt, but they are like a bat­tery in which the stroke of any one ball produces no great effect, but the amount of continual repe­tition is decisive. Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelvemonth, and he will become our master.

All those countries in which several States are comprehended under some general geographical description, and loosely united by some federal con­stitution; countries of which the members are small, and greatly diversified in their forms of go­vernment, and in the titles by which they are held—these countries, as it might be well expected, are the principal objects of their hopes and machina­tions. Of these, the chief are Germany and Swit­zerland: after them, Italy has it's place as in cir­cumstances somewhat similar.

Germany.As to Germany (in which from their relation to the Emperor, I comprehend the Belgick provinces) it appears to me to be from several circumstances, internal and external, in a very critical situation, and the laws and liberties of the Empire are by no means secure from the contagion of the French doctrines and the effect of French intrigues; or from the use which two of the greater German powers may make of a general derangement, to [Page 19] the general detriment. I do not say that the French do not mean to bestow on these German States, liberties and laws too, after their mode; but those are not what have hitherto been under­stood as the laws and liberties of the Empire. These exist and have always existed under the prin­ciples of feodal tenure and succession, under Im­perial constitutions, grants and concessions of So­vereigns, family compacts and publick treaties, made under the sanction, and some of them gua­ranteed by the Sovereign Powers of other nations, and particularly the old Government of France, the author and natural support of the treaty of Westphalia.

In short, the Germanick body is a vast mass of heterogeneous States, held together by that hete­rogeneous body of old principles which formed the publick law positive and doctrinal. The modern laws and liberties which the new power in France proposes to introduce into Germany, and to sup­port with all it's force, of intrigue and of arms, is of a very different nature, utterly irreconcileable with the first, and indeed fundamentally the reverse of it: I mean the Rights and Liberties of the Man, the Droit de l'Homme. That this doctrine has made an amazing progress in Germany, there cannot be a shadow of doubt. They are infected by it along the whole course of the Rhine, the Maese, the [Page 20] Moselle, and in the greater part of Suabla and Franconia. It is particularly prevalent amongst all the lower people, churchmen and laity, in the dominions of the Ecclesiastical Electors. Ecclesiasti­cal State. It is not easy to find or to conceive Governments more mild and indulgent than these Church Sovereign­ties: but good government is as nothing when the Rights of Man take possession of the mind. In­deed the loose rein held over the people in these provinces, must be considered as one cause of the facility with which they lend themselves to any schemes of innovation, by inducing them to think lightly of their governments, and to judge of grievances not by feeling, but by imagination.

Balance of Germany.It is in these Electorates that the first impres­sions of France are likely to be made, and if they succeed, it is over with the Germanick body as it stands at present. A great revolution is preparing in Germany; and a revolution, in my opinion, likely to be more decisive upon the general fate of nations than that of France itself; other than as in France is to be found the first source of all the principles which are in any way likely to distin­guish the troubles and convulsions of our age. If Europe does not conceive the independence, and the equilibrium of the Empire to be in the very essence of the system of balanced power in Europe, and if the scheme of publick law, or mass of laws [Page 21] upon which that independence and equilibrium are founded, be of no leading consequence as they are preserved or destroyed, all the politicks of Eu­rope for more than two centuries have been mi­serably erroneous.

Prussia and Emperor.If the two great leading Powers of Germany do not regard this danger (as apparently they do not) in the light in which it presents itself so naturally, it is because they are powers too great to have a social interest. That sort of interest belongs only to those, whose state of weakness or mediocrity is such, as to give them greater cause of apprehension from what many destroy them, than of hope from any thing by which they may be aggrandized.

As long as those two Princes are at variance, so long the liberties of Germany are safe. But if ever they should so far understand one another as to be persuaded that they have a more direct and more certainly defined interest in a proportioned mutual aggrandizement than in a reciprocal reduc­tion, that is, if they come to think that they are more likely to be enriched by a division of spoil, han to be rendered secure by keeping to the old policy of preventing others from being spoiled by either of them, from that moment the liberties of Germany are no more.

[Page 22] That a junction of two in such a scheme is nei­ther impossible nor improbable, is evident from the partition of Poland in 1773, which was effected by such a junction as made the interposition of other nations to prevent it, not easy. Their circumstances at that time hindered any other three States, or in­deed any two, from taking measures in common to prevent it, though France was at that time an existing power, and had not yet learned to act upon a system of politicks of her own invention. The geographical position of Poland was a great obstacle to any movements of France in opposi­tion to this, at that time unparalleled league. To my certain knowledge, if Great Britain had at that time been willing to concur in preventing the execution of a project so dangerous in the exam­ple, even exhausted as France then was by the preceding war, and under a lazy and unenterpriz­ing Prince, she would have at every risque taken an active part in this business. But a languor with regard to so remote an interest, and the prin­ciples and passions which were then strongly at work at home, were the causes why Great Britain would not give France any encouragement in such an enterprize. At that time, however, and with regard to that object, in my opinion, Great Britain and France had a common interest.

[Page 23] Possible pro­ject of the Emperor and K. of Prus­sia.But the position of Germany is not like that of Poland, with regard to France, either for good or for evil. If a conjunction between Prussia and the Emperor should be formed for the purpose of secu­larising and rendering hereditary the Ecclesiastical Electorates and the Bishoprick of Munster, for settling two of them on the children of the Em­peror, and uniting Cologne and Munster to the dominions of the King of Prussia on the Rhine, or if any other project of mutual aggrandizement should be in prospect, and that to facilitate such a scheme, the modern French should be permitted and encouraged to shake the internal and external security of these Ecclesiastical Electorates, Great Britain is so situated that she could not with any effect set herself in opposition to such a design. Her principal arm, her marine, could here be of no sort of use.

To be resist­ed only by France.France, the author of the treaty of Westphalia, is the natural guardian of the independence and balance of Germany. Great Britain (to say no­thing of the King's concern as one of that august body) has a serious interest in preserving it; but, except through the power of France, acting upon the common old principles of State policy, in the case we have supposed, she has no sort of means of supporting that interest. It is always the inte­rest of Great Britain that the power of France [Page 24] should be kept within the bounds of moderation. It is not her interest that that power should be wholly annihilated in the system of Europe. Though at one time through France the indepen­dence of Europe was endangered, it is and ever was through her alone that the common liberty of Germany can be secured against the single or the combined ambition of any other power. In truth, within this century the aggrandizement of other Sovereign Houses has been such that there has been a great change in the whole state of Europe, and other nations as well as France may become objects of jealousy and apprehension.

New princi­ples of alli­ance.In this state of things, a new principle of alli­ances and wars is opened. The treaty of West­phalia is, with France, an antiquated fable. The rights and liberties she was bound to maintain are now a system of wrong and tyranny which she is bound to destroy. Her good and ill dispositions are shewn by the same means. To communicate peaceably the rights of men is the true mode of her shewing her friendship; to force Sovereigns to submit to those rights is her mode of hostility. So that either as friend or foe her whole scheme has been and is, to throw the Empire into confusion: and those Statesmen, who follow the old routine of politicks, may see in this general confusion, and in the danger of the lesser Princes, an occasion as [Page 25] protectors or enemies, of connecting their territo­ries to one or the other of the two great German Powers. They do not take into consideration that the means which they encourage, as leading to the event they desire, will with certainty not only ravage and destroy the Empire, but if they should for a moment seem to aggrandize the two great houses, will also establish principles, and confirm tempers amongst the people, which will preclude the two Sovereigns from the possibility of holding what they acquire, or even the dominions which they have inherited. It is on the side of the Ecclesiasti­cal Electorates that the dykes, raised to support the German liberty, first will give way.

The French have begun their general operations by seizing upon those territories of the Pope, the situation of which was the most inviting to the enterprize. Their method of doing it was by excit­ing sedition and spreading massacre and desolation thro' these unfortunate places, and then under an idea of kindness and protection, bringing forward an antiquated title of the Crown of France and an­nexing Avignon and the two cities of the Comtat with their territory to the French Republick. Geneva.They have made an attempt on Geneva, in which they very narrowly failed of success. It is known that they hold out from time to time the idea of unit­ing all the other provinces of which Gaul was an­tiently [Page 26] composed, Savoy.including Savoy on the other side, and on this side bounding themselves by the Rhine.

Switzerland.As to Switzerland, it is a country whose long union rather than it's possible division, is the mat­ter of wonder. Here I know they entertain very sanguine hopes. The aggregation to France of the Democratick Swiss Republicks appears to them to be a work half done by their very form; and it might seem to them rather an encrease of impor­tance to these little Commonwealths, than a dero­gation from their independency, or a change in the manner of their Government. Upon any quarrel amongst the Cantons nothing is more like­ly than such an event. As to the Aristocratick Re­publicks, the general clamour and hatred which the French excite against the very name, (and with more facility and success than against Monarchs) and the utter impossibility of their Government making any sort of resistance against an insurrec­tion, where they have no troops, and the people are all armed and trained, render their hopes in that quarter, far indeed from unfounded. It is certain that the Republick of Berne thinks itself obliged to a vigilance next to hostile, and to impri­son or expel all the French whom they find in their territories. But indeed those Aristocracies which comprehend whatever is considerable, wealthy, and valuable in Switzerland, do now so wholly depend [Page 27] upon opinion, Old French maxims the security of its indepen­dence. and the humour of their multitude, that the lightest puff of wind is sufficient to blow them down. If France, under it's antient regimen, and upon the antient principles of policy, was the support of the Germanick Constitution, it was much more so of that of Switzerland, which al­most from the very origin of that consederacy rest­ed upon the closeness of it's connexion with France, on which the Swiss Cantons wholly re­posed themselves for the preservation of the parts of their body in their respective rights and perma­nent forms, as well as for the maintenance of all in their general independency.

Switzerland and Germany are the first objects of the new French politicians. When I contem­plate what they have done at home, which is in effect little less than an amazing conquest wrought by a change of opinion, in a great part (to be sure far from altogether) very sudden, I cannot help letting my thoughts run along with their designs, and without attending to geographical order, to consider the other States of Europe so far as they may be any way affected by this astonishing Re­volution. If early steps are not taken in some way or other to prevent the spreading of this influence, I scarcely think any of them perfectly secure.

Italy.Italy is divided, as Germany and Switzerland are, into many smaller States, and with some con­siderable [Page 28] diversity as to forms of Government; but as these divisions and varieties in Italy are not so considerable, so neither do I think the danger al­together so imminent there as in Germany and Switzerland. Savoy I know that the French con­sider as in a very hopeful way, and I believe not at all without reason. Lombardy.They view it as an old mem­ber of the Kingdom of France which may be easily re-united in the manner, and on the principles of the re-union of Avignon. This country commu­nicates with Piedmont; and as the King of Sardi­nia's dominions were long the key of Italy, and as such long regarded by France, whilst France acted on her old maxims, and with views on Italy; so in this new French empire of sedition, if once she gets that key into her hands, she can easily lay open the barrier which hinders the entrance of her present politicks into that inviting region. Milan, I am sure, nourishes great disquiets—and if Milan should stir, no part of Lombardy is secure to the present possessors—whether the Venetian or the Austrian. Genoa is closely connected with France.

Bourbon Princes in Italy.The first Prince of the House of Bourbon has been obliged to give himself up entirely to the new system, and to pretend even to propagate it with all zeal; at least that Club of intriguers who assemble at the Feuillans, and whose cabinet [Page 29] meets at Madame Stahl's, and makes and directs all the Ministers, is the real Executive Government of France. The Emperor is perfectly in concert, and they will not long suffer any Prince of the House of Bourbon, to keep by force the French emissaries out of their dominions; nor whilst France has a commerce with them, especially thro' Marseilles, (the hottest focus of sedition in France) will it be long possible to prevent the intercourse or the effects.

Naples has an old inveterate disposition to Re­publicanism, and (however for some time past quiet) is as liable to explosion as it's own Vesuvius. Sicily I think has these dispositions in full as strong a degree. In neither of these countries exists any thing which very well deserves the name of Go­vernment or exact police.

Ecclesiasti­cal State.In the Estates of the Church, notwithstanding their strictness in banishing the French out of that country, there are not wanting the seeds of a re­volution. The spirit of Nepotism prevails there nearly as strong as ever. Every Pope of course is to give origin or restoration to a great family, by the means of large donations. The foreign reve­nues have long been gradually on the decline, and seem now in a manner dried up. To supply this defect the resource of vexatious and impolitick [Page 30] jobbing at home, if any thing, is rather encreased than lessened. Various, well intended but ill un­derstood practices, some of them existing, in their spirit at least, from the time of the old Roman empire, still prevail; and that Government is as blindly attached to old abusive customs, as others are wildly disposed to all sorts of innovations and experiments. These abuses were less felt whilst the Pontificate drew riches from abroad, which in some measure counterbalanced the evils of their remiss and jobbish Government at home. But now it can subsist only on the resources of domestick management; and abuses in that management of course will be more intimately and more severely selt.

In the midst of the apparently torpid languor of the Ecclesiastical State, those who have had oppor­tunity of a near observation, have seen a little rip­pling in that smooth water, which indicates some­thing alive under it. There is in the Ecclesiasti­cal State, a personage who seems capable of acting (but with more force and steadiness) the part of the Tribune Rienzi. The people once inflamed will not be destitute of a leader. They have such an one already in the Cardinal or Archbishop Buon Campagna. He is, of all men, if I am not ill in­formed, the most turbulent, seditious, intriguing bold, and desperate. He is not at all made for; [Page 31] Roman of the present day. I think he lately held the first office of their State, that of Great Cham­berlain, which is equivalent to High Treasurer. At present he is out of employment, and in dis­grace. If he should be elected Pope, or even come to have any weight with a new Pope, he will infallibly conjure up a democratick spirit in that country. He may indeed be able to effect it without these advantages. The next interreg­num will probably shew more of him. There may be others of the same character, who have not come to my knowledge. This much is certain, that the Roman people, if once the blind reverence they bear to the sanctity of the Pope, which is their only bridle, should relax, are naturally tur­bulent, serocious, and headlong, whilst the police is defective, and the Government feeble and re­sourceless beyond all imagination.

Spain.As to Spain, it is a nerveless country. It does not possess the use, it only suffers the abuse of a nobility. For some time, and even before the set­tlement of the Bourbon Dynasty, that body has been systematically lowered, and rendered incapa­ble by exclusion, and for incapacity excluded from affairs. In this circle the body is in a manner annihilated—and so little means have they of any weighty exertion either to controul or to support the Crown, that if they at all interfere, it is only [Page 32] by abetting desperate and mobbish insurrections, like that at Madrid which drove Squillace from his place. Florida Blanca is a creature of office, and has little connexion, and no sympathy with that body.

As to the Clergy, they are the only thing in Spain that looks like an independent order, and they are kept in some respect by the Inquisi­tion, the sole but unhappy resource of publick tranquillity and order now remaining in Spain. As in Venice, it is become mostly an engine of State, which indeed to a degree it has always been in Spain. It wars no longer with Jews and Hereticks: It has no such war to carry on. It's great object is to keep atheistick and republican doctrines from making their way in that kingdom. No French book upon any subject can enter there which does not contain such matter. In Spain, the clergy are of moment from their influence, but at the same time with the envy and jealousy that attend great riches and power. Though the Crown has by ma­nagement with the Pope got a very great share of the ecclesiastical revenues into it's own hands, much still remains to them. There will always be about that Court those who look out to a farther division of the Church property as a resource, and to be obtained by shorter methods than those of negotia­tions with the Clergy and their Chief. But at pre­sent I think it likely that they will stop, lest the [Page 33] business should be taken out of their hands; and lest that body in which remains the only life that exists in Spain, and is not a fever, may with their property lose all the influence necessary to preserve the Monarchy, or being poor and desperate, may employ whatever influence remains to them as ac­tive agents in it's destruction.

Castile dif­ferent from Catalonia & Arragon.The Castilians have still remaining a good deal of their old character, their Gravidad, Lealdad, and il Timor de Dios; but that character neither is, or ever was exactly true, except of the Castilians only. The several kingdoms which compose Spain, have perhaps some features which run through the whole; but they are in many particulars as diffe­rent as nations who go by different names; the Ca­talans, for instance, and the Arragonians too, in a good measure have the spirit of the Miquelets, and much more of republicanism than of an attach­ment to royalty. They are more in the way of trade and intercourse with France; and upon the least internal movement, will disclose and probably let loose a spirit that may throw the whole Spanish Monarchy into convulsions.

It is a melancholy reflection that the spirit of melioration which has been going on in that part of Europe, more or less during this century, and the various schemes very lately on foot for further [Page 34] advancement are all put a stop to at once. Refor­mation certainly is nearly connected with innovation—and where that latter comes in for too large a share, those who undertake to improve their coun­try may risque their own safety. In times where the correction, which includes the confession of an abuse, is turned to criminate the authority which has long suffered it, rather than to honour those who would amend it (which is the spirit of this malignant French distemper) every step out of the common course becomes critical, and renders it a task full of peril for Princes of moderate talents to engage in great undertakings. At present the only safety of Spain is the old national hatred to the French. How far that can be depended upon, if any great ferments should be excited, it is impos­sible to say.

As to Portugal, she is out of the high road of these politicks—I shall, therefore, not divert my thoughts that way; but return again to the North of Europe, which at present seems the part most in­terested, and there it appears to me that the French speculation on the northern countries, may be valued in the following, or some such manner.

Denmark.Denmark and Norway do not appear to surnish any of the materials of a democratick revolution, or the dispositions to it. Denmark can only be con­sequentially [Page 35] affected by any thing done in France; Swedenbut of Sweden I think quite otherwise. The pre­sent power in Sweden is too new a system, and too green and too sore from it's late Revolution, to be considered as perfectly assured. The King by his astonishing activity, his boldness, his decision, his ready versatility, and by rouzing and employing the old military spirit of Sweden, keeps up the top with continual agitation and lashing. The mo­ment it ceases to spin, the Royalty is a dead bit of box. Whenever Sweden is quiet externally for some time, there is great danger that all the repub­lican elements she contains will be animated by the new French spirit, and of this I believe the King is very sensible.

Russia.The Russian Government is of all others the most liable to be subverted by military seditions, by Court conspiracies, and sometimes by headlong re­bellions of the people, such as the turbinating move­ment of Pugatchef. It is not quite so probable that in any of these changes the spirit of system may mingle in the manner it has done in France. The Muscovites are no great speculators—But I should not much rely on their uninquisitive dispo­sition, if any of their ordinary motives to sedition should arise. The little catechism of the Rights of Men is soon learned; and the inferences are in the passions.

[Page 36] Poland.Poland, from one cause or another, is always un­quiet. The new Constitution only serves to supply that restless people with new means, at least new modes, of cherishing their turbulent disposition. The bottom of the character is the same. Saxony.It is a great question, whether the joining that Crown with the Electorate of Saxony, will contribute most to strengthen the Royal authority of Poland, or to shake the Ducal in Saxony. The Elector is a Ca­tholick; the people of Saxony are, six sevenths at the very least, Protestants. He must continue a Ca­tholick according to the Polish law, if he accepts that Crown. The pride of the Saxons, formerly flattered by having a Crown in the House of their Prince, though an honour which cost them dear; the German probity, fidelity and loyalty; the weight of the Constitution of the Empire under the Treaty of Westphalia; the good temper and good nature of the Princes of the House of Saxony; had for­merly removed from the people all apprehension with regard to their religion, and kept them per­fectly quiet, obedient, and even affectionate. The seven years war made some change in the minds of the Saxons. They did not, I believe, regret the loss of what might be considered almost as the succes­sion to the Crown of Poland, the possession of which, by annexing them to a foreign interest, had often obliged them to act an arduous part, towards the support of which that foreign interest afforded [Page 37] no proportionable strength. In this very delicate situation of their political interests, the speculations of the French and German Oeconomists, and the ca­bals, and the secret, as well as public doctrines of the Illuminatenordens and Free Masons, have made a considerable progress in that country; and a tur­bulent spirit under colour of religion, but in reality arising from the French Rights of Man, has al­ready shewn itself, and is ready on every occasion to blaze out.

The present Elector is a Prince of a safe and quiet temper, of great prudence, and goodness. He knows that in the actual state of things, not the power and respect belonging to Sovereigns, but their very existence depends on a reasonable fruga­lity. It is very certain that not one Sovereign in Europe can either promise for the continuance of his authority in a state of indigence and insolvency, or dares to venture on a new imposition to relieve himself. Without abandoning wholly the ancient magnificence of his Court, the Elector has con­ducted his affairs with infinitely more oeconomy than any of his predecessors, so as to restore his finances beyond what was thought possible from the state in which the seven years war had left Saxony. Saxony during the whole of that dreadful period having been in the hands of an exasperated enemy, rigorous by resentment, by nature and by neces­sity, [Page 38] was obliged to bear in a manner the whole burthen of the war; in the intervals when their al­lies prevailed, the inhabitants of that country were not better treated.

The moderation and prudence of the present Elector, in my opinion, rather perhaps respites the troubles than secures the peace of the Electorate. The offer of the succession to the Crown of Poland is truly critical, whether he accepts, or whether he declines it. If the States will consent to his ac­ceptance, it will add to the difficulties, already great, of his situation between the King of Prussia and the Emperor. But these thoughts lead me too far, when I mean to speak only of the interior con­dition of these Princes. It has always however some necessary connexion with their foreign politicks.

Holland.With regard to Holland and the ruling party there, I do not think it at all tainted, or likely to be so except by fear; or that it is likely to be mis­led unless indirectly and circuitously. But the pre­dominant party in Holland is not Holland. The suppressed faction, though suppressed, exists. Un­der the ashes, the embers of the late commotions are still warm. This Anti-Orange party has from the day of it's origin been French, though alienated in some degree for some time, through the pride and folly of Louis the Fourteenth. It will ever [Page 39] hanker after a French connexion; and now that the internal Government in France has been assi­milated in so considerable a degree to that which the immoderate Republicans began so very lately to introduce into Holland, their connexion, as still more natural, will be more desired. I do not well understand the present exterior politicks of the Stadtholder, nor the Treaty into which the news­papers say he has entered for the States with the Emperor. But the Emperor's own politicks with regard to the Netherlands seem to me to be exactly calculated to answer the purpose of the French Re­volutionists. He endeavours to crush the Aristo­cratick party—and to nourish one in avowed con­nexion with the most furious Democratists in France.

These Provinces in which the French game is so well played, they consider as part of the Old French Empire: certainly they were amongst the oldest parts of it. These they think very well situated, as their party is well-disposed to a re-union. As to the greater nations, they do not aim at making a direct conquest of them, but by disturbing them through a propagation of their principles, they hope to weaken, as they will weaken them, and to keep them in perpetual alarm and agitation, and thus render all their efforts against them utterly [Page 40] impracticable, whilst they extend the dominion of their sovereign anarchy on all sides.

England.As to England, there may be some apprehension from vicinity, from constant communication, and from the very name of Liberty, which, as it ought to be very dear to us, in it's worst abuses carries some­thing seductive. It is the abuse of the first and best of the objects which we cherish. I know that many who sufficiently dislike the system of France, have yet no apprehensions of it's prevalence here. I say nothing to the ground of this security in the at­tachment of the people to their Constitution, and their satisfaction in the discreet portion of liberty which it measures out to them. Upon this I have said all I have to say, in the Appeal I have pub­lished. That security is something, and not in­considerable. But if a storm arises I should not much rely upon it.

Objection to the stability of the French system.There are other views of things which may be used to give us a perfect (though in my opinion a delusive) assurance of our own security. The first of these is from the weakness and ricketty nature of the new system in the place of it's first formation. It is thought that the monster of a Commonwealth cannot possibly live—that at any rate the ill con­trivance of their fabrick will make it fall in pieces [Page 41] of itself—that the Assembly must be bankrupt, and that this bankruptcy will totally destroy that sys­tem, from the contagion of which apprehensions are entertained.

For my part I have long thought that one great cause of the stability of this wretched scheme of things in France was an opinion that it could not stand; and, therefore, that all external measures to destroy it were wholly useless.

Bankruptcy.As to the bankruptcy, that event has happened long ago, as much as it is ever likely to happen. So soon as a nation compels a creditor to take paper currency in discharge of his debt, there is a bankruptcy. The compulsory paper has in some degree answered; not because there was a surplus from Church lands, but because faith has not been kept with the Clergy. As to the holders of the old funds, to them the payments will be dilatory, but they will be made, and whatever may be the discount on paper, whilst paper is taken, paper will be issued.

Resources.As to the rest, they have shot out three branches of revenue to supply all those which they have de­stroyed, that is, the Universal Register of all Trans­actions, the heavy and universal Stamp Duty, and the new Territorial Impost, levied chiefly on the [Page 42] reduced estates of the gentlemen. These branches of the revenue, especially as they take assignats in payment, answer their purpose in a considerable degree, and keep up the credit of their paper; for as they receive it in their treasury, it is in reality funded upon all their taxes and future resources of all kinds, as well as upon the church estates. As this paper is become in a manner the only visible maintenance of the whole people, the dread of a bankruptcy is more apparently connected with the delay of a counter-revolution, than with the du­ration of this Republick; because the interest of the new Republick manifestly leans upon it; and in my opinion, the counter-revolution cannot exist along with it. The above three projects ruined some Ministers under the old Government, merely for having conceived them. They are the salvation of the present Rulers.

As the Assembly has laid a most unsparing and cruel hand on all men who have lived by the bounty, the justice, or the abuses of the old Go­vernment, they have lessened many expences. The royal establishment, though excessively and ridiculously great for their scheme of things, is re­duced at least one half;—the estates of the King's Brothers, which under the ancient Government had been in truth royal revenues, go to the general stock of the confiscation; and as to the crown [Page 43] lands, though under the Monarchy they never yielded two hundred and fifty thousand a year, by many they are thought at least worth three times as much.

As to the ecclesiastical charge, whether as a compensation for losses, or a provision for religion, of which they made at first a great parade, and entered into a solemn engagement in favour of it, it was estimated at a much larger sum than they could expect from the church property, moveable or immoveable: they are completely bankrupt as to that article. It is just what they wish; and it is not productive of any serious inconvenience. The non-payment produces discontent and occa­sional sedition; but is only by fits and spasms, and amongst the country people who are of no consequence. These seditions furnish new pre­texts for non-payment to the church establishment, and help the Assembly wholly to get rid of the Clergy, and indeed of any form of religion, which is not only their real, but avowed object.

Want of Money how supplied.They are embarrassed indeed in the highest de­gree, but not wholly resourceless. They are with­out the species of money. Circulation of money is a great convenience, but a substitute for it may be found. Whilst the great objects of production and consumption, corn, cattle, wine, and the like, [Page 44] exist in a country, the means of giving them cir­culation with more or less convenience, cannot be wholly wanting. The great confiscation of the church and of the crown lands, and of the ap­penages of the princes, for the purchase of all which their paper is always received at par, gives means of continually destroying and continually creating, and this perpetual destruction and reno­vation feeds the speculative market, and prevents, and will prevent, till that fund of confiscation be­gins to fail, a total depreciation.

Monied In­terest not necessary to them.But all consideration of public credit in France is of little avail at present. The action indeed of the monied interest was of absolute necessity at the beginning of this Revolution; but the French Republicks can stand without any assist­ance from that description of men, which, as things are now circumstanced, rather stands in need of assistance itself from the power which alone sub­stantially exists in France; I mean the several districts and municipal republicks, and the several clubs which direct all their affairs and appoint all their magistrates. This is the power now para­mount to every thing, even to the Assembly itself called National, and that to which tribunals, priesthood, laws, finances, and both descriptions of military power, are wholly subservient, so far as the military power of either description yields obe­dience to any name of authority.

[Page 45] The world of contingency and political combi­nation is much larger than we are apt to imagine. We never can say what may, or may not happen, without a view to all the actual circumstances. Experience upon other data than those, is of all things the most delusive. Prudence in new cases can do nothing on grounds of retrospect. A con­stant vigilance and attention to the train of things as they successively emerge, and to act on what they direct, are the only sure courses. The phy­sician that let blood, and by blood-letting cured one kind of plague, in the next added to it's ra­vages. That power goes with property is not uni­versally true, and the idea that the operation of it is certain and invariable, may mislead us very sa­tally.

Power sepa­rated from Property.Whoever will take an accurate view of the state of those Republicks, and of the composition of the present Assembly deputed by them (in which As­sembly there are not quite fifty persons possessed of an income amounting to 100l. sterling yearly) must discern clearly, that the political and civil power of France is wholly separated from it's property of every description; and of course that neither the landed nor the monied interest possesses the smallest weight or consideration in the direction of any publick concern. The whole kingdom is directed by the refuse of it's chicane, with the aid [Page 46] of the bustling, presumptuous young clerks of counting-houses and shops, and some intermix­ture of young gentlemen of the same character in the several towns. The rich peasants are bribed with church lands: and the poorer of that descrip­tion are, and can be, counted for nothing. They may rise in ferocious, ill-directed tumults—but they can only disgrace themselves and signalize the triumph of their adversaries.

Effect of the Rota.The truly active citizens. that is, the above de­scriptions. are all concerned in intrigue respecting the various objects in their local or their general government. The rota which the French have established for their National Assembly, holds out the highest objects of ambition to such vast mul­titudes as, in an unexampled measure, to widen the bottom of a new species of interest merely po­litical, and wholly unconnected with birth or pro­perty. This scheme of a rota, though it enfeebles the state, considered as one solid body, and indeed wholly disables it from acting as such, gives a great, an equal, and a diffusive strength to the de­mocratick scheme. Seven hundred and fifty peo­ple, every two years raised to the supreme power, has already produced at least fifteen hundred bold, acting politicians; a great number for even so great a country as France. These men never will quietly settle in ordinary occupations, nor [Page 47] submit to any scheme which must reduce them to an entirely private condition, or to the exercise of a steady, peaceful, but obscure and unimportant industry. Whilst they sit in the Assembly they are denied offices of trust and profit—but their short duration makes this no restraint—during their probation and apprenticeship they are all salaried with an income to the greatest part of them immense; and after they have passed the novitiate, those who take any sort of lead are placed in very lucrative offices, according to their influence and credit, or appoint those who divide their profits with them.

This supply of recruits to the corps of the highest civil ambition, goes on with a regular progression. In very few years it must amount to many thousands. These, however, will be as nothing in comparison to the multitude of municipal officers, and officers of district and department, of all sorts, who have tasted of power and profit, and who hunger for the periodical return of the meal. To these needy agitators, the glory of the state, the general wealth and prosperity of the nation, and the rise or fall of publick credit, are as dreams; nor have arguments deduced from these topicks any sort of weight with them. The indifference with which the Assembly regards the state of their Colonies, the only valu­able part of the French commerce, is a full proof [Page 48] how little they are likely to be affected by any thing but the selfish game of their own ambition, now universally diffused.

Impractica­bility of Re­sistance.It is true, amidst all these turbulent means of security to their system, very great discontents every where prevail. But they only produce mi­sery to those who nurse them at home, or exile, beggary, and in the end, confiseation, to those who are so impatient as to remove from them. Each Municipal Republick has a Committee, or some­thing in the nature of a Committee of Research. In these petty Republicks the tyranny is so near it's object, that it becomes instantly acquainted with every act of every man. It stifles conspiracy in it's very first movements. Their power is absolute and uncontroulable. No stand can be made against it. These Republicks are besides so disconnected, that very little intelligence of what happens in them is to be obtained, beyond their own bounds, except by the means of their clubs, who keep up a constant correspondence, and who give what co­lour they please to such facts as they choose to communicate out of the track of their correspon­dence. They all have some sort of communica­tion, just as much or as little as they please, with the center. By this consinement of all commu­nication to the ruling faction, any combination grounded on the abuses and discontents in one. [Page 49] scarcely can reach the other. There is not one man, in any one place, to head them. The old Government had so much abstracted the Nobility from the cultivation of provincial interest, that no man in France exists, whose power, credit or con­sequence extends to two districts, or who is capa­ble of uniting them in any design, even if any man could assemble ten men together, without be­ing sure of a speedy lodging in a prison. One must not judge of the state of France by what has been observed elsewhere. It does not in the least resemble any other country. Analogical reasoning from history or from recent experience in other places is wholly delusive.

In my opinion there never was seen so strong a government internally as that of the French Municipalities. If ever any rebellion can arise against the present system, it must begin, where the Revolution which gave birth to it did, at the Capital. Paris is the only place in which there is the least freedom of intercourse. But even there, so many servants as any man has, so many spies, and irreconcileable domestick enemies.

Gentlemen are Fugi­tives.But that place being the chief seat of the power and intelligence of the ruling faction, and the place of occasional resort for their fiercest spirits, [Page 50] even there a revolution is not likely to have any thing to feed it. The leaders of the aristocratick party have been drawn out of the kingdom by order of the Princes, on the hopes held out by the Emperor and the King of Prussia at Pilnitz; and as to the democratick factions in Paris, amongst them there are no leaders possessed of an influence for any other purpose but that of maintaining the present state of things. The moment they are seen to warp, they are reduced to nothing. They have no attached army—no party that is at all personal.

It is not to be imagined because a political sys­tem is, under certain aspects, very unwise in it's contrivance, and very mischievous in it's effects, that it therefore can have no long duration. It's very defects may tend to it's stability, because they are agreeable to it's nature. The very faults in the constitution of Poland made it last; the veto which destroyed all it's energy preserved it's life. What can be conceived so monstrous as the Republick of Algiers? and that no less strange Republick of the Mammalukes in Egypt? They are of the worst form imaginable, and exercised in the worst man­ner, yet they have existed as a nuisance on the earth for several hundred years.

[Page 51] Conclusions.From all these considerations, and many more, that croud upon me, three conclusions have long since arisen in my mind—

First, that no counter-revolution is to be ex­pected in France from internal causes solely.

Secondly, that the longer the present system ex­ists, the greater will be it's strength; the greater it's power to destroy discontents at home, and to resist all foreign attempts in favour of these dis­contents.

Thirdly, that as long as it exists in France, it will be the interest of the managers there, and it is in the very essence of their plan, to disturb and distract all other governments, and their endless succession of restless politicians will continually stimulate them to new attempts.

Proceedings of Princes; Defensive Plans.Princes are generally sensible that this is their common cause; and two of them have made a publick declaration of their opinion to this effect. Against this common danger, some of them, such as the King of Spain, the King of Sardinia, and the Republick of Berne, are very diligent in using de­sensive measures.

[Page 52] If they were to guard against an invasion from France, the merits of this plan of a merely defen­sive resistance might be supported by plausible to­picks; but as the attack does not operate against these countries externally, but by an internal cor­ruption (a sort of dry rot); they who pursue this merely defensive plan, against a danger which the plan itself supposes to be serious, cannot possibly escape it. For it is in the nature of all defensive measures to be sharp and vigorous under the im­pressions of the first alarm, and to relax by de­grees; until at length the danger, by not operat­ing instantly, comes to appear as a false alarm; so much so that the next menacing appearance will look less formidable, and will be less provided against. But to those who are on the offensive it is not necessary to be always alert. Possibly it is more their interest not to be so. For their unfore­seen attacks contribute to their success.

The French Party how composed.In the mean time a system of French conspiracy is gaining ground in every country. This system happening to be founded on principles the most delusive indeed, but the most flattering to the na­tural propensities of the unthinking multitude, and to the speculations of all those who think, without thinking very profoundly, must daily ex­tend it's influence. A predominant inclination [Page 53] towards it appears in all those who have no reli­gion, when otherwise their disposition leads them to be advocates even for despotism. Hence Hume, though I cannot say that he does not throw out some expressions of disapprobation on the proceedings of the levellers in the reign of Richard the Second, yet affirms that the doctrines of John Ball were ‘"conformable to the ideas of primitive equality, which are engraven in the hearts of all men."’

Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. They were even of a character nearly the reverse; they were formerly like the old Epicureans, rather an unenterprizing race. But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent and seditious. They are sworn enemies to Kings, Nobility and Priesthood. We have seen all the Academicians at Paris, with Condorcet, the friend and correspondent of Priestley, at their head, the most furious of the extravagant Republicans.

Condorcet.The late Assembly, after the last captivity of the King, had actually chosen this Condorcet by a ma­jority on the ballot, for Preceptor to the Dauphin, who was to be taken out of the hands and direction of his parents, and to be delivered over to this fana­tick Atheist, and furious democratick Republican. His untractability to these leaders, and his figure [Page 54] in the Club of Jacobins, which at that time they wished to bring under, alone prevented that part of the arrangement, and others in the same style, from being carried into execution. Whilst he was candidate for this office, he produced his title to it by promulgating the following ideas of the title of his royal pupil to the crown. In a paper written by him, and published with his name, against the re-establishment, even of the appearance of monar­chy under any qualifications, He says,

Doctrine of the French."Jusqu'à ce moment ils [l'Assemblée Nationale] n'out rien préjugé encore. En se reservant de nom­mer un Gouvernour an Dauphin, ils n'out pas prononcé que cet enfant dût regner; mais seule­ment quil étoit possible que la Constitution l'y des­tinât; ils out voulu que l'éducation, effaçant tout ce que les prestiges du Trône out pu lui in­spirer de préjugés fur les droits prétendus de sa naissance, qu'elle luifit connoître de bonne heure, et l'Egalité naturelle des Hommes, et la Souve­raineté du peuple; qu'elle lui apprit à ne pas ou­blier que c'est du peuple qu'il tiendra le tître de Roi, et que le peuple nia pas même le droit de re­noncer à celui de l'en depouiller."

"Ils ont voulu que cette éducation le rendit également digne, par ses lumières, et ses vertus, de recevoir avec resignation, le fardeau dangereux d'une couronne, ou de la déposer avec joie entre les [Page 55] mains de ces frères, qu'il sentit que le devoir, et la gloire du Roi d'un peuple libre, est de hâter le moment de n'être plus qu'un citoyen ordinaire."

"Ils ont voulu que l'inutilité d'un Roi, la néces­sité de chercher les moyens de remplacer un pouvoir fondé sur les illusions, fut une des premières véri­tés offertes à sa raison; l'obligation d'y concourir lui même un des premières devoirs de sa morale; et le desir, de n'être plus affranchi du joug de la loi, par une injurieuse inviolabilité, le premier sentiment de son coeur. Ils n'ignorent pas que dans ce mo­ment il s'agit bien moins de former un Roi que de lui apprendre à savoir, à vouloir ne plus l'ê­tre."*

[Page 56] Such are the sentiments of the man who has oc­casionally filled the chair of the National Assembly, who is their perpetual secretary, their only standing officer, and the most important by far. He leads them to peace or war. He is the great theme of the Republican faction in England. These ideas of M. Condorcet, are the principles of those to whom Kings are to entrust their successors, and the inte­rests of their succession. This man would be ready to plunge the poignard in the heart of his pupil, or to whet the axe for his neck. Of all men, the most dangerous is a warm, hot-headed, zealous Atheist. This sort of man aims at dominion, and his means are, the words he always has in his mouth, ‘"L'é­galité naturelle des Hommes, et la Souverainté du Peuple."’

All former attempts grounded on these Rights of Men, had proved unfortunate. The success of this [Page 57] last makes a mighty difference in the effect of the doctrine. Here is a principle of a nature, to the multitude, the most seductive, always existing be fore their eyes, as a thing feasible in practice. After so many failures, such an enterprize previous to the French experiment, carried ruin to the contrivers, on the face of it; and if any enthusiast was so wild as to wish to engage in a scheme of that nature, it was not easy for him to find followers: Now there is a party almost in all countries, ready made, ani­mated with success, with a sure Ally in the very center of Europe. There is no cabal so obscure in any place, that they do not protect, cherish, foster, and endeavour to raise it into importance at home and abroad. From the lowest, this intrigue will creep up to the highest. Ambition, as well as enthusiasm, may find it's account in the party and in the principle.

Character of Ministers.The Ministers of other Kings, like those of the King of France (not one of whom was perfectly free from this guilt, and some of whom were very deep in it) may themselves be the persons to foment such a disposition and such a faction Hertzberg, the King of Prussia's late Minister, is so much of what is called a philosopher, that he was of a fac­tion with that sort of politicians in every thing, and in every place. Even when he defends himself from the imputation of giving extravagantly into [Page 58] these principles, he still considers the revolution of France as a great publick good, by giving credit to their fraudulent declaration of their universal be­nevolence, and love of peace. Nor are his Prus­sian Majesty's present ministers at all disinclined to the same system. Their ostentatious preamble to certain late edicts, demonstrates (if their actions had not been sufficiently explanatory of their cast of mind) that they are deeply infected with the same distemper of dangerous, because plausible, though trivial, and shallow speculation.

Ministers turning their backs on the reputation which properly belongs to them, aspire at the glory of being speculative writers. The duties of these two situations are, in general, directly oppo­site to each other. Speculators ought to be neu­tral. A Minister cannot be so. He is to support the interest of the publick as connected with that of his master. He is his master's trustee, advocate, attorney, and steward—and he is not to indulge in any speculation which contradicts that charac­ter or even detracts from its efficacy. Necker had an extreme thirst for this sort of glory; so had others; and this pursuit of a misplaced and mis­understood reputation, was one of the causes of the ruin of these ministers, and of their unhappy mas­ter. The Prussian ministers in foreign courts, have (at least not long since) talked the most democra­tick [Page 59] language with regard to France, and in the most unmanaged terms.

Corps diplo­matique.The whole corps diplomatique, with very few exceptions, leans that way. What cause produces in them a turn of mind, which at first one would think unnatural to their situation, it is not impossi­ble to explain. The discussion would however be somewhat long and somewhat invidious. The fact itself is indisputable, however they may dis­guise it to their several courts. This disposition is gone to so very great a length in that corps, in it­self so important, and so important as furnishing the intelligence which sways all cabinets, that if Princes and States do not very speedily attend with a vi­gorous controul to that source of direction and in­formation, very serious evils are likely to befal them.

Sovereigns—their disposi­tions.But indeed Kings are to guard against the same sort of dispositions in themselves. They are very easily alienated from all the higher orders of their subjects, whether civil or military, laick or eccle­siastical. It is with persons of condition that Sove­reigns chiefly come into contact. It is from them that they generally experience opposition to their will. It is with their pride and impracticability, that Princes are most hurt; it is with their servility and baseness, that they are most commonly disgust­ed; it is from their humours and cabals, that they [Page 60] find their affairs most frequently troubled and dis­tracted. But of the common people in pure mo­narchical governments, Kings know little or no­thing; and therefore being unacquainted with their faults (which are as many as those of the great, and much more decisive in their effects when ac­companied with power) Kings generally regard them with tenderness and favour, and turn their eyes towards that description of their subjects, par­ticularly when hurt by opposition from the higher orders. It was thus that the King of France (a perpetual example to all sovereigns) was ruined. I have it from very sure information (and it was in­deed obvious enough from the measures which were taken previous to the assembly of the States and afterwards) that the King's counsellors had filled him with a strong dislike to his nobility, his clergy, and the corps of his magistracy. They re­presented to him, that he had tried them all seve­rally, in several ways, and found them all untract­able. That he had twice called an Assembly (the Notables) composed of the first men of the clergy, the nobility, and the magistrates; that he had him­self named every one member in those assemblies, and that though so picked out, he had not, in this their collective state, sound them more disposed to a compliance with his will than they had been se­parately. That there remained for him, with the least prospect of advantage to his authority in the States [Page 61] General, which were to be composed of the same sorts of men, but not chosen by him, only the Tiers Etat. In this alone he could repose any hope of extricating himself from his difficulties, and of set­tling him in a clear and permanent authority. They represented (these are the words of one of my in­formants) ‘"That the Royal Authority compressed with the weight of these aristocratick bodies, full of ambition, and of faction, when once unloaded, would rise of itself, and occupy it's natural place without disturbance or controul:"’ That the com­mon people would protect, cherish, and support, in­stead of crushing it. ‘"The people, (it was said) could entertain no objects of ambition;"’ they were out of the road of intrigue and cabal; and could possibly have no other view than the support of the mild and parental authority by which they were invested, for the first time collectively with real importance in the State, and protected in their peaceable and useful employments.

King of France.This unfortunate King (not without a large share of blame to himself) was deluded to his ruin by a desire to humble and reduce his Nobility, Clergy, and his corporate Magistracy; not that I suppose he meant wholly to eradicate these bodies, in the manner since effected by the Democratick power: I rather believe that even Necker's designs did not go to that extent. With his own hand, however, [Page 62] Louis the XVIth pulled down the pillars which up­held his throne; and this he did, because he could not bear the inconveniences which are attached to every thing human; because he found himself cooped up, and in durance by those limits which nature prescribes to desire and imagination; and was taught to consider as low and degrading, that mutual dependance which Providence has ordain­ed that all men should have on one another. He is not at this minute perhaps cured of the dread of the power and credit like to be acquired by those who would save and rescue him. He leaves those who suffer in his cause to their fate; and hopes by various mean delusive intrigues in which I am afraid he is encouraged from abroad, to re­gain, among Traitors and Regicides, the power he has joined to take from his own family, whom he quietly sees proscribed before his eyes, and called to answer to the lowest of his rebels, as the vilest of all criminals.

Emperor.It is to be hoped that the Emperor may be taught better things by this fatal example. But it is sure that he has advisers who endeavour to fill him with the ideas which have brought his bro­ther-in-law to his present situation. Joseph the Second was far gone in this philosophy, and some, if not most who serve the Emperor, would kindly initiate him into all the mysteries of this free-ma­sonry. [Page 63] They would persuade him to look on the National Assembly not with the hatred of an ene­my, but the jealousy of a rival. They would make him desirous of doing, in his own dominions, by a Royal despotism, what has been done in France by a Democratick. Rather than abandon such enterprises, they would persuade him to a strange alliance between those extremes. Their grand object being now, as in his brother's time, at any rate to destroy the higher orders, they think he cannot compass this end, as certainly he cannot, without elevating the lower. By depressing the one and by raising the other, they hope in the first place to encrease his treasures and his army; and with these common instruments of Royal Power they flatter him that the Democracy which they help, in his name, to create, will give him but little trouble. In defiance of the freshest ex­perience, which might shew him that old impos­sibilities are become modern probabilities, and that the extent to which evil principles may go, when left to their own operation, is beyond the power of calculation, they will endeavour to per­suade him that such a Democracy is a thing which cannot subsist by itself; that in whosever hands the military command is placed, he must be in the necessary course of affairs, sooner or later the master; and that being the master of various un­connected countries, he may keep them all in or­der [Page 64] by employing a military force, which to each of them is foreign. This maxim too, however formerly plausible, will not now hold water. This scheme is full of intricacy, and may cause him every where to lose the hearts of his people. These Counsellors forget that a corrupted army was the very cause of the ruin of his brother-in-law; and that he is himself far from secure from a similar corruption.

Brabant.Instead of reconciling himself heartily and bonâ fide according to the most obvious rules of policy to the States of Brabant as they are constituted, and who in the present state of things stand on the same foundation with the Monarchy itself, and who might have been gained with the greatest facility, they have advised him to the most unkingly pro­ceeding which, either in a good or in a bad light, has ever been attempted. Under a pretext taken from the spirit of the lowest chicane, they have counselled him wholly to break the publick faith, to annul the amnesty, as well as the other condi­tions through which he obtained an entrance into the Provinces of the Netherlands, under the guar­rantee of Great Britain and Prussia. He is made to declare his adherence to the indemnity in a cri­minal sense, but he is to keep alive in his own name, and to encourage in others a civil process in the nature of an action of damages for what has [Page 65] been suffered during the troubles. Whilst he keeps up this hopeful law-suit in view of the da­mages he may recover against individuals, he loses the hearts of a whole people, and the vast subsi­dies which his ancestors had been used to receive from them.

Emperor's conduct with regard to France.This design once admitted, unriddles the mys­tery of the whole conduct of the Emperor's Mi­nisters with regard to France. As soon as they saw the life of the King and Queen of France no longer as they thought in danger, they entirely changed their plan with regard to the French na­tion. I believe that the chiefs of the Revolution (those who led the Constituting Assembly) have contrived as far as they can do it, to give the Em­peror satisfaction on this head. He keeps a con­tinual tone and posture of menace to secure this his only point. But it must be observed, that he all along grounds his departure from the engage­ment at Pilnitz to the Princes, on the will and ac­tions of the King and the majority of the people, without any regard to the natural and constitu­tional orders of the State, or to the opinions of the whole House of Bourbon. Though it is manifestly under the constraint of imprisonment and the fear of death, that this unhappy man has been guilty of all those humilities which have astonished mankind, the advisers of the Emperor will consider nothing [Page 66] but the physical person of Louis, which, even in his present degraded and infamous state, they regard as of sufficient authority to give a compleat sanc­tion to the persecution and utter ruin of all his fa­mily, and of every person who has shewn any de­gree of attachment or fidelity to him, or to his cause; as well as competent to destroy the whole antient constitution and frame of the French mo­narchy.

The present policy therefore of the Austrian po­liticians, is to recover despotism through demo­cracy; or at least, at any expence, every where to ruin the description of men who are every where the objects of their settled and systematick aversion, but more especially in the Netherlands. Compare this with the Emperor's refusing at first all inter­course with the present powers in France, with his endeavouring to excite all Europe against them, and then his not only withdrawing all assistance and all countenance from the fugitives who had been drawn by his declarations from their houses, situations, and military commissions, many even from the means of their very existence, but treat­ing them with every species of insult and outrage.

Combining this unexampled conduct in the Em­peror's advisers, with the timidity (operating as per­sidy) of the King of France, a fatal example is held [Page 67] out to all subjects, tending to shew what little sup­port, or even countenance they are to expect from those for whom their principle of fidelity may in­duce them to risque life and fortune. The Em­peror's advisers would not for the world rescind one of the acts of this or of the late French Assem­bly; nor do they wish any thing better at present for their master's brother of France, than that he should really be, as he is nominally, at the head of the system of persecution of religion and good or­der, and of all descriptions of dignity, natural and instituted; they only wish all this done with a little more respect to the King's person, and with more appearance of consideration for his new subordi­nate office; in hopes that yielding himself for the present, to the persons who have effected these changes, he may be able to game for the rest here­after. On no other principles than these, can the conduct of the Court of Vienna be accounted for. The subordinate Court of Brussels talks the lan­guage of a club of Feuillans and Jacobins.

Moderate party.In this state of general rottenness among sub­jects, and of delusion and false politicks in Princes, comes a new experiment. The King of France is in the hands of the Chiefs of the Regicide Faction, the Barnvaes, Lameths, Fayettes, Perigords, Duports, Robespierre's, Camus's, &c. &c. &c. They who had imprisoned, suspended, and conditionally de­posed [Page 68] him, are his confidential counsellors. The next desperate of the desperate rebels, call them­selves the Moderate Party. They are the Chiefs of the first Assembly, who are consederated to support their power during their suspension from the pre­sent, and to govern the existent body with as sove­reign a sway as they had done the last. They have, for the greater part, succeeded; and they have many advantages towards procuring their success in future. Just before the close of their regular power, they bestowed some appearance of preroga­tives on the King, which in their first plans they had refused to him; particularly the mischievous, and in his situation, dreadful prerogative of a Veto. This prerogative (which they hold as their bit in the mouth of the National Assembly for the time being) without the direct assistance of their Club, it was impossible for the King to shew even the desire of exerting with the smallest effect, or even with safety to his person. However, by playing through this Veto, the Assembly against the King, and the King against the Assembly, they have made them­selves masters of both. In this situation, having destroyed the old Government by their sedition, they would preserve as much of order as is neces­sary for the support of their own usurpation.

French Am­bassador.It is believed that this, by far the worst party of the miscreants of France, has received direct en­couragement from the counsellors who betray the [Page 69] Emperor. Thus strengthened by the possession of the captive King (now captive in his mind as well as in body) and by a good hope of the Emperor, they intend to send their Ministers to every Court in Europe; having sent before them such a de­nunciation of terror and superiority to every na­tion without exception, as has no example in the diplomatick world. Hitherto the Ministers to fo­reign Courts had been of the appointment of the Sovereign of France previous to the Revolu­tion; and either from inclination, duty or decorum, most of them were contented with a merely pas­sive obedience to the new power. At present the King being entirely in the hands of his jailors, and his mind broken to his situation, can send none but the enthusiasts of the system—men framed by the secret Committee of the Feuillans, who meet in the house of Madame de Stahl, Mr. Necker's daugh­ter. Such is every man whom they have talked of sending hither. These Ministers will be so many spies and incendiaries; so many active emissaries of Democracy. Their houses will become places of rendezvous here, as every where else, and cen­ters of cabal for whatever is mischievous and ma­lignant in this country, particularly among those of rank and fashion. As the Minister of the Na­tional Assembly will be admitted at this Court, at least with his usual rank, and as entertainments will be naturally given and received by the King's [Page 70] own Ministers, any attempt to discountenance the resort of other people to that Minister would be ineffectual, and indeed absurd, and full of con­tradiction. The women who come with these Ambassadors will assist in somenting factions amongst ours, which cannot fail of extending the evil. Some of them I hear are already arrived. There is no doubt they will do as much mischief as they can.

Connexion of Clubs.Whilst the publick Ministers are received under the general law of the communication between na­tions, the correspondences between the factious clubs in France and ours, will be, as they now are, kept up: but this pretended embassy will be a closer, more steady and more effectual link be­tween the partizans of the new system on both sides of the water. I do not mean that these Anglo Gallick clubs in London, Manchester, &c. are not dangerous in a high degree. The ap­pointment of festive anniversaries has ever in the sense of mankind been held the best method of keeping alive the spirit of any institution. We have one settled in London; and at the last of them, that of the 14th of July, the strong discoun­tenance of Government, the unfavourable time of the year, and the then uncertainty of the disposi­tion of foreign Powers, did not hinder the meeting of at least nine hundred people, with good coats on [Page 71] their backs, who could afford to pay half a guinea a head to shew their zeal for the new principles. They were with great difficulty, and all possible address, hindered from inviting the French Am­bassador. His real indisposition, besides the fear of offending any party, sent him out of town. But when our Court shall have recognized a Govern­ment in France, founded on the principles an­nounced in Montmorin's Letter, how can the French Ambassador be frowned upon for an atten­dance on those meetings wherein the establishment of the Government he represents is celebrated? An event happened a few days ago, which in many particulars was very ridiculous; yet even from the ridicule and absurdity of the proceedings, it marks the more strongly the spirit of the French Assem­bly. I mean the reception they have given to the Frith-Street Alliance. This, though the delirium of a low, drunken alehouse-club, they have pub­licly announced as a formal alliance with the people of England, as such ordered it to be presented to their King, and to be published in every province in France. This leads more directly and with much greater force than any proceeding with a regular and rational appearance, to two very ma­terial considerations. First, it shews that they are of opinion that the current opinions of the English have the greatest influence on the minds of the people in France, and indeed of all the people in [Page 72] Europe, since they catch with such astonishing eagerness at every the most trifling shew of such opinions in their favour. Next, and what appears to me to be full as important, it shews that they are willing publickly to countenance and even to adopt every factious conspiracy that can be formed in this nation, however low and base in itself, in order to excite in the most miserable wretches here, an idea of their own sovereign importance, and to encourage them to look up to France, whenever they may be matured into something of more force, for assistance in the subversion of their domestick Government. This address of the alchouse club was actually proposed and accepted by the Assem­bly as an alliance. The procedure was in my opi­nion a high misdemeanor in those who acted thus in England, if they were not so very low and so very base, that no acts of theirs can be called high, even as a description of criminality; and the As­sembly in accepting, proclaiming and publishing this forged alliance, has been guilty of a plain ag­gression, which would justify our Court in demand­ing a direct disavowal, if our policy should not lead us to wink at it.

Whilst I look over this paper to have it copied, I see a Manifesto of the Assembly, as a preliminary to a declaration of war against the German Princes on the Rhine. This Manifesto contains the whole [Page 73] substance of the French politicks with regard to fo­reign States. They have ordered it to be circu­lated amongst the people in every country of Eu­rope—even previously to it's acceptance by the King and his new Privy Council, the club of the Feuillans. Therefore, as a summary of their po­licy avowed by themselves, let us consider some of the circumstances attending that piece, as well as the spirit and temper of the piece itself.

Declaration against the Emperor.It was preceded by a speech from Brissot, full of unexampled insolence towards all the Sovereign States of Germany, if not of Europe. The Assem­bly, to express their satisfaction in the sentiments which it contained, ordered it to be printed. This Brissot had been in the lowest and basest employ under the deposed Monarchy; a sort of thies­taker, or spy of police, in which character he acted after the manner of persons in that description. He had been employed by his master, the Lieutenant de Police, for a considerable time in London, in the same or some such honourable occupation. The Revolution which has brought forward all merit of that kind, raised him, with others of a similar class and disposition, to fame and eminence. On the Revolution he became a publisher of an infamous newspaper, which he still continues. He is charged, and I believe justly, as the first mover of the troubles in Hispaniola. There is no wick­edness, [Page 74] if I am rightly informed, in which he is not versed, and of which he is not perfectly capable. His quality of news-writer, now an employment of the first dignity in France, and his practices and principles, procured his election into the Assembly, where he is one of the leading members.—Mr. Condorcet produced on the same day a draft of a Declaration to the King, which the Assembly pub­lished before it was presented.

Condorcet (though no Marquis, as he styled himself before the Revolution) is a man of another sort of birth, fashion, and occupation from Brissot; but in every principle, and in every disposition to the lowest as well as the highest and most deter­mined villainies, fully his equal. He seconds Bris­sot in the Assembly, and is at once his coadjutor and his rival in a newspaper, which in his own name and as successor to Mr. Garat, a Member also of the Assembly, he has just set up in that Empire of Gazettes. Condorcet was chosen to draw the first Declaration presented by the Assem­bly to the King, as a threat to the Elector of Treves, and the other Princes on the Rhine. In that piece, in which both Feuillans and Jacobins concurred, they declared publickly, and most proudly and insolently, the principle on which they mean to proceed in their future disputes with any of the Sovereigns of Europe, for they say, ‘"That [Page 75] it is not with fire and sword they mean to attack their territories, but by what will be more dread­ful to them, the introduction of liberty."’—I have not the paper by me to give the exact words—but I believe they are nearly as I state them. Dreadful indeed will be their hostility, if they should be able to carry it on according to the ex­ample of their modes of introducing liberty. They have shewn a perfect model of their whole design, very complete, though in little. This gang of murderers and savages have wholly laid waste and utterly ruined the beautiful and happy country of the Comtat Venaissin and the city of Avignon. This cruel and treacherous outrage the Sovereigns of Europe, in my opinion, with a great mistake of their honour and interest, have permitted even without a remonstrance to be carried to the desired point, on the principles on which they are now themselves threatened in their own States; and this, because, according to the poor and narrow spirit now in fashion, their brother Sovereign, whose subjects have been thus traiterously and inhumanly treated in violation of the law of nature and of nations, has a name somewhat different from theirs, and instead of being styled King or Duke, or Land­grave, is usually called Pope.

State of the Empire.The Electors of Treves and Mentz were fright­ened with the menace of a similar mode of war. [Page 76] The Assembly, however, not thinking that the Electors of Treves and Mentz had done enough under their first terror, have again brought forward Condorcet. preceded by Brissot, as I have just stat­ed. The Declaration which they have ordered now to be circulated in all countries, is in substance the same as the first, but still more insolent, because more full of detail. There they have the impu­dence to state that they aim at no conquest; insi­nuating that all the old lawful Powers of the World had each made a constant open profession of a de­sign of subduing his neighbours. They add, that if they are provoked, their war will be directed only against those who assume to be Masters. But to the People they will bring peace, law, liberty, &c. &c. There is not the least hint that they consider those whom they call persons ‘"assuming to be Masters,"’ to be the lawful Government of their country, or persons to be treated with the least ma­nagement or respect. They regard them as usurp­ers and enslavers of the people. If I do not mis­take they are described by the name of tyrants in Condorcet's first draft. I am sure they are so in Brissot's speech, ordered by the Assembly to be printed at the same time and for the same purposes. The whole is in the same strain, full of false philo­sophy and false rhetorick, both however calculated to captivate and influence the vulgar mind, and to excite sedition in the countries in which it is or­dered [Page 77] to be circulated. Indeed it is such, that if any of the lawful acknowledged Sovereigns of Eu­rope had publickly ordered such a manifesto to be circulated in the dominions of another, the Am­bassador of that power would instantly be ordered to quit every Court without an audience.

Effect of Fear on the Sovereign Powers.The powers of Europe have a pretext for con­cealing their fears, by saying that this language is not used by the King; though they well know that there is in effect no such person, that the As­sembly is in reality, and by that King is acknow­ledged to be the Master, that what he does is but matter of formality, and that he can neither cause nor hinder, accelerate or retard any measure what­soever, nor add to or soften the manifesto which the Assembly has directed to be published, with the declared purpose of exciting mutiny and rebellion in the several countries governed by these powers. By the generality also of the menaces contained in this paper (though infinitely aggravating the out­rage) they hope to remove from each power sepa­rately the idea of a distinct affront. The persons first pointed at by the menace are certainly the Princes of Germany, who harbour the persecuted house of Bourbon and the Nobility of France; the declaration, however, is general, and goes to every state with which they may have a cause of quarrel. But the terror of France has fallen upon all nations. A few months since all Sovereigns seemed disposed [Page 78] to unite against her, at present they all seem to combine in her favour. At no period has the power of France ever appeared with so formidable an aspect. In particular the liberties of the Empire can have nothing more than an existence the most tot­tering and precarious, whilst France exists with a great power of fomenting rebellion, and the greatest in the weakest; but with neither power nor dispo­sition to support the smaller states in their indepen­dence against the attempts of the more powerful.

I wind up all in a full conviction within my own breast, and the substance of which I must repeat over and over again, that the state of France is the first consideration in the politicks of Europe, and of each state, externally as well as internally con­sidered.

Most of the topicks I have used are drawn from fear and apprehension. Topicks derived from fear or addressed to it, are, I well know, of doubtful appearance. To be sure, hope is in general the incitement to action. Alarm some men—you do not drive them to provide for their security; you put them to a stand; you induce them not to take measures to prevent the approach of danger, but to remove so unpleasant an idea from their minds; you persuade them to remain as they are, from a new fear that their activity may bring on the ap­prehended mischief before it's time. I confess [Page 79] freely that this evil sometimes happens from an overdone precaution; but it is when the measures are rash, ill chosen, or ill combined, and the ef­fects rather of blind terror than of enlightened foresight. But the few to whom I wish to submit my thoughts, are of a character which will enable them to see danger without astonishment, and to provide against it without perplexity.

To what lengths this method of circulating mutinous manifestos, and of keeping emissaries of sedition in every Court under the name of Am­bassadors, to propagate the same principles and to follow the practices, will go, and how soon they will operate, it is hard to say—but go on it will—more or less rapidly, according to events, and to the humour of the time. The Princes menaced with the revolt of their subjects, at the same time that they have obsequiously obeyed the sovereign mandate of the new Roman Senate, have received with distinction, in a publick character, Ambassa­dors from those who in the same act had circulated the manifesto of sedition in their dominions. This was the only thing wanting to the degradation and disgrace of the Germanick Body.

The Ambassadors from the Rights of Man, and their admission into the diplomatick system, I hold to be a new aera in this business. It will be the most important step yet taken to affect the exist­ence [Page 80] of Sovereigns, and the higher classes of life—I do not mean to exclude it's effects upon all classes—but the first blow is aimed at the more prominent parts in the ancient order of things.

What is to be done?

It would be presumption in me to do more than to make a case. Many things occur. But as they, like all political measures, depend on disposi­tions, tempers, means, and external circumstances, for all their effect, not being well assured of these, I do not know how to let loose any speculations of mine on the subject. The evil is stated in my opinion as it exists. The remedy must be where power, wisdom and information, I hope are more united with good intentions than they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe for ever. It has given me many anxious moments for the two last years. If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be sitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope, will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to re­sist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.

HEADS FOR CONSIDERATION ON THE PRESENT STATE OF AFFAIRS.
WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 1792.
[Page] HEADS FOR CONSIDERATION, &c. &c.
WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 1792.

THAT France, by it's mere geographical po­sition, independently of every other cir­cumstance, must affect every State of Europe; some of them immediately, all of them through mediums not very remote.

That the standing policy of this kingdom ever has been to watch over the external proceedings of France (whatever form the interiour Government of that kingdom might take) and to prevent the extension of it's dominion or it's ruling influence, over other States.

That, there is nothing in the present internal state of things in France, which alters the na­tional policy with regard to the exteriour relations of that country.

That there are, on the contrary, many things in the internal circumstances of France (and perhaps [Page 84] of this country too) which tend to sortify the prin­ciples of that fundamental policy; and which ren­der the active assertion of those principles more pressing at this, than at any former time.

That, by a change effected in about three weeks, France has been able to penetrate into the heart of Germany; to make an absolute conquest of Savoy; to menace an immediate invasion of the Netherlands; and to awe and overbear the whole Helvetick Body, which is in a most perilous situa­tion. The great Aristocratick Cantons having, perhaps, as much or more to dread from their own people whom they arm, but do not chuse or dare to employ, as from the foreign enemy, which against all publick faith has butchered their troops, serving by treaty in France. To this picture, it is hardly necessary to add, the means by which France has been enabled to effect all this, namely the apparently entire destruction of one of the largest, and certainly the highest disciplined, and best appointed army ever seen, headed by the first military Sovereign in Europe, with a Captain un­der him of the greatest renown; and that without a blow given or received on any side. This state of things seems to me, even if it went no further, truly serious.

[Page 85] Circumstances have enabled France to do all this by land. On the other element she has begun to exert herself; and she must succeed in her de­signs, if enemies very different from those she has hitherto had to encounter, do not resist her.

She has fitted out a naval force, now actually at sea, by which she is enabled to give law to the whole Mediterranean. It is known as a fact (and if not so known, it is in the nature of things highly probable) that she proposes the ravage of the Ec­clesiastical State, and the pillage of Rome, as her first object; that next she means to bombard Na­ples; to awe, to humble, and thus to command all Italy—to force it to a nominal neutrality, but to a real dependence—to compel the Italian Prin­ces and Republicks to admit the free entrance of the French commerce, an open intercourse, and the sure concomitant of that intercourse, the affili­ated societies, in a manner similar to those she has established at Avignon, the Comtat, Chamberry, London, Manchester, &c. &c. which are so many colonies planted in all these countries, for extend­ing the influence, and securing the dominion of the French Republick.

That there never has been hitherto a period in which this kingdom would have suffered a French fleet to domineer in the Mediterranean, and to [Page 86] force ITALY to submit to such terms as France would think sit to impose—to say nothing of what has been done upon land in support of the same system. The great object for which we preserved Minorea, whilst we could keep it, and for which we still retain Gibraltar, both at a great expence, was, and is, to prevent the predominance of France over the Mediterranean.

Thus far as to the certain and immediate effect of that armament upon the Italian States. The probable effect which that armament, and the other armaments preparing at Toulon, and other ports may have upon SPAIN, on the side of the Medi­terranean, is worthy of the serious attention of the British councils.

That it is most probable, we may say, in a man­ner certain, that if there should be a rupture be­tween France and Spain, France will not confinc her offensive piratical operations against Spain, to her efforts in the Mediterranean; on which side, however, she may grievously affect Spain, especially if she excites Morocco and Algiers, which un­doubtedly she will, to fall upon that power.

That she will fit out armaments upon the ocean, by which the flota itself may be intercepted, and thus the treasures of all Europe, as well as the [Page 87] largest and surest resources of the Spanish monar­chy, may be conveyed into France, and become powerful instruments for the annoyance of all her neighbours.

That she makes no secret of her designs.

That, if the inward and outward bound flota should escape, still France has more and better means of dissevering many of the provinces in the West and East Indies, from the state of Spain, than Hol­land had when she succeeded in the same attempt. The French marine resembles not a little the old ar­maments of the Flibustriers, which about a century back, in conjunction with pirates of our nation, brought such calamities upon the Spanish colonies. They differ only in this, that the present piratical force is, out of all measure and comparison, greater; one hundred and fifty ships of the line, and frigates being ready built, most of them in a manner new, and all applicable in different ways to that service. Privateers and Moorish corsaires possess not the best seamanship, and very little discipline, and in­deed can make no figure in regular service, but in desperate adventures, and animated with a lust of plunder, they are truly formidable.

That the land forces of France are well adapted to concur with their marine in conjunct expeditions [Page 88] of this nature. In such expeditions, enterprize sup­plies the want of discipline, and perhaps more than supplies it. Both for this, and for other service (however contemptible their military is, in other re­spects) one arm is extremely good, the Engineer­ing and Artillery branch. The old officer corps in both being composed for the greater part of those who were not gentlemen, or gentlemen newly such, few have abandoned the service, and the men are veterans well enough disciplined, and very expert. In this piratical way they must make war with good advantage. They must do so, even on the side of Flanders, either offensively or defensively. This shews the difference between the policy of Louis the XIVth. who built a wall of brass about his kingdom: and that of Joseph the Second, who premeditatedly uncovered his whole frontier.

That Spain from the actual and expected preva­lence of French power, is in a most perilous situa­tion: perfectly dependent on the mercy of that Republick. If Austria is broken, or even hum­bled, she will not dare to dispute it's mandates.

In the present state of things, we have nothing at all to dread from the power of Spain by sea, or by land, or from any rivalry in commerce.

[Page 89] That we have much to dread from the con­nexions into which Spain may be forced.

From the circumstances of her territorial posses­sions, of her resources, and the whole of her civil and political state, we may be authorized safely, and with undoubted confidence to affirm, that

Spain is not a substantive Power:

That she must lean on France, or on England.

That it is as much for the interest of Great Britain to prevent the predominancy of a French interest in that kingdom, as if Spain were a province of the Crown of Great Britain, or a State actually depen­dent on it; full as much so as ever Portugal was reputed to be. This is a dependency of much greater value: and it's destruction, or it's being carried to any other dependency, of much more serious misfortune.

One of these two things must happen. Either Spain must submit to circumstances, and take such conditions as France will impose; or she must en­gage in hostilities along with the Emperor, and the King of Sardinia.

[Page 90] If Spain should be forced or awed into a treaty with the Republick of France, she must open her ports and her commerce, as well as the land com­munication for the French labourers, who were ac­customed annually to gather in the harvest in Spain. Indeed she must grant a free communica­tion for travellers and traders through her whole country. In that case it is not conjectural, it is certain, the Clubs will give law in the Provinces; Bourgoing, or some such miscreant, will give law at Madrid.

In this England may acquiesee if she pleases; and France will conclude a triumphant peace, with Spain under her absolute dependence, with a broad highway into that, and into every State of Europe. She actually invites Great Britain to di­vide with her the spoils of the new world, and to make a partition of the Spanish Monarchy. Clearly it is better to do so, than to suffer France to possess those spoils, and that territory alone; which, with­out doubt, unresisted by us, she is altogether as able, as she is willing to do.

This plan is proposed by the French, in the way in which they propose all their plans; and in the only way in which indeed they can propose them, where there is no regular communication between his Majesty and their Republick.

[Page 91] What they propose is a plan. It is a plan also to resist their predatory project. To remain quiet, and to suffer them to make their own use of a na­val power before our face, so as to awe and bully Spain into a submissive peace, or to drive them into a ruinous war, without any measure on our part, I fear is no plan at all.

However, if the plan of co-operation which France desires, and which her affiliated societies here ardently wish and are constantly writing up, should not be adopted, and the war between the Emperor and France should continue, I think it not at all likely that Spain should not be drawn into the quarrel. In that case, the neutrality of England will be a thing absolutely impossible. The time is only the subject of deliberation.

Then the question will be, whether we are to de­fer putting ourselves into a posture for the common defence, either by armament, or negotiation, or both, until Spain is actually attacked; that is, whether our Court will take a decided part for Spain, whilst Spain on her side, is yet in a condi­tion to act with whatever degree of vigour she may have; whilst that vigour is yet unexhausted;—or whether we shall connect ourselves with her broken fortunes; after she shall have received material blows, and when we shall have the whole slow [Page 92] length of that always unwieldy, and all constructed, and then wounded and crippled body, to drag af­ter us, rather than to aid us. Whilst our disposi­tion is uncertain, Spain will not dare to put herself in such a state of defence as will make her hosti­lity formidable, or her neutrality respectable.

If the decision is such as the solution of this question (I take it to be the true question) con­ducts to—no time is to be lost. But the measures though prompt, ought not to be rash and indi­gested. They ought to be well chosen, well com­bined, and well pursued. The system must be ge­neral: but it must be executed, not successively, or with interruption, but all together, uno flatu, in one melting, and one mould.

For this purpose, we must put Europe before us, which plainly is, just now, in all it's parts, in a state of dismay, derangement and confusion; and very possibly amongst all it's Sovereigns, full of se­cret heart-burning, distrust, and mutual accusation. Perhaps it may labour under worse evils. There is no vigour any where, except the distempered vi­gour and energy of France. That country has but too much life in it, when every thing around is so disposed to tameness and languor. The very vices of the French system at home tend to give force to foreign exertions. The Generals must join [Page 93] the armies. They must lead them to enterprize, or they are likely to perish by their hands. Thus without law or government of her own, France gives law to all the Governments in Europe.

This great mass of political matter must, have been always under the view of thinkers for the pub­lick, whether they act in office or not. Amongst events, even the late calamitous events were in the book of contingency. Of course, they must have been in design, at least, provided for. A plan which takes in as many as possible of the States concerned, will rather facilitate and simplify a ra­tional scheme for preserving Spain, (if that were our sole, as I think it ought to be our principal object) than to delay and perplex it.

If we should think that a provident policy (per­haps now more than provident, urgent and neces­sary) should lead us to act, we cannot take mea­sures as if nothing had been done. We must see the faults, if any, which have conducted to the present misfortunes; not for the sake of criticism, military or political, or from the common motives of blaming persons and counsels which have not been successful; but in order, if we can, to admi­nister some remedy to these disasters, by the adop­tion of plans, more bottomed in principle, and [Page 94] built on with more discretion. Mistakes may be lessons.

There seem indeed to have been several mistakes in the political principles on which the War was en­tered into, as well as in the plans upon which it was conducted; some of them very fundamental, and not only visibly, but I may say, palpably erroneous; and I think him to have less than the discernment of a very ordinary Statesman. who could not fore­see from the very beginning, unpleasant conse­quences from those plans, though not the unparal­leled disgraces and disasters which really did attend them: for they were, both principles and mea­sures, wholly new and out of the common course, without any thing apparently very grand in the conception, to justify this total departure from all rule.

For, in the first place, the united Sovereigns very much injured their cause by admitting, that they had nothing to do with the interiour arrange­ments of France; in contradiction to the whole tenour of the publick Law of Europe, and to the correspondent practice of all it's States, from the time we have any history of them. In this parti­cular, the two German Courts seem to have as little consulted the Publicists of Germany, as [Page 95] their own true interests, and those of all the Sove­reigns of Germany and Europe. This admission of a false principle in the Law of Nations, brought them into an apparent contradiction, when they insisted on the re-establishment of the Royal Au­thority in France. But this confused and contra­dictory proceeding gave rise to a practical error of worse consequence. It was derived from one and the same root; namely, that the person of the Mo­narch of France was every thing; and the Mo­narchy, and the intermediate orders of the State, by which the Monarchy was upheld, were nothing. So that, if the united Potentates had succeeded so far, as to re-establish the authority of that King, and that he should be so ill-advised as to confirm all the confiseations, and to recognize as a lawful body, and to class himself with, that rabble of mur­derers (and there wanted not persons who would so have advised him) there was nothing in the principle, or in the proceeding of the United Powers, to prevent such an arrangement.

An expedition to free a brother Sovereign from prison, was undoubtedly a generous and chival­rous undertaking. But the spirit and generosity would not have been less, if the policy had been more profound, and more comprehensive; that is, if it had taken in those considerations, and those persons, by whom, and, in some measure, for [Page 96] whom, Monarchy exists. This would become a bottom for a system of solid and permanent policy, and of operations conformable to that system.

The same fruitful error was the cause why no­thing was done to impress the people of France (so far as we can at all consider the inhabitants of France as a people) with an idea that the Govern­ment was ever to be really French, or indeed any thing else than the nominal government of a Mo­narch, a Monarch absolute as over them, but whose sole support was to arise from foreign Poten­tates, and who was to be kept on his Throne by German forces; in short, that the King of France was to be a Viceroy to the Emperor and the King of Prussia.

It was the first time that foreign Powers inter­fering in the concerns of a nation divided into par­ties, have thought proper to thrust wholly out of their councils, to postpone, to discountenance, to reject, and in a manner to disgrace the party whom those Powers came to support. The single person of a King cannot be a party. Woe to the King who is himself his party! The Royal party with the King or his Representatives at it's head, is the Royal cause. Foreign Powers have hitherto chosen to give to such wars as this, the appearance of a civil contest, and not that of an hostile invasion. [Page 97] When the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, sent aids to the chiefs of the League, they appeared as Allies to that League, and to the imprisoned King (the Cardinal de Bourbon) which that League had set up. When the Germans came to the aid of the Protestant Princes, in the same series of civil wars, they came as Allies. When the English came to the aid of Henry the Fourth, they appear­ed as Allies to that Prince. So did the French always when they intermeddled in the affairs of Germany. They came to aid a party there. When the English and Dutch intermeddled in the succession of Spain, they appeared as Allies to the Emperor Charles the Sixth. In short, the po­licy has been as uniform as it's principles were ob­vious to an ordinary eye.

According to all the old principles of law and policy, a regency ought to have been appointed by the French Princes of the Blood, Nobles, and Par­liaments, and then recognized by the combined Powers. Fundamental law and antient usage, as well as the clear reason of the thing, have always ordained it during an imprisonment of the King of France; as in the case of John, and of Francis the First. A Monarchy ought not to be left a mo­ment without a Representative, having an interest in the succession. The orders of the State, ought also to have been recognized in those amongst [Page 98] whom alone they existed in freedom, that is, in the Emigrants.

Thus laying down a firm foundation on the re­cognition of the authorities of the Kingdom of France, according to nature and to it's fundamen­tal laws, and not according to the novel and incon­siderate principles of the usurpation which the United Powers were come to extirpate. The King of Prussia and the Emperor, as Allies of the antient Kingdom of France, would have proceeded with dignity, first, to free the Monarch, if possible; if not, to secure the Monarchy as principal in the design; and in order to avoid all risques to that great object (the object of other ages than the present, and of other countries than that of France) they would of course avoid proceeding with more haste, or in a different manner than what the nature of such an object required.

Adopting this, the only rational system, the ra­tional mode of proceeding upon it, was to com­mence with an effective siege of Lisle, which the French Generals must have seen taken before their faces, or be forced to fight. A plentiful country of friends, from whence to draw supplies, would have been behind them; a plentiful country of enemies, from whence to force supplies, would have been before them. Good towns were always [Page 99] within reach to deposit their hospitals and maga­zines. The March from Lisle to Paris, is through a less defensible country, and the distance is hardly so great as from Longwy to Paris.

If the old politick and military ideas had govern­ed, the advanced guard would have been formed of those who best knew the country, and had some interest in it, supported by some of the best light troops and light artillery, whilst the grand solid body of an army disciplined to perfection, proceeded lei­surely, and in close connexion with all it's stores, provisions, and heavy cannon, to support the ex­pedite body in case of misadventure, or to improve and compleat it's success.

The direct contrary of all this was put in prac­tice. In consequence of the original sin of this project, the army of the French Princes was every where thrown into the rear, and no part of it brought forward to the last moment, the time of the commencement of the secret negotiation. This naturally made an ill impression on the people, and furnished an occasion for the rebels at Paris to give out that the faithful subjects of the King were distrusted, despised, and abhorred by his allies. The march was directed through a skirt of Lor­raine, and thence into a part of Champagne, the Duke of Brunswick leaving all the strongest places [Page 100] behind him; leaving also behind him, the strength of his artillery; and by this means giving a su­periority to the French, in the only way in which the present France is able to oppose a German force.

In consequence of the adoption of those false politicks, which turned every thing on the King's sole and single person, the whole plan of the war was reduced to nothing but a coup de main, in or­der to set that Prince at liberty. If that failed, every thing was to be given up.

The scheme of a coup de main, might (under fa­vourable circumstances) be very fit for a partizan at the head of a light corps, by whose failure no­thing material would be deranged. But for a royal army of eighty thousand men, headed by a King in person, who was to march an hundred and fifty miles through an enemy's country—surely this was a plan unheard of.

Although this plan was not well chosen, and proceeded upon principles altogether ill judged and impolitick, the superiority of the military force, might in a great degree have supplied the defects, and furnished a corrective to the mistakes. The greater probability was that the Duke of Brunswick would make his way to Paris, over the bellies of the [Page 101] rabble of drunkards, robbers, assassins, rioters, mu­tineers, and half-grown boys, under the ill-obeyed command of a theatrical, vapouring, reduced Cap­tain of cavalry, who opposed that great Comman­der and great army. But—Diis aliter visum—He began to treat, the winds blew, and the rains beat, the house fell—because it was built upon sand—and great was the fall thereof. This march was not an exact copy of either of the two marches made by the Duke of Parma into France.

There is some secret. Sickness and weather may defeat an army pursuing a wrong plan; not that I believe the sickness to have been so great as it has been reported: but there is a great deal of superfluous humiliation in this business, a perfect prodigality of disgrace. Some advantage, real or imaginary, must compensate to a great Sovereign, and to a great General, for so immense a loss of reputation. Longwy, situated as it is, might (one should think) be evacuated without a capitulation with a Republick just proclaimed by the King of Prussia as an usurping and rebellious body. He was not far from Luxembourg. He might have taken away the obnoxious French in his flight. It does not appear to have been neces­sary that those Magistrates who declared for their own King, on the faith, and under the immediate protection of the King of Prussia, should be deli­vered over to the gallows. It was not necessary that [Page 102] the emigrant Nobility and Gentry who served with the King of Prussia's army, under his immediate command, should be excluded from the cartel, and given up to be hanged as rebels. Never was so gross, and so cruel a breach of the public faith, not with an enemy, but with a friend. Dumourier, has dropped very singular hints. Custine, has spoken out more broadly. These accounts have never been contradicted. They tend to make an eternal rup­ture between the Powers. The French have given out, that the Duke of Brunswick endeavoured to negotiate some name and place for the captive King, amongst the murderers and proscribers of those who have lost their all for his cause. Even this has not been denied.

It is singular, and indeed, a thing, under all it's circumstances, inconceivable, that every thing should by the Emperor be abandoned to the King of Prussia. That Monarch was considered as prin­cipal. In the nature of things, as well as in his position with regard to the war, he was only an ally; and a new ally, with crossing interests in many particulars, and of a policy rather uncertain. At best, and supposing him to act with the greatest fidelity, the Emperor, and the Empire, to him must be but secondary objects. Countries out of Ger­many, must affect him in a still more remote man­ner. France, other than from the fear of it's doc­trinal [Page 103] principles, can to him be no object at all. Accordingly, the Rhine, Sardinia, and the Swiss, are left to their fate. The King of Prussia has no direct and immediate concern with France; conse­quentially, to be sure, a great deal; but the Empe­ror touches France directly in many parts: he is a near neighbour to Sardinia, by his Milanese terri­tories; he borders on Switzerland; Cologne, pos­sessed by his uncle, is between Mentz and Treves, the King of Prussia's territories on the Lower Rhine. The Emperor is the natural guardian of Italy and Germany; the natural balance against the ambition of France, whether Republican or Monarchical. His Ministers and his Generals, therefore, ought to have had their full share in every material consultation, which I suspect they had not. If he has no Minister capable of plans of policy, which comprehend the superintendancy of a war, or no General with the least of a political head, things have been as they must be. However, in all the parts of this strange proceeding, there must be a secret.

It is probably known to Ministers. I do not mean to penetrate into it. My speculations on this head must be only conjectural. If the King of Prussia, under the pretext, or on the reality of some information relative to ill practice on the part of the Court of Vienna, takes advantage of his [Page 104] being admitted into the heart of the Emperor's do­minions in the character of an ally, afterwards to join the common enemy, and to enable France to seize the Netherlands, and to reduce and humble the Empire, I cannot conceive, upon every prin­ciple, any thing more alarming for this country, se­parately, and as a part of the general system. After all, we may be looking in vain in the regions of po­liticks, for what is only the operation of temper and character upon accidental circumstances—But I never knew accidents to decide the whole of any great business; and I never knew temper to act, but that some system of politicks, agreeable to it's peculiar spirit, was blended with it, strengthened it, and got strength from it. Therefore the poli­ticks can hardly be put out of the question.

Great mistakes have been committed; at least I hope so. If there have been none, the case in fu­ture is desperate. I have endeayoured to point out some of those which have occurred to me, and most of them very early.

Whatever may be the cause of the present state of things, on a full and mature view and compa­rison of the historical matter, of the transactions that have passed before our eyes, and of the future prospect, I think I am authorized to form an opi­nion without the least hesitation.

[Page 105] That there never was, nor is, nor ever will be, or ever can be, the least rational hope of making an impression on France by any Continental Powers, if England is not a part, is not the directing part, is not the soul, of the whole confederacy against it.

This, so far as it is an anticipation of future, is grounded on the whole tenour of former history—In speculation it is to be accounted for on two plain principles.

First, That Great Britain is likely to take a more fair and equal part in the alliance, than the other Powers, as having less of crossing interest, or per­plexed discussion with any of them.

Secondly, Because France cannot have to deal with any of these continental Sovereigns, without their feeling that nation, as a maritime Power, greatly superiour to them all put together; a force which is only to be kept in check by England.

England, except during the excentrick aberration of Charles the Second, has always considered it as her duty and interest, to take her place in such a confederacy. Her chief disputes must ever be with France, and if England shews herself indiffe­rent and unconcerned when these Powers are com­bined [Page 106] against the enterprizes of France, she is to look with certainty for the same indifference on the part of these Powers, when she may be at war with that nation. This will tend totally to disconnect this kingdom from the system of Europe, in which, if she ought not rashly to meddle, she ought never wholly to withdraw herself from it.

If then England is put in motion, whether by a consideration of the general safety, or of the influ­ence of France upon Spain, or by the probable operations of this new system on the Netherlands, it must embrace in it's project the whole as much as possible, and the part it takes ought to be as much as possible a leading and presiding part.

I therefore beg leave to suggest,

First, That a Minister should forthwith be sent to Spain, to encourage that Court to persevere in the measures they have adopted against France; to make a close alliance and guarantee of posses­sions, as against France, with that power, and whilst the formality of the treaty is pending, to assure them of our protection, postponing any lesser dis­putes to another occasion.

Secondly, To assure the Court of Vienna, of our desire to enter into our antient connexions with [Page 107] her, and to support her effectually in the war which France has declared against her.

Thirdly, To animate the Swiss, and the King of Sardinia, to take a part, as the latter once did on the principles of the Grand Alliance.

Fourthly, To put an end to our disputes with Russia, and mutually to forget the past. I believe if she is satisfied of this oblivion, she will return to her old sentiments, with regard to this Court, and will take a more forward part in this business than any other Power.

Fifthly, If what has happened to the King of Prussia is only in consequence of a sort of panick or of levity, and an indisposition to persevere long in one design—the support and concurrence of Russia will tend to steady him, and to give him resolution. If he be ill disposed, with that power on his back, and without one ally in Europe, I conceive he will not be easily led to derange the plan.

Sixthly, To use the joint influence of our Court, and of our then Allied Powers, with Holland, to arm as fully as she can by sea, and to make some ad­dition by land.

[Page 108] Seventhly, To acknowledge the King of France's next brother (assisted by such a Council and such Representatives of the Kingdom of France, as shall be thought proper) Regent of France, and to send that Prince a small supply of money, arms, cloath­ing and artillery.

Eighthly, To give force to these negociations, an instant naval armament ought to be adopted; one squadron for the Mediterranean; another for the Channel. The season is convenient, most of our trade being, as I take it, at home.

After speaking of a plan formed upon the an­tient policy and practice of Great Britain, and of Europe; to which this is exactly conformable in every respect, with no deviation whatsoever, and which is, I conceive much more strongly called for by the present circumstances, than by any former, I must take notice of another which I hear, but cannot persuade myself to believe, is in agitation. This plan is grounded upon the very same view of things which is here stated, namely, the danger to all Sovereigns, and old Republicks, from the prevalence of French power and influ­ence.

[Page 109] It is to form a Congress of all the European powers, for the purpose of a general defensive alli­ance, the objects of which should be,

First, The recognition of this new Republick (which they well know is formed on the princi­ples, and for the declared purpose of the destruc­tion of all Kings), and whenever the heads of this new Republick shall consent to release the Royal Captives, to make Peace with them.

Secondly, To defend themselves with their joint forces against the open aggressions or the secret practices, intrigues and writings, which are used to propagate the French principles.

It is easy to discover from whose shop this com­modity comes. It is so perfectly absurd, that if that, or any thing like it, meets with a serious entertainment in any Cabinet, I should think it the effect of what is called a judicial blindness, the certain forerunner of the destruction of all Crowns and Kingdoms.

An offensive alliance, in which union is pre­served, by common efforts in common dangers, against a common active enemy, may preserve it's consistency, and may produce for a given time, [Page 110] some considerable effect; though this is not easy, and for any very long period, can hardly be ex­pected. But a defensive alliance, formed of long discordant interests, with innumerable discussions existing, having no one pointed object to which it is directed, which is to be held together with an unremitted vigilance, as watchful in peace as in war, is so evidently impossible, is such a chimera, is so contrary to human nature, and the course of human affairs, that I am persuaded no person in his senses, except those whose Country, Religion and Sovereign, are deposited in the French funds, could dream of it. There is not the slightest petty boundary suit, no difference between a family ar­rangement, no sort of misunderstanding, or cross purpose between the pride and etiquette of Courts, that would not entirely disjoint this sort of alli­ance, and render it as sutile in it's effects, as it is feeble in it's principle. But when we consider that the main drift of that defensive alliance must be to prevent the operation of intrigue, mischievous doctrine and evil example, in the success of un­provoked rebellion, regieide, and systematick as­sassination and massacre, the absurdity of such a scheme becomes quite lamentable. Open the communication with France, and the rest follows of course.

[Page 111] How far the interiour circumstances of this coun­try support what is said with regard to it's foreign politicks, must be left to better judgments. I am sure the French faction here is infinitely strength­ened by the success of the assassins on the other side of the water.—This evil in the heart of Europe must be extirpated from that center, or no part of the circumference can be free from the mischief which radiates from it, and which will spread circle beyond circle, in spite of all the little defensive precautions which can be employed against it.

I do not put my name to these hints submitted to the consideration of reflecting men. It is of too little importance to suppose the name of the writer could add any weight to the state of things con­tained in this paper. That state of things presses irresistibly on my judgment, and it lies, and has long lain, with an heavy weight upon my mind. I cannot think that what is done in France, is bene­ficial to the human race. If it were, the English Constitution ought no more to stand against it than the antient Constitution of the kingdom in which the new system prevails. I thought it the duty of a man, not unconcerned for the publick, and who is a faithful subject to the King, respect­fully to submit this state of facts at this new step [Page 112] in the progress of the French arms and politicks, to his Majesty, to his confidential servants, and to those persons who, though not in office, by their birth, their rank, their fortune, their character and their reputation for wisdom, seem to me to have a large stake in the stability of the antient order of things.

Bath, November 5, 1793.

REMARKS ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES WITH RESPECT TO FRANCE.
BEGUN IN OCTOBER, 1793.
[Page 115] REMARKS ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
BEGUN IN OCTOBER, 1793.

AS the proposed manifesto is, I understand, to promulgate to the world the general idea of a plan for the regulation of a great kingdom, and through the regulation of that kingdom probably to decide the fate of Europe for ever, nothing requires a more serious deliberation with regard to the time of making it, the circumstances of those to whom it is addressed, and the matter it is to contain.

As to the time, (with the due diffidence in my own opinion) I have some doubts whether it is not rather unfavourable to the issuing any Manifesto, with regard to the intended government of France; and for this reason, that it is, (upon the principal [Page 116] point of our attack) a time of calamity and defeat. Manifestoes of this nature are commonly made when the army of some Sovereign enters into the enemy's country in great force, and under the im­posing authority of that force employs menaces towards those whom he desires to awe; and makes promises to those whom he wises to engage in his favour.

As to a party, what has been done at Toulon leaves no doubt, that the party for which we de­clare must be that which substantially declares for Royalty as the basis of the government.

As to menaces—Nothing, in my opinion, can contribute more effectually to lower any Sovereign in the publick estimation, and to turn his defeats into disgraces, than to threaten in a moment of im­potence. The second Manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick appeared therefore to the world to be extremely ill-timed. However, if his menaces in that Manifesto had been seasonable, they were not without an object. Great crimes then appre­hended, and great evils then impending, were to be prevented. At this time, every act, which early menaces might possibly have prevented, is done. Punishment and vengeance alone remain, and God forbid that they should ever be forgotten. But the punishment of enormous offenders, will [Page 117] not be the less severe, or the less exemplary when it is not threatened at a moment when we have it not in our power to execute our threats. On the other side, to pass by proceedings of such a nefa­rious nature, in all kinds, as have been carried on in France, without any signification of resentment, would be in effect to ratify them; and thus to become accessaries after the fact, in all those enor­mities which it is impossible to repeat, or think of without horror. An absolute silence appears to me to be at this time the only safe course.

The second usual matter of Manifestoes is com­posed of promises to those who co-operate with our designs. These promises depend in a great mea­sure, if not wholly, on the apparent power of the person who makes them to fulfil his engagements. A time of disaster on the part of the promiser, seems not to add much to the dignity of his per­son, or to the effect of his offers. One would hardly wish to seduce any unhappy persons to give the last provocation to a merciless tyranny, without very effectual means of protecting them.

The time therefore seems (as I said) not favourable to a general Manifesto, on account of the unplea­sant situation of our affairs. However, I write in a changing scene, when a measure very imprudent to day, may be very proper to-morrow. Some [Page 118] great victory may alter the whole state of the ques­tion, so far as it regards our power of fulfilling any engagement we may think fit to make.

But there is another consideration of far greater importance for all the purposes of this Manifesto. The publick, and the parties concerned, will look somewhat to the disposition of the promiser indi­cated by his conduct, as well as to his power of fulfilling his engagements.

Speaking of this nation as part of a general com­bination of powers, are we quite sure, that others can believe us to be sincere, or that we can be even fully assured of our own sincerity in the pro­tection of those who shall risque their lives for the restoration of Monarchy in France, when the world sees, that those who are the natural, legal, consti­tutional representatives of that Monarchy, if it has any, have not had their names so much as men­tioned in any one publick act; that in no way whatever are their persons brought forward, that their rights have not been expressly or implicitly allowed, and that they have not been in the least consulted on the important interests they have at stake. On the contrary, they are kept in a state of obscurity and contempt, and in a degree of in­digence at times bordering on beggary. They are in fact, little less prisoners in the village of [Page 119] Hanau, than the Royal captives who are locked up in the tower of the Temple. What is this, according to the common indications which guide the judgment of mankind, but, under the pretext of protecting the crown of France, in reality to usurp it?

I am also very apprehensive, that there are other circumstances which must tend to weaken the force of our declarations. No partiality to the allied powers, can prevent great doubts on the fairness of our intentions as supporters of the Crown of France, or of the true principles of legitimate Government in opposition to Jacobinism, when it is visible that the two leading orders of the State of France, who are now the victims, and who must always be the true and sole supports of Mo­narchy in that country, are, at best, in some of their descriptions, considered only as objects of charity, and others are, when employed, employed only as mercenary soldiers; that they are thrown back out of all reputable service, are in a manner disowned, considered as nothing in their own cause, and never once consulted in the concerns of their King, their country, their laws, their religion, and their property! We even affect to be ashamed of them. In all our proceedings we carefully avoid the appearance of being of a party with them. In all our ideas of Treaty we do not regard [Page 120] them as what they are, the two leading orders of the kingdom. If we do not consider them in that light, we must recognize the savages by whom they have been ruined, and who have declared war upon Europe, whilst they disgrace and persecute human nature, and openly defy the God that made them, as real proprietors of France.

I am much afraid, too, that we shall scarcely be believed fair supporters of lawful Monarchy against Jacobinism, so long as we continue to make and to observe cartels with the Jacobins, and on fair terms exchange prisoners with them, whilst the Royalists, invited to our standard, and employed under our publick faith, against the Jacobins, if taken by that savage faction, are given up to the executioner without the least attempt whatsoever at reprisal. For this, we are to look at the King of Prussia's conduct, compared with his Mani­festoes about a twelvemonth ago. For this we are to look at the capitulations of Mentz and Va­lenciennes, made in the course of the present cam­paign. By these two capitulations, the Christian Royalists were excluded from any participation in the cause of the combined powers. They were considered as the outlaws of Europe. Two armies were in effect sent against them. One of those armies (that which surrendered Mentz) was very near overpowering the Christians of Poitou, and [Page 121] the other (that which surrendered at Valenciennes) has actually crushed the people whom oppression and despair had driven to resistance at Lyons, has massacred several thousands of them in cold blood, pillaged the whole substance of the place, and pur­sued their rage to the very houses, condemning that noble city to desolation, in the unheard of manner we have seen it devoted.

It is then plain by a conduct which overturns a thousand declarations, that we take the Royalists of France only as an instrument of some conve­nience in a temporary hostility with the Jacobins, but that we regard those atheistick and murderous barbarians as the bonâ fide possessors of the soil of France. It appears at least, that we consider them as a fair Government de facto, if not de jure; a resistance to which in favour of the King of France, by any man who happened to be born within that country, might equitably be considered by other nations, as the crime of treason.

For my part, I would sooner put my hand into the fire than sign an invitation to oppressed men to fight under my standard, and then on every sinister event of war, cruelly give them up to be punished as the basest of traitors, as long as I had one of the common enemy in my hands to be put to death in order to secure those under my protection, and to [Page 122] vindicate the common honour of Sovereigns. We hear nothing of this kind of security in favour of those whom we invite to the support of our cause. Without it, I am not a little apprehensive that the proclamations of the combined powers might (contrary to their intention no doubt) be looked upon as frauds, and cruel traps laid for their lives.

So far as to the correspondence between our declarations and our conduct, let the declaration be worded as it will, the conduct is the practical comment by which, and which alone it can be un­derstood. This conduct acting on the declara­tion, leaves a Monarchy without a Monarch; and without any representative or trustee for the Mo­narch, and the Monarchy. It supposes a kingdom without states and orders; a territory without pro­prietors; and faithful subjects, who are to be left to the fate of rebels and traitors.

The affair of the establishment of a Govern­ment is a very difficult undertaking for foreign powers to act in as principals; though as auxiliaries and mediators, it has been not at all unusual, and may be a measure full of policy and humanity, and true dignity.

The first thing we ought to do, supposing us not giving the law as conquerors, but acting as [Page 123] friendly powers applied to for counsel and assistance in the settlement of a distracted country, is well to consider the composition, nature, and temper of its objects, and particularly of those who actually do, or who ought to exercise power in that state. It is material to know who they are, and how constituted, whom we consider as the people of France?

The next consideration is, through whom our arrangements are to be made, and on what princi­ples the Government we propose is to be esta­blished.

The first question on the people is this, Whether we are to consider the individuals now actually in France, numerically taken and arranged into Jacobin Clubs, as the body politick, constituting the nation of France? or, Whether we consider the original individual proprietors of lands, expelled since the Revolution, and the states and the bodies politick, such as the colleges of justice called parliaments, the corporations noble and not noble of balliages, and towns, and cities, the bishops and the clergy, as the true constituent parts of the nation, and forming the legally organized parts of the people of France?

[Page 124] In this serious concern it is very necessary that we should have the most distinct ideas annexed to the terms we employ; because it is evident, that an abuse of the term people, has been the original fundamental cause of those evils, the cure of which, by war and policy, is the present object of all the states of Europe.

If we consider the acting power in France in any legal construction of publick law, as the people, the question is decided in favour of the Republick one and indivisible. But we have decided for Monarchy. If so, we have a King and Subjects; and that King and Subjects have rights and privi­leges which ought to be supported at home; for I do not suppose that the Government of that king­dom can, or ought to be regulated, by the arbi­trary Mandate of a foreign Confederacy.

As to the faction exercising power, to suppose that Monarchy can be supported by principled Regicides, Religion by professed Atheists, Order by Clubs of Jacobins, Property by Committees of Proscription, and Jurisprudence by Revolu­tionary Tribunals, is to be sanguine in a degree of which I am incapable. On them I decide, for myself, that these persons are not the legal Corpo­ration of France, and that it is not with them we can (if we would) settle the Government of France.

[Page 125] Since, then, we have decided for Monarchy in that kingdom, we ought also to settle who is to be the Monarch, who is to be the Guardian of a Minor, and how the Monarch and Monarchy is to be modified and supported? If the Monarch is to be elected, who the Electors are to be: if heredi­tary, what order is established corresponding with an hereditary Monarchy, and fitted to maintain it? Who are to modify it in its exercise? Who are to restrain its powers where they ought to be limited, to strengthen them where they are to be supported, or to enlarge them, where the ob­ject, the time, and the circumstances, may de­mand their extension? These are things which, in the outline, ought to be made distinct and clear; for if they are not (especially with regard to those great points, who are the proprietors of the soil, and what is the corporation of the kingdom) there is nothing to hinder the compleat establishment of a Jacobin Republick, (such as that formed in 1790 and 1791) under the name of a Democracie Royale. Jacobinism does not consist in the having or not having, a certain Pageant under the name of a King, but ‘"in taking the people as equal individuals, without any corporate name or de­scription, without attention to property, without division of powers, and forming the governmen of delegates from a number of men so constituted, [Page 126] in destroying or confiscating property, and bribing the publick creditors, or the poor, with the spoils, now of one part of the community, now of ano­ther, without regard to prescription or possession."’

I hope no one can be so very blind as to ima­gine that Monarchy can be acknowledged and supported in France upon any othe basis than that of its property, corporate and individual, or that it can enjoy a moment's permanence or secu­rity upon any scheme of things, which sets aside all the antient corporate capacities and distinctions of the kingdom, and subverts the whole fabrick of its antient laws and usages, political, civil and re­ligious, to introduce a system founded on the sup­posed Rights of the Man, and the absolute equality of the human race. Unless, therefore, we declare clearly and distinctly in favour of the restoration of property, and confide to the hereditary property of the kingdom, the limitation and qualifications of its hereditary Monarchy, the blood and treasure of Europe is wasted for the establishment of Jacobinism in France. There is no doubt that Danton and Robespiere, Chaumette and Barrere, that Condorcet, that Thomas Paine, that La Fayette, and the Exbishop of Autun, the Abbé Gregoire, with all the gang of the Syeyes's, the Henriots, and the Santerres, if they could secure themselves in the fruits of their rebellion and robbery, would be perfectly indifferent, whether the most unhappy [Page 127] of all infants, whom by the lessons of the shoe­maker, his governour and guardian, they are train­ing up studiously and methodically to be an idiot, or what is worse, the most wicked and base of mankind, continues to receive his civic education in the Temple or the Thuilleries, whilst they, and such as they, really govern the kingdom.

It cannot be too often and too strongly incul­cated, that Monarchy and property must, in France, go together; or neither can exist. To think of the possibility of the existence of a per­manent and hereditary Royalty, where nothing else is hereditary or permanent in point either of personal or corporate dignity, is a ruinous chimera worthy of the Abbé Syeyes and those wicked Fools his Associates, who usurped Power by the Murders of the 19th of July, and the 6th of October 1789, and who brought forth the Monster which they called Democracie Royale, or the Constitution.

I believe that most thinking men, would prefer infinitely some sober and sensible form of a Re­publick, in which there was no mention at all of a King, but which held out some reasonable security to property, life, and personal freedom, to a scheme of things like this Democracie Royale, founded on impiety, immorality, fraudulent currencies, the confiscation of innocent individuals, and the pre­tended Rights of Man; and which, in effect, excluding the whole body of the nobility, clergy, [Page 128] and landed property of a great nation, threw every thing into the hands of a desperate set of obscure adventurers who led to every mischief, a blind and bloody band of Sans-Culottes. At the head, or rather at the tail of this system, was a miserable pageant as its ostensible instrument, who was to be treated with every species of indignity, till the moment, when he was conveyed from the Palace of Contempt to the Dungeon of Horrour, and thence led by a Brewer of his Capital through the applauses of an hired, frantick, drunken multitude, to lose his head upon a scaffold.

This is the Constitution, or Democracie Royale; and this is what infallibly would be again set up in France to run exactly the same round, if the predominant power should so far be forced to sub­mit as to receive the name of a King, leaving it to the Jacobins, (that is, to those who have sub­verted Royalty and destroyed Property) to modify the one, and to distribute the other as spoil. By the Jacobins I mean indiscriminately the Brissotins and the Maratists, knowing no sort of difference between them. As to any other party, none exists in that unhappy country. The Royalists (those in Poitou excepted) are banished and extinguished; and as to what they call the Constitutionalists, or Democrats Royaux, they never had an existence of the smallest degree of power, consideration or autho­rity; [Page 129] nor, if they differ at all from the rest of the Atheistick Banditti (which from their actions and principles I have no reason to think) were they ever other than the temporary tools and instru­ments of the more determined, able, and syste­matick Regicides. Several attempts have been made to support this chimerical Democracie Royale—the first was by La Fayette—the last by Dumourier:—they tended only to shew, that this absurd project had no party to support it. The Girondists under Wimpfen, and at Bourdeaux, have made some struggle. The Constitutionalists never could make any; and for a very plain rea­son; they were Leaders in Rebellion. All their principles, and their whole scheme of government being Republican, they could never excite the smallest degree of enthusiasm in favour of the un­happy Monarch, whom they had rendered con­temptible, to make him the Executive Officer in their new Commonwealth. They only appeared as traitors to their own Jacobin cause, not as faith­ful adherents to the King.

In an Address to France, in an attempt to treat with it, or in considering any scheme at all relative to it, it is impossible we should mean the geogra­phical, we must always mean the moral and poli­tical country. I believe we shall be in a great errour if we act upon an idea that there exists in [Page 130] that country any organized body of men who might be willing to treat on equitable terms, for the restoration of their Monarchy; but who are nice in balancing those terms, and who would accept such as to them appeared reasonable, but who would quietly submit to the predominant power, if they were not gratified in the fashion of some constitution which suited with their fancies.

I take the state of France to be totally different. I know of no such body, and of no such party. So far from a combination of twenty men (always excepting Poitou) I never yet heard, that a single man could be named of sufficient force or influ­ence to answer for another man, much less for the smallest district in the country, or for the most incomplete company of soldiers in the army. We see every man that the Jacobins chuse to apprehend, taken up in his village, or in his house, and conveyed to prison without the least shadow of resistance; and this indifferently, whether he is suspected of Royalism or Federalism, Moderan­tism, Democracy Royal, or any other of the names of faction which they start by the hour. [...]What is much more astonishing, (and if we did not carefully attend to the genius and circum­stances of this Revolution, must indeed appear incredible) all their most accredited military men, from a generalissimo to a corporal, may be arrested, [Page 131] (each in the midst of his camp, and covered with the laurels of accumulated victories) tied neck and heels, thrown into a cart, and sent to Paris to be disposed of at the pleasure of the Revolutionary Tribunals.

No Corpo­rations of Justice, Commerce, or Police.As no individuals have power and influence, so there are no Corporations, whether of Lawyers or Burghers existing. The Assembly called Consti­tuent, destroyed all such institutions very early. The Primary and Secondary Assemblies, by their original constitution, were to be dissolved when they answered the purpose of electing the Ma­gistrates; and were expressly disqualified from per­forming any corporate act whatsoever. The tran­sient Magistrates have been almost all removed before the expiration of their terms, and new have been lately imposed upon the people, without the form or ceremony of an election: these Magistrates during their existence are put under, as all the Executive Authorities are from first to last, the popular Societies (called Jacobin Clubs) of the several countries, and this by an express order of the National Convention: it is even made a case of death to oppose or attack those Clubs. They too have been lately subjected to an expurgatory scrutiny, to drive out from them every thing savouring of what they call the crime of Moderan­tism, of which offence however few were guilty. [Page 132] But as people began to take refuge from their per­secutions—amongst themselves, they have driven them from that last asylum.

The State of France is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions—The Oppressors and the Oppressed.

The first have the whole authority of the State in their hands, all the arms, all the revenues of the publick, all the confiscations of individuals and corporations. They have taken the lower sort from their occupations and have put them into pay, that they may form them into a body of Janisaries to overrule and awe property. The heads of these wretches they never suffer to cool. They supply them with a food for fury varied by the day—besides the sensual state of intoxication from which they are rarely free. They have made the Priests and people formally abjure the Divinity; they have estranged them from every civil, moral, and social, or even natural and instinctive senti­ment, habit, and practice, and have rendered them systematically savages, to make it impossible for them to be the instruments of any sober and vir­tuous arrangement, or to be reconciled to any state of order, under any name whatsoever.

[Page 133] The other description, the Oppressed—are people of some property; they are the small reliques of the persecuted Landed Interest; they are the Burghers and the Farmers. By the very circum­stance of their being of some property, though numerous in some points of view, they cannot be very considerable as a number. In cities the nature of their occupations renders them domestick and feeble; in the country it confines them to their farm for subsistence. The National Guards are all changed and reformed. Every thing suspicious in the description of which they were composed is rigorously disarmed. Committees, called of Vigi­lance and Safety, are every where formed; a most severe and scrutinizing Inquisition, far more rigid than any thing ever known or imagined. Two persons cannot meet and confer without hazard to their liberty, and even to their lives. Numbers scarcely credible have been executed, and their property confiscated. At Paris and in most other towns, the bread they buy is a daily dole—which they cannot obtain without a daily ticket delivered to them by their Masters. Multitudes of all ages and sexes are actually imprisoned. I have reason to believe, that in France there are not, for various state crimes, so few as twenty thousand* actually in jail—a large portion of people of property in any State. If a father of a family should shew any [Page 134] dispositions to resist, or to withdraw himself from their power, his wife and children are cruelly to answer for it. It is by means of these hostages; that they keep the troops, which they sorce by masses (as they call it) into the field—true to their colours.

Another of their resources is not to be forgotten.—They have lately found a way of giving a sort of ubiquity to the supreme Sovereign Authority, which no Monarch has been able yet to give to any representation of his.

The Commissioners of the National Convention, who are the Members of the Convention itself, and really exercise all its powers, make continual circuits through every province, and visits to every army. There they supersede all the ordinary Au­thorities civil and military, and change and alter every thing at their pleasure. So that in effect no deliberative capacity exists in any portion of the inhabitants.

Toulon, republican in principle, having taken its decision in a moment under the guillotine, and before the arrival of these Commissioners, Toulon, being a place regularly fortified, and having in its bosom a navy in part highly discontented, has escaped, though by a sort of miracle; and it would not have escaped, if two powerful fleets had not [Page 135] been at the door to give them not only strong, but prompt and immediate succour, especially, as neither this nor any other sea-port town in France can be depended on, from the peculiarly savage dispositions, manners, and connexions among the lower sort of people in those places. This I take to be the true state of things in France; so far as it regards any existing bodies, whether of legal or voluntary association, capable of acting or of treating in corps.

As to the oppressed individuals, they are many; and as discontented as men must be under the monstrous and complicated tyranny of all sorts, with which they are crushed. They want no stimulus to throw off this dreadful yoke: but they do want (not Manifestoes, which they have had even to surfeit, but) real protection, force and succour.

The disputes and questions of men at their ease, do not at all affect their minds, or ever can occupy the minds of men in their situation. These theories are long since gone by; they have had their day, and have done their mischief. The question is not between the Rabble of Systems, Fayetteism, Condorcetism, Monarchism, or Democratism or Federalism, on the one side, and the fundamental Laws of France on the other—or between all these systems amongst themselves. It is a controversy [Page 136] (weak indeed and unequal on the one part) between the proprietor and the robber; between the prisoner and the jailor; between the neck and the guillotine. Four-fifths of the French inhabitants would thankfully take protection from the Emperor of Morocco, and would never trouble their heads about the abstract principles of the power by which they were snatched from imprisonment, robbery, and murder. But then these men can do little or nothing for themselves. They have no arms, nor magazines, nor chiefs, nor union, nor the possi­bility of these things within themselves. On the whole therefore I lay it down as a certainty, that in the Jacobins, no change of mind is to be expected—and that no others in the territory of France have an independent and deliberative existence.

The truth is, that France is out of itself—The moral France is separated from the geographical. The master of the house is expelled, and the robbers are in possession. If we look for the corporate people of France existing as corporate in the eye and intention of public Law, (that corpo­rate people, I mean, who are free to deliberate and to decide, and who have a capacity to treat and conclude) they are in Flanders, and Germany, in Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and England. There are all the Princes of the Blood, there are all the [Page 137] Orders of the State, there are all the Parliaments of the kingdom.

This being, as I conceive, the true state of France, as it exists territorially, and as it exists morally, the question will be, with whom we are to concert our arrangements; and whom we are to use as our instruments in the reduction, in the pacification, and in the settlement of France. The work to be done must indicate the workmen. Supposing us to have rational objects, we have two principal, and one secondary. The first two are so intimately connected as not to be separated even in thought; the re-establishment of Royalty, and the re-establishment of Property. One would think it requires not a great deal of argument to prove, that the most serious endeavours to restore Royalty, will be made by Royalists. Property will be most energetically restored by the antient proprietors of that kingdom.

When I speak of Royalists, I wish to be under­stood of those who were always such from prin­ciple. Every arm lifted up for Royalty from the beginning, was the arm of a man so principled. I do not think there are ten exceptions.

The principled Royalists are certainly not of force to effect these objects by themselves. If they [Page 138] were, the operations of the present great Combi­nation would be wholly unnecessary. What I con­tend for is, that they should be consulted with, treated with, and employed; and that no Foreigners whatsoever are either in interest so engaged, or in judgment and local knowledge so competent, to answer all these purposes as the natural proprietors of the country.

Their number for an exiled party is also con­siderable. Almost the whole body of the landed proprietors of France, ecclesiastical and civil, have been steadily devoted to the Monarchy. This body does not amount to less than seventy thou­sand—a very great number in the composition of the respectable classes in any society.—I am sure, that if half that number of the same description were taken out of this country, it would leave hardly any thing that I should call the people of England. On the faith of the Emperor and the King of Prussia, a body of ten thousand Nobility on horseback, with the King's two brothers at their head, served with the King of Prussia in the cam­paign of 1792, and equipped themselves with the last shilling of their ruined fortunes and exhausted credit*. It is not now the question how that great [Page 139] force came to be rendered useless and totally dissi­pated. I state it now, only to remark, that a great part of the same force exists, and would act if it were enabled. I am sure every thing has shewn us that in this war with France, one Frenchman is worth twenty foreigners. La Vendee is a proof of this.

If we wish to make an impression on the minds of any persons in France, or to persuade them to join our standard, it is impossible that they should not be more easily led, and more readily formed and disciplined, (civilly and martially disciplined) by those who speak their language, who are ac­quainted with their manners, who are conversant with their usages and habits of thinking, and who have a local knowledge of their country, and some remains of antient credit and consideration, than with a body congregated from all tongues and tribes. Where none of the respectable native interests are seen in the transaction, it is impossible that any declarations can convince those that are within, or those that are without, that any thing [Page 140] else than some sort of hostility in the style of a conqueror is meant. At best it will appear to such wavering persons, (if such there are) whom we mean to fix with us, at best a choice whether they are to continue a prey to domestick banditti, or to be fought for as a carrion carcass, and picked to the bone by all the crows and vultures of the sky. They may take protection, (and they would I doubt not) but they can have neither alacrity nor zeal in such a cause. When they see nothing but bands of English, Spaniards, Neapolitans, Sardi­nians, Prussians, Austrians, Hungarians, Bohe­mians, Sclavonians, Croatians, acting as principals, it is impossible they should think we come with a beneficent design. Many of those fierce and bar­barous people have already given proofs how little they regard any French party whatsoever. Some of these nations the people of France are jealous of; such are the English, and the Spaniards—others they despise; such are the Italians—others they hate and dread; such are the German and Danu­bian powers. At best such interposition of antient enemies excites apprehension; but in this case, how can they suppose that we come to main­tain their legitimate Monarchy in a truly paternal French Government, to protect their privileges, their laws, their religion, and their property, when they see us make use of no one person who has any interest in them, any knowledge of them, or [Page 141] any the least zeal for them? On the contrary, they see, that we do not suffer any of those who have shewn a zeal in that cause, which we seem to make our own, to come freely into any place in which the Allies obtain any footing.

If we wish to gain upon any people, it is right to see what it is they expect. We have had a pro­posal from the Royalists of Poitou. They are well intitled, after a bloody war maintained for eight months against all the powers of anarchy, to speak the sentiments of the Royalists of France. Do they desire us to exclude their Princes, their Clergy, their Nobility? The direct contrary. They earnestly solicit that men of every one of these descriptions should be sent to them. They do not call for English, Austrian, or Prussian officers. They call for French emigrant officers. They call for the exiled priests. They have demanded the Comte d'Artois to appear at their head. These are the demands, (quite natural demands) of those who are ready to follow the standard of Monarchy.

The great means therefore of restoring the Monarchy which we have made the main object of the war, is to assist the dignity, the religion, and the property of France, to repossess themselves of the means of their natural influence. This [Page 142] ought to be the primary object of all our politicks, and all our military operations. Otherwise every thing will move in a preposterous order, and nothing but confusion and destruction will follow.

I know that misfortune is not made to win res­pect from ordinary minds. I know that there is a leaning to prosperity however obtained, and a prejudice in its favour; I know there is a disposition to hope something from the variety and incon­stancy of villany, rather than from the tiresome uniformity of fixed principle. There have been, I admit, situations in which a guiding person or party might be gained over, and through him or them, the whole body of a nation. For the hope of such a conversion, and of deriving advantage from enemies, it might be politick for a while to throw your friends into the shade. But examples drawn from history in occasions like the present will be found dangerously to mislead us. France has no resemblance to other countries which have undergone troubles and been purified by them. If France, jacobinised as it has been for four full years, did contain any bodies of authority and disposition to treat with you, (most assuredly she does not) such is the levity of those who have expelled every thing respectable in their country, such their ferocity, their arrogance, their mutinous spirit, their habits of defying every thing human [Page 143] and divine, that no engagement would hold with them for three months; nor indeed could they cohere together for any purpose of civilized society, if left as now they are. There must be a means not only of breaking their strength within them­selves, but of civilizing them; and these two things must go together, before we can possibly treat with them, not only as a nation, but with any division of them. Descriptions of men of their own race, but better in rank, superiour in property and decorum, of honourable, decent and orderly habits, are absolutely necessary to bring them to such a frame as to qualify them so much as to come into contact with a civilized nation. A set of those ferocious savages with arms in their hands, left to themselves in one part of the coun­try, whilst you proceed to another, would break forth into outrages at least as bad as their former. They must, as fast as gained (if ever they are gained) be put under the guide, direction and government of better Frenchmen than themselves, or they will instantly relapse into a sever of aggra­vated Jacobinism.

We must not judge of other parts of France by the temporary submission of Toulon, with two vast fleets in its harbour, and a garrison far more numerous than all the inhabitants able to bear arms. If they were left to themselves I am quite [Page 144] sure they would not retain their attachment to Mo­narchy of any name, for a single week.

To administer the only cure for the unheard of disorders of that undone country, I think it infi­nitely happy for us, that God has given into our hands, more effectual remedies than human con­trivance could point out. We have in our bosom, and in the bosom of other civilized states, nearer forty than thirty thousand persons, providentially preserved not only from the cruelty and violence, but from the contagion of the horrid practices, sentiments and language of the Jacobins, and even sacredly guarded from the view of such abominable scenes. If we should obtain in any considerable district, a footing in France, we possess an immense body of physicians and magistrates of the mind, whom we now know to be the most discreet, gentle, well tempered, conciliatory, virtuous, and pious persons, who in any order probably existed in the world. You will have a missioner of peace and order in every parish. Never was a wiser national oeconomy than in the charity of the English and of other countries. Never was money better ex­pended than in the maintenance of this body of civil troops for re-establishing order in France, and for thus securing its civilization to Europe. This means, if properly used, is of value inesti­mable.

[Page 145] Nor is this corps of instruments of civilization confined to the first order of that state, I mean the clergy. The allied powers possess also, an exceedingly numerous, well informed, sensible, ingenious, high principled and spirited body of cavaliers in the expatriated landed interest of France, as well qualified at least, as I, (who have been taught by time and experience to moderate my calculation of the expectancy of human abili­ties) ever expected to see in the body of any landed gentlemen and soldiers by their birth. France is well winnowed and sifted. Its virtuous men are, I believe, amongst the most virtuous, as its wicked are amongst the most abandoned upon earth. Whatever in the territory of France may be found to be in the middle between these, must be attracted to the better part. This will be compassed, when every gentleman, every where being restored to his landed estate, each on his patrimonial ground, may join the Clergy in reani­mating the loyalty, fidelity and religion of the people; that these gentlemen proprietors of land, may sort that people according to the trust they severally merit, that they may arm the honest and well affected, and disarm and disable the factious and ill disposed. No foreigner can make this dis­crimination nor these arrangements. The antient corporations of Burghers according to their several modes should be restored; and placed, (as they [Page 146] ought to be) in the hands of men of gravity and property in the cities or baillages, according to the proper constitutions of the commons or third estate of France. They will restrain and regulate the seditious rabble there, as the gentlemen will on their own estates. In this way, and in this way alone, the country (once broken in upon by foreign force well directed) may be gained and settled. It must be gained and settled by itself, and through the medium of its own native dignity and property. It is not honest, it is not decent, still less is it poli­tick, for foreign powers themselves to attempt any thing in this minute, internal, local detail, in which they could shew nothing but ignorance, imbecility, confusion and oppression. As to the Prince who has a just claim to exercise the regency of France, like other men he is not without his faults and his defects. But faults or defects (always supposing them faults of common human infirmity) are not what in any country destroy a legal title to Govern­ment. These princes are kept in a poor obscure country town of the King of Prussia's. Their reputation is entirely at the mercy of every calum­niator. They cannot shew themselves, they can­not explain themselves, as princes ought to do. After being well informed, as any man here can be, I do not find, that these blemishes in this emi­nent person, are at all considerable, or that they at all affect a character, which is full of probity, [Page 147] honour, generosity, and real goodness. In some points he has but too much resemblance to his un­fortunate Brother; who with all his weaknesses, had a good understanding and many parts of an excellent man, and a good King. But Monsieur, without supposing the other deficient, (as he was not) excells him in general knowledge and in a sharp and keen observation, with something of a better address, and an happier mode of speaking and of writing. His conversation is open, agreeable and informed, his manners gracious and princely. His brother the Comte'd Artois sustains still better the representation of his place. He is eloquent, lively, engaging in the highest degree, of a deci­ded character, full of energy and activity. In a word he is a brave, honourable, and accomplished cavalier. Their brethren of Royalty, if they were true to their own cause and interest, instead of relegating these illustrious persons to an obscure town, would bring them forward in their courts and camps, and exhibit them to, what they would spee­dily obtain, the esteem, respect, and affection of mankind.

Objection made to the Regent's en­deavour to go to Spain.As to their knocking at every door, (which seems to give offence) can any thing be more natural? Abandoned, despised, rendered in a man­ner outlaws by all the powers of Europe, who have treated their unfortunate brethren with all the [Page 148] giddy pride, and improvident insolence of blind unfeeling prosperity, who did not even send them a compliment of condolence on the murder of their brother and sister; in such a state is it to be wondered at, or blamed, that they tried every way, likely or unlikely, well or ill chosen, to get out of the horrible pit into which they are fallen, and that in particular they tried whether the Princes of their own blood, might at length be brought to think the cause of Kings, and of Kings of their race, wounded in the murder and exile of the branch of France, of as much importance as the killing of a brace of partridges. If they were absolutely idle, and only eat in sloth their bread of sorrow and dependence, they would be forgotten, or at best thought of as wretches unworthy of their pretensions which they had done nothing to sup­port. If they err from our interests, what care has been taken to keep them in those interests? or what desire has ever been shewn to employ them in any other way than as instruments of their own degradation, shame, and ruin?

The Parliament of Paris, by whom the title of the Regent is to be recognized (not made) accord­ing to the laws of the kingdom, is ready to recognize it, and to register it, if a place of meeting was given to them, which might be within their own jurisdic­tion, supposing that only locality was required for the [Page 149] exercise of their functions: for it is one of the ad­vantages of Monarchy, to have no local seat. It may maintain its rights out of the sphere of its ter­ritorial jurisdiction, if other powers will suffer it.

I am well apprised, that the little intrigners, and whisperers, and self-conceited thoughtless babblers, worse than either, run about to depreciate the fallen virtue of a great nation. But whilst they talk, we must make our choice—they or the Jacobins. We have no other option. As to those, who in the pride of a prosperity, not ob­tained by their wisdom, valour, or industry, think so well of themselves and of their own abilities and virtues, and so ill of other men; truth obliges me to say, that they are not founded in their presump­tion concerning themselves, nor in their contempt of the French Princes, Magistrates, Nobility, and Clergy. Instead of inspiring me with dislike and distrust of the unfortunate, engaged with us in a common cause against our jacobin enemy, they take away all my esteem for their own characters, and all my deference to their judg­ment.

There are some few French gentlemen indeed who talk a language not wholly different from this jargon. Those whom I have in my eye, I respect as gallant soldiers, as much as any one can do, but [Page 150] on their political judgment, and prudence, I have not the slightest reliance, nor on their knowledge of their own country, or of its laws and constitu­tion. They are, if not enemies, at least not friends to the orders of their own state; not to the Princes, the Clergy, or the Nobility; they possess only an attachment to the Monarchy, or rather to the persons of the late King and Queen. In all other respects their conversation is Jacobin. I am afraid they or some of them, go into the closets of Ministers, and tell them that the affairs of France will be better arranged by the allied Powers than by the landed proprietors of the kingdom, or by the Princes who have a right to govern; and that if any French are at all to be employed in the settlement of their country, it ought to be only those who have never declared any decided opinion or taken any active part in the Revolution*.

I suspect that the authors of this opinion are mere soldiers of fortune, who, though men of integrity and honour, would as gladly receive military rank from Russia, or Austria, or Prussia, as from the Regent of France. Perhaps their not having as much importance at his court as they could wish, may incline them to this strange imagination. Perhaps having no property in old France, they [Page 151] are more indifferent about its restoration. Their language is certainly flattering to all Ministers in all courts. We all are men; we all love to be told of the extent of our own power and our own faculties. If we love glory, we are jealous of partners, and afraid even of our own instruments. It is of all modes of flattery the most effectual to be told, that you can regulate the affairs of another kingdom better than its hereditary proprietors. It is formed to flatter the principle of conquest so natural to all men. It is this principle which is now making the partition of Poland. The powers concerned have been told by some perfidious Poles, and perhaps they believe, that their usurpation is a great benefit to the people, especially to the com­mon people. However this may turn out with regard to Poland, I am quite sure that France could not be so well under a foreign direction as under that of the representatives of its own King, and its own antient Estates.

I think I have myself studied France, as much as most of those whom the allied courts are likely to employ in such a work. I have likewise of myself as partial and as vain an opinion as men commonly have of themselves. But if I could command the whole military arm of Europe, I am sure, that a bribe of the best province in that kingdom, would not tempt me to intermeddle in their affairs, except [Page 152] in perfect concurrence and concert with the natural legal interests of the country, composed of the Ecclesiastical, the Military, the several Corporate Bodies of Justice, and of Burghership, making under a Monarch (I repeat it again and again) the French Nation, according to its fundamental Consti­tution. No considerate Statesmen would undertake to meddle with it upon any other condition.

The Government of that kingdom is funda­mentally Monarchical. The publick law of Europe has never recognized in it any other form of Go­vernment. The Potentates of Europe have by that law, a right, an interest, and a duty to know with what government they are to treat, and what they are to admit into the federative Society, or in other words into the diplomatick Republick of Europe. This Right is clear and indisputable.

What other and further interference they have a right to in the interior of the concerns of another people, is a matter on which, as on every political subject, no very definite or positive rule can well be laid down. Our neighbours are men; and who will attempt to dictate the laws, under which it is allowable or forbidden to take a part in the concerns of men, whether they are considered individually or in a collective capacity, whenever charity to them, or a care of my own safety, calls forth my [Page 153] activity. Circumstances perpetually variable, di­recting a moral prudence and discretion, the gene­ral principles of which never vary, must alone prescribe a conduct fitting on such occasions. The latest casuists of public law are rather of a Repub­lican cast, and in my mind, by no means so averse as they ought to be to a Right in the people (a word which ill defined is of the most dangerous use) to make changes at their pleasure in the fun­damental laws of their country. These writers, however, when a country is divided, leave abun­dant liberty for a neighbour to support any of the parties according to his choice*. This interfer­ence must indeed always be a Right, whilst the privilege of doing good to others, and of averting from them every sort of evil, is a Right: Circum­stances may render that Right a Duty. It depends wholly on this, whether it be a bona fide charity to a party, and a prudent precaution with regard to yourself, or whether under the pretence of aiding one of the parties in a nation, you act in such a manner as to aggravate its calamities, and accom­plish its final destruction. In truth it is not the in­terfering or keeping aloof, but iniquitous inter­meddling, or treacherous inaction which is praised or blamed by the decision of an equitable judge.

[Page 154] It will be a just and irresistible presumption against the fairness of the interposing power, that he takes with him no party or description of men in the divided state. It is not probable, that these parties should all, and all alike, be more adverse to the true interests of their country, and less ca­pable of forming a judgment upon them, than those who are absolute strangers to their affairs, and to the character of the actors in them, and have but a remote, feeble, and secondary sympa­thy with their interest. Sometimes a calm and healing arbiter may be necessary; but, he is to compose differences, not to give laws. It is im­possible that any one should not feel the full force of that presumption. Even people, whose poli­tics for the supposed good of their own country lead them to take advantage of the dissentions of a neighbouring nation in order to ruin it, will not directly propose to exclude the natives, but they will take that mode of consulting and employing them which most nearly approaches to an exclu­sion. In some particulars they propose what amounts to that exclusion, in others they do much worse. They recommend to Ministry, ‘"that no Frenchman who has given a decided opinion, or acted a decided part in this great Revolution for or against it, should be countenanced, brought for­ward, trusted or employed, even in the strictest subordination to the Ministers of the allied powers."’ [Page 155] Although one would think that this advice would stand condemned on the first proposition, yet as it has been made popular, and has been proceeded upon practically, I think it right to give it a full consideration.

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

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

[Page 156] Except him, I do not recollect a man of rank or talents, who by his speeches or his votes, by his pen or by his sword, has not been active on this scene. The time indeed could admit no neutrality in any person worthy of the name of man. There were originally two great divisions in France; the one is that which overturned the whole of the Govern­ment in Church and State, and erected a Republic on the basis of Atheism. Their grand engine was the Jacobin Club, a sort of secession from which, but exactly on the same principles, begat another short­lived one, called the Club of Eighty Nine*, which was chiefly guided by the Court Rebels, who, in addition to the crimes of which they were guilty in common with the others, had the merit of betray­ing a gracious Master, and a kind Benefactor. Subdivisions of this faction, which since we have seen, do not in the least differ from each other in their principles, their dispositions, or the means they have employed. Their only quarrel has been about power: in that quarrel, like wave succeeding wave, one faction has got the better and expelled the other. Thus La Fayette for a while got the better of Orleans; and Orleans afterwards prevailed over La Fayette. Brissot overpower'd Orleans; Barrere and Roberspiere, and their faction, mastered [Page 157] them both and cut off their heads. All who were not Royalists have been listed in some or other of these divisions. If it were of any use to settle a precedence, the Elder ought to have his rank. The first authors, plotters, and contrivers of this monstrous scheme, seem to me intitled to the first place in our distrust and abhorrence. I have seen some of those who are thought the best amongst the original Rebels; and I have not neglected the means of being informed concerning the others. I can very truly say, that I have not found by ob­servation or enquiry, that any sense of the evils produced by their projects has produced in them, or any one of them, the smallest degree of repent­ance. Disappointment and mortification undoubt­edly they feel: but to them, repentance is a thing impossible. They are Atheists. This wretched opinion, by which they are possessed even to the height of fanaticism, leading them to exclude from their ideas of a Commonwealth, the vital principle of the physical, the moral, and the political world, engages them in a thousand absurd contrivances, to fill up this dreadful void. Incapable of innoxious repose, or honourable action, or wise speculation, in the lurking holes of a foreign land, into which (in a common ruin) they are driven to hide their heads amongst the innocent victims of their madness, they are at this very hour, as busy in the confection of the dirt-pyes of their imaginary Constitutions, as if [Page 158] they had not been quite fresh from destroying by their impious and desperate vagaries, the finest country upon earth.

It is however, out of these, or of such as these, guilty and impenitent, despising the experience of others, and their own, that some people talk of chusing their Negotiators with those Jacobins, who they suppose may be recovered to a sounder mind. They flatter themselves, it seems, that the friendly habits formed during their original partnership of iniquity, a similarity of character, and a con­formity in the ground-work of their principles, might facilitate their conversion, and gain them over to some recognition of Royalty. But surely this is to read human nature very ill. The several Sectaries in this schism of the Jacobins, are the very last men in the world to trust each other. Fellow­ship in Treason, is a bad ground of confidence. The last quarrels are the sorest; and the injuries received or offered by your own associates, are ever the most bitterly resented. The people of France of every name and description, would a thousand times sooner listen to the Prince de Condé, or to the Archbishop of Aix, or the Bishop of St. Pol, or to Monsieur De Cazalès, than to La Fayette, or Dumourier, or the Vicomte De Noailles, or the Bishop of Autun, or Necker, or his Disciple Lally Tolendal. Against the first description they have [Page 159] not the smallest animosity beyond that of a merely political dissention. The others they regard as Traitors.

The first description is that of the Christian Royalists, men who as earnestly wished for refor­mation, as they opposed innovation in the funda­mental parts of their Church and State. Their part has been very decided. Accordingly they are to be set aside in the restoration of Church and State. It is an odd kind of disqualification where the restoration of Religion and Monarchy is the question. If England should (God forbid it should) fall into the same misfortune with France, and that the Court of Vienna should undertake the restora­tion of our Monarchy, I think it would be extraor­dinary to object to the admission of Mr. Pitt, or Lord Grenville, or Mr. Dundas into any share in the management of that business, because in a day of trial they have stood up firmly and manfully, as I trust they always will do, and with distinguished powers, for the Monarchy and the legitimate Con­stitution of their country. I am sure if I were to suppose myself at Vienna at such a time, I should, as a Man, as an Englishman, and as a Royalist, protest in that case, as I do in this, against a weak and ruin­ous principle of proceeding, which can have no other tendency, than to make those who wish to support the Crown, meditate too profoundly on the conse­quences [Page 160] of the part they take—and consider whe­ther for their open and forward zeal in the Royal Cause, they may not be thrust out from any sort of confidence and employment, where the interest of crowned heads is concerned.

These are the Parties. I have said, and said truly, that I know of no neutrals. But as a general observation on this general principle of chusing neutrals on such occasions as the present, I have this to say—that it amounts to neither more nor less than this shocking proposition—that we ought to ex­clude men of honour and ability from serving theirs and our cause; and to put the dearest interests of ourselves and our posterity into the hands of men of no decided character, without judgment to chuse, and without courage to profess any prin­ciple whatsoever.

Such men can serve no cause, for this plain rea­son—they have no cause at heart. They can at best work only as mere mercenaries. They have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only be­cause they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites; they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or henroost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. [Page 161] There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy miscreants to be the only men qualified for great affairs: if you set them to transact with such per­sons, they are instantly subdued. They dare not so much as look their antagonist in the face. They are made to be their subjects, not to be their arbiters or controllers.

These men to be sure can look at atrocious acts without indignation, and can behold suffering virtue without sympathy. Therefore they are considered as sober dispassionate men But they have their passions, though of another kind, and which are infinitely more likely to carry them out of the path of their duty. They are of a tame, timid, languid, inert temper wherever the welfare of others is concerned. In such causes, as they have no motives to action, they never possess any real ability, and are totally destitute of all resource.

Believe a man who has seen much, and observed something. I have seen in the course of my life a great many of that family of men. They are generally chosen, because they have no opinion of their own; and as far as they can be got in good earnest to embrace any opinion, it is that of who­ever happens to employ them (neither longer or [Page 162] shorter, narrower or broader) with whom they have no discussion or consultation. The only thing which occurs to such a man when he has got a business for others into his hands, is how to make his own fortune out of it. The person he is to treat with, is not, with him, an adversary over whom he is to prevail, but a new friend he is to gain: therefore he always systematically betrays some part of his trust. Instead of thinking how he shall defend his ground to the last, and if forced to re­treat, how little he shall give up, this kind of man considers how much of the interest of his employer he is to sacrifice to his adversary. Having nothing but himself in view, he knows, that in serving his principal with zeal, he must probably incur some resentment from the opposite party. His object is to obtain the good will of the person with whom he contends, that when an agreement is made, he may join in rewarding him. I would not take one of these as my arbitrator in a dispute for so much as a fish-pond—for if he reserved the mud to me, he would be sure to give the water that fed the pool, to my adversary. In a great cause I should cer­tainly wish, that my agent should possess conciliat­ing qualities; that he should be of a frank, open, and candid disposition, soft in his nature, and of a temper to soften animosities and to win confidence. He ought not to be a man odious to the person he treats with, by personal injury, by violence, or by [Page 163] deceit, or, above all, by the dereliction of his cause in any former transactions. But I would be sure that my Negotiator should be mine, that he should be as earnest in the cause as myself, and known to be so; that he should not be looked upon as a stipendiary advocate, but as a principled partizan. In all treaty it is a great point that all idea of gaining your agent is hopeless. I would not trust the cause of Royalty with a man, who, professing neutrality, is half a Republican. The Enemy has already a great part of his suit without a struggle—and he contends with advantage for all the rest. The common principle allowed between your adversary and your agent, gives your adversary the advantage in every discussion.

Before I shut up this Discourse about neutral Agency (which I conceive is not to be found, or if found, ought not to be used) I have a few other remarks to make on the cause, which I conceive gives rise to it.

In all that we do, whether in the struggle or after it, it is necessary that we should constantly have in our eye, the nature and character of the enemy we have to contend with. The Jacobin Revolution is carried on by men of no rank, of no considera­tion, of wild savage minds, full of levity, arrogance and presumption, without morals, without probity, [Page 164] without prudence. What have they then to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terri­ble even to the firmest minds? One thing, and one thing only—but that one thing is worth a thousand—they have energy. In France, all things being put into an universal serment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprize and the vigour of his mind. If we meet this dreadful and portentous energy, restrained by no consideration of God or man, that is always vigilant, always on the attack, that allows itself no repose, and suffers none to rest an hour with impu­nity; if we meet this energy with poor common­place proceeding, with trivial maxims, paltry old saws, with doubts, fears and suspicions, with a languid, uncertain hesitation, with a formal, official spirit, which is turned aside by every obstacle from its purpose, and which never sees a difficulty but to yield to it, or at best to evade it; down we go to the bottom of the abyss—and nothing short of Omnipotence can save us. We must meet a vi­cious and distempered energy with a manly and rational vigour. As virtue is limited in its resources—we are doubly bound to use all that, in the circle drawn about us by our morals, we are able to command.

I do not contend against the advantages of dis­trust. In the world we live in it is but too neces­sary. [Page 165] Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion. But what signify common-places, that always run parallel and equal? Distrust is good or it is bad, according to our position and our pur­pose. Distrust is a defensive principle. They who have much to lose have much to fear. But in France we hold nothing. We are to break in upon a power in possession; we are to carry every thing by storm, or by surprize, or by intelligence, or by all. Adventure therefore, and not caution, is our policy. Here to be too presuming is the better error.

The world will judge of the spirit of our pro­ceeding in those places of France which may fall into our power, by our conduct in those that are already in our hands. Our wisdom should not be vulgar. Other times, perhaps other measures: But in this awful hour our politicks ought to be made up of nothing but courage, decision, manliness, and rectitude. We should have all the magnanimity of good faith. This is a royal and commanding po­licy; and as long as we are true to it we may give the law. Never can we assume this command if we will not risque the consequences. For which reason we ought to be bottomed enough in prin­ciple not to be carried away upon the first prospect of any sinister advantage. For depend upon it, that if we once give way to a sinister dealing, we [Page 166] shall teach others the game, and we shall be out­witted and overborne: the Spaniards, the Prussians, God knows who, will put us under contribution at their pleasure; and instead of being the head of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish quarrels; the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced, whilst all Europe, Eng­land included, is left open and defenceless on every part, to jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms. In the case of the King of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an ene­my. This contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a colour of fraud to all our trans­actions, or at least will so complicate our politicks, that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them.

I have Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard that in taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust, that is, to hold them for the use of the owner, and, in the mean time, to employ them for our common service. These ships are now so [Page 167] circumstanced, that if we are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the enemy, or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.

Are we then so poor in resources that we can do no better with eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them? Had we sent for French Royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had, and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, which are all over Italy to be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English commanders in chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours. It may be said that these French officers would take them for the King of France, and that they would not be in our power. Be it so. The islands would not be ours, but they would not be jacobinized. This is how­ever a thing impossible▪ They must in effect and substance be ours. But all is upon that false prin­ciple of distrust, which, not confiding in strength, can never have the full use of it. They that pay, and feed, and equip, must direct. But I must speak plain upon this subject▪ The French islands, if they were all our own, ought not to be all kept. [Page 168] A fair partition only ought to be made of those territories. This is a subject of policy very serious, which has many relations and aspects. Just here I only hint at it as answering an objection, whilst I state the mischievous consequences which suffer us to be surprized into a virtual breach of faith, by confounding our ally with our enemy, because they both belong to the same geographical territory.

My clear opinion is, that Toulon ought to be made, what we set out with, a royal French city. By the necessity of the case, it must be under the influence, civil and military, of the allies. But the only way of keeping that jealous and discordant mass from tearing its component parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is to put the place into the nominal government of the regent, his officers being approved by us. This, I say, is absolutely necessary for a poise amongst ourselves. Otherwise is it to be believed that the Spaniards, who hold that place with us in a sort of part­nership contrary to our mutual interest, will see us absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar on one side, and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble body of the Spanish dominions in that part of the world, absolutely at our mercy, without [Page 169] any power to balance us in the smallest degree. Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or sear. Spain must think she sees, that we are taking advantage of the confusions which reign in France, to disable that country, and of course every country from affording her protection, and in the end to turn the Spanish Monarchy into a province. If she saw things in a proper point of light, to be sure, she would not consider any other plan of politicks as of the least moment in comparison of the ex­tinction of jacobinism. But her ministers (to say the best of them) are vulgar politicians. It is no wonder that they should postpone this great point, or balance it, by considerations of the common politicks, that is, the questions of power between state and state. If we manifestly endeavour to de­stroy the balance, especially the maritime and commercial balance, both in Europe and the West Indies, (the latter their sore and vulnerable part) from fear of what France may do for Spain here­after, is it to be wondered, that Spain, infinitely weaker than we are, (weaker indeed that such a mass of empire ever was,) should feel the same fears from our uncontroled power, that we give way to ourselves from a supposed resurrection of the antient power of France under a Monarchy? It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right [Page 170] in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can subsist between the two nations. If Spain goes, Naples will speedily follow. Prussia is quite certain, and thinks of nothing but making a market of the present confusions. Italy is broken and divided; Switzerland is jacobinized, I am afraid, completely. I have long seen with pain the pro­gress of French principles in that country. Things cannot go on upon the present bottom. The possession of Toulon, which, well managed, might be of the greatest advantage, will be the greatest misfortune that ever happened to this nation. The more we multiply troops there, the more we shall multiply causes and means of quarrel amongst our­selves. I know but one way of avoiding it, which is to give a greater degree of simplicity to our politicks. Our situation does necessarily render them a good deal involved. And, to this evil, in­stead of increasing it, we ought to apply all the remedies in our power.

See what is, in that place, the consequence (to say nothing of every other) of this complexity. Toulon has, as it were, two gates, an English, and a Spanish. The English gate is, by our policy, fast barred against the entrance of any Royalists. The Spaniards open theirs, I fear, upon no fixed principle, and with very little judgment. By [Page 171] means, however, of this foolish, mean, and jealous policy on our side, all the Royalists whom the English might select as most practicable, and most subservient to honest views, are totally excluded. Of those admitted, the Spaniards are masters. As to the inhabitants they are a nest of Jacobins which is delivered into our hands, not from principle, but from fear. The inhabitants of Toulon may be described in few words. It is differtum nautis, cauponibus atque malignis. The rest of the seaports are of the same description.

Another thing which I cannot account for is, the sending for the Bishop of Toulon, and afterwards forbidding his entrance. This is as directly con­trary to the declaration, as it is to the practice of the allied powers. The King of Prussia did better. When he took Verdun, he actually re-instated the Bishop and his Chapter. When he thought he should be the master of Chalons, he called the bishop from Flanders, to put him into possession. The Austrians have restored the clergy wherever they obtained possession. We have proposed to restore Religion as well as Monarchy; and in Toulon we have restored neither the one nor the other. It is very likely that the Jacobin Sans-Culottes, or some of them, objected to this measure, who rather chuse to have the atheistick buffoons of clergy they have got to sport with, till they are [Page 172] ready to come forward, with the rest of their worthy brethren, in Paris and other places, to de­clare that they are a set of impostors, that they never believed in God, and never will preach any sort of religion. If we give way to our Jacobins in this point, it is fully and fairly putting the go­vernment, civil and ecclesiastical, not in the King of France, to whom, as the protector and go­vernor, and in substance the head of the Gallican Church, the nomination to the bishopricks belonged, and who made the bishop of Toulon; it does not leave it with him, or even in the hands of the King of England, or the King of Spain; but in the basest Jacobins of a low sea-port, to exercise, pro tempore, the sovereignty. If this point of religion is thus given up, the grand instrument for reclaiming France is abandoned. We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dread­ful contest. It is a religious war. It includes in its object undoubtedly every other interest of so­ciety as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplish­ment of all their other views. The French Revo­lution, impious at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestick power and foreign empire. Look at all the proceedings of the National Assembly from the first day of declaring itself such in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full [Page 173] half of their business to be directly on this subject. In fact it is the spirit of the whole. The religious system, called the Constitutional Church, was on the face of the whole proceeding set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come, when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion whatsoever, and persecute christianity throughout Europe with fire and sword. The Constitutional Clergy are not the Ministers of any religion: they are the agents and instruments of this horrible conspiracy against all morals. It was from a sense of this, that in the English Addition to the Articles proposed at St. Domingo, tolerating all Religions, we very wisely refused to suffer that kind of traitors and buffoons.

This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect as formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions. The question is not whether you are to overturn the catholick, to set up the protestant. Such an idea in the present state of the world is too contemptible. Our business is to leave to the schools the discussion of the contro­verted points, abating as much as we can the acrimony of disputants on all sides. It is for christian Statesmen, as the world is now circumstanced, to secure their common Basis, and not to risque the subversion of the whole Fabrick by pursuing these [Page 174] distinctions with an ill-timed zeal. We have in the present grand Alliance, all modes of Govern­ment as well as all modes of religion. In Govern­ment, we mean to restore that which, notwithstand­ing our diversity of forms we are all agreed in, as fundamental in Government. The same principle ought to guide us in the religious part; conforming the mode, not to our particular ideas (for in that point we have no ideas in common) but to what will best promote the great general ends of the Alliance. As Statesmen we are to see which of those modes best suits with the interests of such a Commonwealth as we wish to secure and promote. There can be no doubt, but that the catholick religion, which is fundamentally the religion of France, must go with the Monarchy of France; we know that the Monarchy did not survive the Hierarchy, no not even in appearance, for many months; in substance, not for a single hour. As little can it exist in future, if that pillar is taken away, or even shattered and impaired.

If it should please God to give to the Allies the means of restoring peace and order in that focus of war and confusion, I would, as I said in the beginning of this Memorial, first replace the whole of the old Clergy: because we have proof more than sufficient, that whether they err or not in the scholastick disputes with us, they are not tainted [Page 175] with atheism, the great political evil of the time. I hope I need not apologize for this phrase, as if I thought religion nothing but policy; it is far from my thoughts; and I hope it is not to be inferred from my expressions. But in the light of policy alone I am here considering the question. I speak of policy too in a large light; in which large light, policy too is a sacred thing.

There are many, perhaps half a million or more, calling themselves protestants, in the south of France, and in other of the provinces. Some raise them to a much greater number, but I think this nearer to the mark. I am sorry to say, that they have behaved shockingly since the very be­ginning of this rebellion, and have been uniformly concerned in its worst and most atrocious acts. Their Clergy are just the same atheists with those of the Constitutional catholicks; but still more wicked and daring. Three of their number have met, from their Republican associates, the reward of their crimes.

As the antient catholick religion is to be restored for the body of France, the antient calvinistick religion ought to be restored for the protestants with every kind of protection and privilege. But not one Minister concerned in this rebellion ought to be suffered amongst them. If they have not [Page 176] Clergy of their own, men well recommended as untainted with Jacobinism, by the synods of those places where calvinism prevails and French is spoken, ought to be sought. Many such there are. The presbyterian discipline ought, in my opinion, to be established in its vigour, and the people pro­fessing it ought to be bound to its maintenance. No man, under the false and hypocritical pretence of liberty of conscience, ought to be suffered to have no conscience at all. The King's com­missioner ought also to sit in their synods as before the revocation of the Edict of Nantz. I am con­scious, that this discipline disposes men to Repub­licanism: but it is still a discipline, and it is a cure, (such as it is) for the perverse and undisciplined habits which for some time have prevailed. Re­publicanism repressed may have its use in the com­position of a State. Inspection may be practicable, and responsibility in the teachers and elders may be established in such an Hierarchy as the presbyterian. For a time like ours, it is a great point gained, that people should be taught to meet, to combine, and to be classed and arrayed in some other way than in Clubs of Jacobins. If it be not the best mode of protestantism under a Monarchy, it is still an orderly christian church, orthodox in the fundamentals, and what is to our point, capable enough of rendering men useful citizens. It was the impolitick abolition of their discipline which [Page 177] exposed them to the wild opinions and conduct, that have prevailed amongst the Hugonots. The toleration in 1787 was owing to the good dispo­sition of the late King; but it was modified by the profligate folly of his atheistick Minister the Cardinal de Lomenie. This mischievous Minister did not follow, in the Edict of toleration, the wisdom of the Edict of Nantz. But his toleration was granted to Non-Catholicks—a dangerous word, which might signify any thing, and was but too expressive of a fatal indifference with regard to all piety. I speak for myself: I do not wish any man to be converted from his sect. The distinctions which we have reformed from animosity to emulation, may be even useful to the cause of religion. By some moderate contention they keep alive zeal. Whereas people who change, except under strong convic­tion (a thing now rather rare) the religion of their early prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity, and often downright atheism.

Another political question arises about the mode of Government which ought to be established. I think the proclamation (which I read before I had proceeded far in this Memorial,) puts it on the best footing, by postponing that arrangement to a time of peace.

[Page 178] When our politicks lead us to enterprize a great, and almost total political revolution in Europe, we ought to look seriously into the consequences of what we are about to do. Some eminent persons discover an apprehension that the Monarchy, if restored in France, may be restored in too great strength for the liberty and happiness of the natives, and for the tranquillity of other States. They are therefore of opinion that terms ought to be made for the modification of that Monarchy. They are persons too considerable from the powers of their mind, and from their situation, as well as from the real respect I have for them, who seem to entertain these apprehensions, to let me pass them by un­noticed.

As to the power of France, as a State, and in its exteriour relations, I confess my fears are on the part of its extreme reduction. There is un­doubtedly something in the vicinity of France, which makes it naturally and properly an object of our watchfulness and jealousy, whatever form its Government may take. But the difference is great between a plan for our own security, and a scheme for the utter destruction of France. If there were no other countries in the political map but these two, I admit that policy might justify a wish to lower our neighbour to a standard which would even render her in some measure, if not wholly, [Page 179] our dependent. But the system of Europe is ex­tensive and extremely complex. However formi­dable to us as taken in this one relation, France is not equally dreadful to all other States. On the contrary, my clear opinion is, that the Liberties of Europe cannot possibly be preserved, but by her remaining a very great and preponderating power. The design at present evidently pursued by the combined Potentates, or of the two who lead, is totally to destroy her as such a Power. For Great Britain resolves that she shall have no Colonies, no Commerce, and no Marine. Austria means to take away the whole frontier from the borders of Switzerland, to Dunkirk. It is their plan also to render the interiour Government lax and feeble, by prescribing by force of the arms of rival and jealous nations, and without consulting the natural interests of the kingdom; such arrange­ments as in the actual state of Jacobinism in France, and the unsettled state in which property must re­main for a long time, will inevitably produce such distraction and debility in Government, as to reduce it to nothing, or to throw it back into its old con­fusion. One cannot conceive so frightful a state of a Nation. A maritime country, without a ma­rine, and without commerce; a continental country without a frontier, and for a thousand miles sur­rounded with powerful, warlike, and ambitious neighbours! It is possible, that she might submit [Page 180] to lose her commerce and her colonies; her security she never can abandon. If, contrary to all expectations, under such a disgraced and im­potent Government, any energy should remain in that country, she will make every essort to recover her security, which will involve Europe for a cen­tury in war and blood. What has it cost to France to make that frontier? What will it cost to re­cover it? Austria thinks that without a Frontier she cannot secure the Netherlands. But without her Frontier France cannot secure herself. Austria has been however secure for an hundred years in those very Netherlands, and has never been dispos­sessed of them by the chance of war, without a moral certainty of receiving them again on the restoration of peace. Her late dangers have arisen not from the power or ambition of the King of France. They arose from her own ill policy, which dismantled all her towns, and discontented all her subjects by Jacobinical innovations. She dismantles her own towns, and then says, Give me the Frontier of France. But let us depend upon it, whatever tends, under the name of secu­rity, to aggrandize Austria, will discontent and alarm Prussia. Such a length of Frontier on the side of France, separated from itself, and sepa­rated from the mass of the Austrian country, will be weak, unless connected at the expence of the Elector of Bavaria (the Elector Palatine) and [Page 181] other lesser Princes, or by such exchanges as will again convulse the Empire.

Take it the other way, and let us suppose that France so broken in spirit as to be content to re­main naked and defenceless by sea and by land, is such a country no prey? Have other Nations no views? Is Poland the only country of which it is worth while to make a partition? We cannot be so childish as to imagine, that ambition is local, and that no others can be infected with it but those who rule within certain parallels of latitude and longitude? In this way I hold war equally certain. But I can conceive that both these principles may operate, ambition on the part of Austria, to cut more and more from France, and French impa­tience under her degraded and unsafe condition. In such a Contest will the other Powers stand by? Will not Prussia call for indemnity as well as Austria and England? Is she satisfied with her gains in Poland? By no means. Germany must pay; or we shall infallibly see Prussia leagued with France and Spain, and possibly with other Powers for the reduction of Austria; and such may be the situa­tion of things, that it will not be so easy to decide what part England may take in such a Contest.

I am well aware how invidious a task it is to oppose any thing which tends to the apparent [Page 182] aggrandizement of our own country. But I think no country can be aggrandized whilst France is Jacobinised. This post removed, it will be a serious question how far her further reduction will contribute to the general safety which I always con­sider as included. Among precautions against am­bition, it may not be amiss to take one precaution against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded. It is ridiculous to say we are not men; and that, as men, we shall never wish to aggrandize ourselves in some way or other. Can we say, that even at this very hour we are not invidiously aggrandized? We are already in pos­session of almost all the commerce of the world. Our Empire in India is an awful thing. If we should come to be in a condition not only to have all this ascendant in commerce, but to be abso­lutely able, without the least controul, to hold the commerce of all other Nations totally dependent upon our good pleasure, we may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing, and hitherto unheard of power. But every other Nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that sooner or later, this state of things must produce a com­bination against us which may end in our ruin.

As to France, I must observe that for a long time she has been stationary. She has, during this [Page 183] whole century, obtained far less by conquest or negotiation than any of the three great continental Powers. Some part of Lorraine excepted, I re­collect nothing she has gained; no not a village. In truth, this Lorraine acquisition does little more than secure her Barrier. In effect and substance it was her own before.

However that may be, I consider these things at present chiefly in one point of view, as obstructions to the war on Jacobinism, which must stand as long as the Powers think its extirpation but a secondary object, and think of taking advantage under the name of indemnity and security to make war upon the whole Nation of France Royal, and Jacobin, for the aggrandizement of the Allies on the ordi­nary principles of interest, as if no Jacobinism existed in the world.

So far is France from being formidable to its neighbours for its domestick strength, that I conceive it will be as much as all its neighbours can do by a steady guarantee, to keep that Monarchy at all upon its basis. It will be their business to nurse France, not to exhaust it. France, such as it is, s indeed highly formidable. Not formidable, however, as a great Republick; but as the most dreadful gang of robbers and murderers that ever was embodied. But this distempered strength of [Page 184] France, will be the cause of proportionable weak­ness on its recovery. Never was a country so com­pletely ruined; and they who calculate the resur­rection of her power by former examples, have not sufficiently considered what is the present state of things. Without detailing the inventory of what organs of Government have been destroyed, together with the very materials of which alone they can be recomposed, I wish it to be considered what an operose affair the whole system of taxa­tion is in the old states of Europe. It is such as never could be made but in a long course of years. In France, all taxes are abolished. The present powers resort to the capital; and to the capital in kind. But a savage undisciplined people suffer a rebbery with more patience than an impost. The former is in their habits and their dispositions. They consider it as transient, and as what, in their turn, they may exercise. But the terrours of the present power are such as no regular Government can possibly employ. They who enter into France do not succeed to their resources. They have not a system to reform, but a system to begin. The whole estate of Government is to be re-acquired.

What difficulties this will meet with in a coun­try exhausted by the taking of the capital, and among a people, in a manner new principled, trained, and actually disciplined to anarchy, rebel­lion, [Page 185] disorder, and impiety, may be conceived by those who know what Jacobin France is, and who may have occupied themselves by revolving in their thoughts, what they were to do if it fell to their lot to re-establish the affairs of France. What support, or what limitations the restored Monarchy must have, may be a doubt, or how it will pitch and settle at last: But one thing I con­ceive to be far beyond a doubt: that the settle­ment cannot be immediate; but that it must be preceded by some sort of power, equal at least in vigour, vigilance, promptitude and decision to a military Government. For such a preparatery Government, no slow-paced, methodical, formal, Lawyer-like system, still less that of a shewy, superficial, trifling, intriguing Court, guided by cabals of ladies, or of men like ladies; least of all, a philo­sophic, theoretic, disputatious school of sophistry. None of these ever will, or ever can lay the foun­dations of an order that can last. Whoever claims a right by birth to govern there, must find in his breast, or must conjure up in it, an energy not to be expected, perhaps not always to be wished for, in well ordered States. The lawful Prince must have, in every thing but crime, the character of an usurper. He is gone, if he imagines himself the quiet possessor of a throne. He is to contend for it as much after an apparent conquest as before. His task is to win it; he must leave posterity to [Page 186] enjoy and to adorn it. No velvet cushions for him. He is to be always (I speak nearly to the letter) on horseback. This opinion is the result of much patient thinking on the subject, which I conceive no event is likely to alter.

A valuable friend of mine, who I hope will con­duct these affairs so far as they fall to his share, with great ability, asked me what I thought of acts of general indemnity and oblivion, as a means of settling France, and reconciling it to Monarchy. Before I venture upon any opinion of my own in this matter, I totally disclaim the interference of foreign powers in a business that properly be­longs to the Government which we have declared legal. That Government is likely to be the best judge of what is to be done towards the security of that kingdom, which it is their duty and their interest to provide for by such measures of justice or of lenity, as at the time they should find best. But if we weaken it, not only by arbitrary limita­tions of our own, but preserve such persons in it as are disposed to disturb its future peace, as they have its past, I do not know how a more direct declaration can be made of a disposition to per­petual hostility against a Government. The per­sons saved from the justice of the native Magis­trate, by foreign authority, will owe nothing to his clemency. He will, and must, look to those to [Page 187] whom he is indebted for the power he has of dis­pensing it. A Jacobin faction, constantly fostered with the nourishment of foreign protection, will be kept alive.

This desire of securing the safety of the actors in the present scene is owing to more laudable motives. Ministers have been made to consider the brothers of the late merciful King, and the Nobility of France, who have been faithful to their honor and duty, as a set of inexorable and remorseless tyrants. How this notion has been infused into them, I cannot be quite certain. I am sure it is not justified by any thing they have done. Never were the two Princes guilty, in the day of their power, of a single hard or ill-natured act. No one instance of cruelty on the part of the Gen­tlemen ever came to my ears. It is true that the English Jacobins, (the natives have not thought of it) as an excuse for their infernal system of mur­der, have so represented them. It is on this prin­ciple that the massacres in the month of Sep­tember 1792 were justified by a writer in the Morning Chronicle. He says, indeed, that ‘"the whole French nation is to be given up to the hands of an irritated and revengeful Noblesse:"’—and judging of others by himself and his brethren, he says, ‘"Whoever succeeds in a civil war, will be cruel. But here the emigrants flying to revenge [Page 188] in the cars of military victory, will almost insatiably call for their victims and their booty; and a body of emigrant traitors were attending the King of Prussia, and the Duke of Brunswick, to suggest the most sanguinary counsels."’ So says this wicked Jacobin; but so cannot say the King of Prussia nor the Duke of Brunswick, who never did receive any sanguinary council; nor did the King's bro­thers, or that great body of Gentlemen who at­tended those Princes, commit one single cruel ac­tion, or hurt the person or property of one indi­vidual. It would be right to quote the instance. It is like the military luxury attributed to these unfortunate sufferers in our common cause.

If these Princes had shewn a tyrannic disposition, it would be much to be lamented. We have no others to govern France. If we screened the body of murderers from their justice, we should only leave the innocent in future to the mercy of men of fierce and sanguinary dispositions, of which in spite of all our intermeddling in their Constitution, we could not prevent the effects. But as we have much more reason to fear their feeble lenity than any blameable rigour, we ought, in my opinion, to leave the matter to themselves.

If however I were asked to give an advice merely as such—here are my ideas. I am not for [Page 189] a total indemnity, nor a general punishment. And first, the body and mass of the people never ought to be treated as criminal. They may become an object of more or less constant watchfulness and suspicion, as their preservation may best require, but they can never become an object of punish­ment. This is one of the few fundamental and unalterable principles of politicks.

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

As to crimes too, I would draw a strong line of limitation. For no one offence, politically an offence of rebellion, by council, contrivance, persuasion or compulsion, for none properly a military offence of [Page 190] rebellion, or any thing done by open hostility in the field, should any man at all be called in ques­tion; because such seems to be the proper and natural death of civil dissentions. The offences of war are obliterated by peace.

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

So far as to indemnity. But where are the objects of justice, and of example, and of future security to the public peace? They are naturally pointed out, not by their having outraged political and civil laws, nor their having rebelled against the state, as a State, but by their having rebelled against the law of nature, and outraged man, as man. In this list, all the regicides in general, all those who laid sacrilegious hands on the King, who without any thing in their own rebellious mission to the convention to justify them, brought him to his trial and unanimously voted him guilty; all those who had a share in the cruel murder of the Queen, and the detestable proceedings with regard to the young King, and the unhappy Prin­cesses; [Page 191] all those who committed cold-blooded murder any where, and particularly in their revo­lutionary tribunals, where every idea of natural justice and of their own declared Rights of Man, have been trod under foot with the most insolent mockery; all men concerned in the burning and demolition of houses or churches, with audacious and marked acts of sacrilege and scorns offered to religion; in general, all the leaders of Jacobin Clubs;—not one of these should escape a punish­ment suitable to the nature, quality and degree of their offence, by a steady but a measured justice.

In the first place, no man ought to be subject to any penalty, from the highest to the lowest, but by a trial according to the course of law, carried on with all that caution and deliberation which has been used in the best times and precedents of the French jurisprudence, the criminal law of which country, faulty to be sure in some particulars, was highly landable and tender of the lives of men. In restoring order and justice, every thing like re­taliation, ought to be religiously avoided; and an example ought to be set of a total alienation from the Jacobin proceedings in their accursed revolu­tionary tribunals. Every thing like lumping men in masses, and of forming tables of proscription ought to be avoided.

[Page 192] In all these punishments, any thing which can be alledged in mitigation of the offence should be fully considered. Mercy is not a thing opposed to justice. It is an essential part of it; as necessary in criminal cases, as in civil affairs equity is to law. It is only for the Jacobins never to pardon. They have not done it in a single instance. A council of mercy ought therefore to be appointed, with powers to report on each case, to soften the penalty, or entirely to remit it, according to cir­cumstances.

With these precautions, the very first founda­tion of settlement must be to call to a strict account those bloody and merciless offenders. With­out it Government cannot stand a year. People little consider the utter impossibility of getting those who having emerged from very low, some from the lowest classes, of society, have exercised a power so high, and with such unrelenting and bloody a rage, quietly to fall back into their old ranks, and be­come humble, peaceable, laborious and useful members of society. It never can be. On the other hand is it to be believed, that any worthy and virtuous subject, restored to the ruins of his house, will with patience see the cold-blooded murderer of his father, mother, wife, or children, or perhaps all of these relations (such things have been) nose him in his own village, and insult him [Page 193] with the riches acquired from the plunder of his goods, ready again to head a Jacobin Faction to attack his life? He is unworthy of the name of man who would suffer it. It is unworthy of the name of a Government, which taking justice out of the private hand, will not exercise it for the injured by the public arm.

I know it sounds plausible, and is readily adopted by those who have little sympathy with the suffer­ings of others, to wish to jumble the innocent and guilty into one mass, by a general indemnity. This cruel indifference dignifies itself with the name of humanity.

It is extraordinary that as the wicked arts of this regicide and tyrannous faction increase in number, variety, and atrocity, the desire of punishing them becomes more and more faint, and the talk of an indemnity towards them, every day stronger and stronger. Our ideas of justice appear to be fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when it is grown gigantick. It is not the point of view in which we are in the habit of viewing guilt. The crimes we every day punish are really below the penalties we inflict. The criminals are obscure and feeble. This is the view in which we see or­dinary crimes and criminals. But when guilt is seen, though but for a time, to be furnished with [Page 194] the arms and to be invested with the robes of power, it seems to assume another nature, and to get, as it were, out of our jurisdiction. This I fear is the case with many. But there is another cause full as powerful towards this security to enor­mous guilt, the desire which possesses people who have once obtained power, to enjoy it at their ease. It is not humanity, but laziness and inertness of mind which produces the desire of this kind of in­demnities. This description of men love general and short methods. If they punish, they make a promiscuous massacre; If they spare, they make a general act of oblivion. This is a want of disposi­tion to proceed laboriously according to the cases, and according to the rules and principles of justice on each case; a want of disposition to assort criminals, to discriminate the degrees and modes of guilt, to separate accomplices from principals, leaders from followers, seducers from the seduced, and then by following the same principles in the same detail, to class punishments, and to fit them to the nature and kind of the delinquency. If that were once attempted, we should soon see that the task was neither infinite, nor the execution cruel. There would be deaths, but for the number of criminals, and the extent of France, not many. There would be cases of transportation; cases of labour to re­store what has been wickedly destroyed; cases of imprisonment, and cases of mere exile. But be [Page 195] this as it may, I am sure that if justice is not done there, there can be neither peace or justice there, nor in any part of Europe.

History is resorted to for other acts of indem­nity in other times. The Princes are desired to look back to Henry the Fourth. We are desired to look to the Restoration of King Charles. These things, in my opinion, have no resemblance whatsoever. They were cases of a civil war; in France more ferocious, in Eng­land more moderate than common. In neither country were the orders of society subverted; religion and morality destroyed on principle, or property totally annihilated In England the Go­vernment of Cromwell was to be sure somewhat rigid, but for a new power, no savage tyranny. The country was nearly as well in his hands as in those of Charles the Second, and in some points much better. The laws in general had their course, and were admirably administered. The King did not in reality grant an act of in­demnity; the prevailing power, then in a manner the nation, in effect granted an indemnity to him. The idea of a preceding Rebellion was not at all admitted in that convention and that parliament. The Regicides were a common enemy, and as such given up.

[Page 196] Among the ornaments of their place which emi­nently distinguish them, few people are better acquainted with the history of their own country than the illustrious Princes now in exile: but I caution them not to be led into errour by that which has been supposed to be the guide of life. I would give the same caution to all Princes. Not that I derogate from the use of history. It is a great im­prover of the understanding, by shewing both men and affairs in a great variety of views. From this source much political wisdom may be learned; that is, may be learned as habit, not as precept; and as an exercise to strengthen the mind, as furnishing materials to enlarge and enrich it, not as a repertory of cases and precedents for a lawyer: if it were, a thousand times better would it be that a Statesman had never learned to read—vellem nescirent literas. This method turns their understanding from the object before them, and from the present exigencies of the world, to comparisons with former times, of which after all, we can know very little and very imperfectly; and our guides, the historians, who are to give us their true interpretation, are often preju­diced, often ignorant, often fonder of system than of truth. Whereas if a man with reasonable good parts and natural sagacity, and not in the leading­strings of any master, will look steadily on the business before him, without being diverted by retrospect and comparison, he may be capable of [Page 197] forming a reasonable good judgment of what is to be done. There are some fundamental points in which nature never changes—but they are few and obvious, and belong rather to morals than to poli­ticks. But so far as regards political matter, the human mind and human affairs are susceptible of infinite modifications, and of combinations wholly new and unlooked for. Very few, for instance, could have imagined that property, which has been taken for natural dominion, should, through the whole of a vast kingdom, lose all its importance and even its influence. This is what history or books of speculation could hardly have taught us. How many could have thought, that the most com­plete and formidable Revolution in a great empire should be made by men of letters, not as subordi­nate instruments and trumpeters of sedition, but as the chief contrivers and managers, and in a short time as the open administrators and sovereign Rulers? Who could have imagined that Atheism could produce one of the most violently operative principles of fanaticism? Who could have ima­gined that, in a Commonwealth in a manner cradled in war, and in an extensive and dreadful war, military commanders should be of little or no account? That the Convention should not contain one military man of name? That administrative bodies in a state of the utmost confusion, and of but a momentary duration, and composed of men [Page 198] with not one imposing part of character, should be able to govern the country and its armies, with an authority which the most settled Senates, and the most respected Monarchs scarcely ever had in the same degree? This, for one, I confess I did not foresee, though all the rest was present to me very early, and not out of my apprehension even for several years.

I believe very few were able to enter into the effects of mere terrour, as a principle not only for the support of power in given hands or forms, but in those things in which the soundest political Spe­culators were of opinion, that the least appearance of force would be totally destructive,—such is the the market, whether of money, provision, or com­modities of any kind. Yet for four years we have seen loans made, treasuries supplied, and armies levied and maintained, more numerous than France ever shewed in the field, by the effects of fear alone.

Here is a state of things of which, in its totality, if history furnishes any examples at all, they are very remote and feeble. I therefore am not so ready as some are, to tax with folly or cowardice, those who were not prepared to meet an evil of this nature. Even now, after the events, all the causes may be somewhat difficult to ascertain. Very many are however traceable. But these things history and [Page 199] books of speculation (as I have already said) did not teach men to foresee, and of course to resist. Now that they are no longer a matter of sagacity, but of experience, of recent experience, of our own experience, it would be unjustifiable to go back to the records of other times, to instruct us to manage what they never enabled us to foresee.

APPENDIX. EXTRACTS from VATTEL's LAW of NATIONS.

[The Titles, marginal Abstracts and Notes, are by Mr. BURKE, excepting such of the Notes as are here distinguished.]

CASES OF INTERFERENCE WITH INDE­PENDENT POWERS.

BOOK II. CHAP. IV. § 53.

IF then there is any where a Nation of a restless and mischievous disposition, always ready to injure others, to traverse their designs, and to raise domestic troubles *, it is not to be doubted, that all have a right to join in order to repress, chastise, and put it ever after out of its power to injure them. Such should be the just fruits of the policy which Machiavel praises in Caesar Borgia. The conduct followed by Philip II. king of Spain, was adapted to unite all Europe against him; and it was from just reasons that Henry the Great formed the design of humbling a power, formidable by its forces, and pernicious by its maxims.

§ 70. Let us apply to the unjust, what we have said above (§ 53), of a mischievous, or maleficent Nation. If there be any that makes an open profession of trampling Justice under foot, of despising and violating the right of [Page] others *, whenever it finds an opportunity, the interest of human society will authorize all others to unite, in order to humble and chastise it. We do not here forget the maxim established in our preliminaries, that it does not belong to nations to usurp the power of being judges of each other. In particular cases, liable to the least doubt, it ought to be supposed, that each of the parties may have some right: and the injustice of that which has committed the injury, may proceed from error, and not from a general contempt of justice. But if, by constant maxims, and by a continued conduct, one Nations shews, that it has evidently this per­nicious disposition, and that it considers no right as sacred, the safety of the human Race requires that it should be suppressed. To form and support an unjust pretension, is to do an injury not only to him who is interested in this pretension, but to mock at justice in general, and to injure all Nations.

To succour against Tyranny.§ 56. If the Prince, attacking the fundamental laws, gives his subjects a legal right to resist him; if Ty­ranny, becoming insupportable, obliges the Nation to rise in their defence; every foreign power has a right to succour an oppressed people who implore their assistance. Case of English Re­volution.The English justly complained of James the Second. The Nobility, and the most distinguished Patriots, resolved to put a check on his enterprizes, which manifestly tended to overthrow the Constitution, and to destroy the liberties and the religion of the people; and therefore applied for assistance to the United Provinces. The authority of the Prince of Orange had, doubtless, an influence on the de­liberations of the States-General; but it did not make them commit injustice; for when a people, from good reasons, take up arms against an Oppressor, justice and generosity require, that brave men should be assisted in the defence of their liberties. Case of Civil War.Whenever, therefore, a civil war is kindled in a state, foreign powers may assist that party which appears to them to have justice on their side. An odious Tyrant. Rebellious people. He who assists an odious Tyrant; he who declares FOR AN UNJUST AND REBELLIOUS PEOPLE, offends against his duty. When the bands of the political society are broken, [Page] Sovereign and his people, when distinct powers.or at least suspended between the Sovereign and his people, they may then be considered as two distinct powers; and since each is independent of all foreign authority, nobody has a right to judge them. Either may be in the right; and each of those who grant their assistance may believe that he supports a good cause. It follows then, in virtue of the voluntary Law of Nations, (see Prelim. § 21) that the two parties may act as having an equal right, and behave accordingly, till the decision of the affair.

Not to be pursued to an extreme. Endeavour to persuade subjects to a revolt.But we ought not to abuse this maxim for authorizing odious proceedings against the tranquility of states. It is a violation of the Law of Nations to persuade those subjects to revolt who actually obey their Sovereign, though they complain of his Government.

The practice of Nations is conformable to our maxims. When the German Protestants came to the assistance of the reformed in France, the Court never undertook to treat them otherwise than as common enemies, and accord­ing to the Laws of War. France at the same time assisted the Netherlands, which took up arms against Spain, and did not pretend that her troops should be con­sidered upon any other footing than as auxiliaries in a regular war. Attempt to excite sub­jects to re­volt. Tyrants.But no power avoids complaining of an atrocious injury, if any one attempts by his emissaries to excite his subjects to revolt.

As to those Monsters who, under the title of Sovereigns, render themselves the scourges and horror of the human race; these are savage Beasts, from which every brave man may justly purge the Earth. All antiquity has praised Hercules for delivering the world from an Antaeus, a Busiris, and a Diomedes.

Book 4. Chap. 2. § 14. After stating, that nations have no right to interfere in domestick concerns, he pro­ceeds—‘"But this rule does not preclude them from espousing the quarrel of a dethroned King, and assisting him, if he appears to have justice on his side. They then declare themselves enemies to the Nation who has acknowledged his rival, as when two different Nations are at war they are at liberty to assist that whose quarrel they think has the fairest appearance."’

CASE OF ALLIANCES.

BOOK II. CHAP. XII. § 196.

IT is asked if that Alliance subsists with the King and the Royal Family, when by some Revolution they are deprived of their Crown? We have lately remarked, (§ 194) that a personal alliance expires with the reign of him who contracted it: but that is to be understood of an alliance with the state, limited as to its duration, to the reign of the contracting King. This, of which we are here speaking, is of another nature. For though it binds the state, since it is bound by all the public acts of its Sovereign, it is made directly in favour of the King and his Family; it would therefore be absurd for it to terminate at the moment when they have need of it, and at an event against which it was made. When an alliance to preserve a King takes place. King does not lose his quality by the loss of his king­dom.Besides, the King. does not lose his quality merely by the loss of his king­dom. * If he is stripped of it unjustly ly an Usurper, or by Rebels, he preserves his rights, in the number of which are his alliances.

[Page] But who shall judge, if the King be dethroned lawfully or by violence? An independent Nation acknowledges no judge. If the Body of the Nation declares the King deprived of his rights by the abuse he has made of them, and deposes him, it may justly do it when its grievantes are well founded, and no other power has a right to cen­sure it. The personal Ally of this King, ought not then to assist him against the Nation that has made use of its right in deposing him: if he attempts it, he injures that Nation. England declared war against Louis the XIVth, in the year 1688, for supporting the interest of James the Second, who was deposed in form by the Nation. The same country declared war against him a second time, at the beginning of the present century, because that Prince acknowledged the son of the deposed James, under the name of James the Third. Case wherein aid may be given to a deposed King.In doubtful cases, and when the Body of the Nation has not pronounced, or HAS NOT PRONOUNCED FREELY, a Sovereign may naturally sup­port and defend an Ally, and it is then that the voluntary Law of Nations subsists between different states. The party that has driven out the King, pretends to have right on its side: this unhappy King and his Ally, flatter them­selves with having the same advantage, and as they have no common judge upon earth, they have no other method to take but to apply to arms to terminate the dispute: they therefore engage in a formal war.

Not obliged to pursue his right be­yond a cer­tain point.In short, when the foreign Prince has faithfully fulfilled his engagements towards an unfortunate Monarch, when he has done in his defence, or to procure his restoration, all he was obliged to perform, in virtue of the alliance; if his efforts are ineffectual, the dethroned Prince cannot require him to support an endless war in his favour, or expect that he will eternally remain the Enemy of the Nation, or of the Sovereign who has deprived him of the Throne. He must think of peace, abandon the Ally, and consider him as having himself abandoned his right, through necessity. Thus Louis XIV. was obliged to abandon James the Second, and to acknowledge K. Wil­liam, though he had at first treated him as an Usurper.

The same question presents itself in real alliances, and in general, in all alliances made with the state, and not in particular with a King for the defence of his person. [Page] Case of de­fence against sub­jects.An Ally ought, doubtless, to be defended against every invasion, against every foreign violence, and even against his rebellious subjects; in the same manner a Republick ought to be defended against the enterprizes of one who at­tempts to destroy the public liberty. But it ought to be re­membered, that an Ally of the State, or the Nation, is not its Judge. If the Nation has deposed its King in form; if the people of a Republick have driven out their Magistrates, and set themselves at liberty, or acknow­ledged the authority of an Usurper, either expressly or tacitly; to oppose these domestick regulations, by dis­puting their justice or validity, would be to interfere in the Government of the Nation, and to do it an injury, (see § 54, and following of this book). The Ally re­mains the Ally of the State, notwithstanding the change that has happened in it. Case where real alli­ances may be re­nounced. However, when this change renders the alliance useless, dangerous or disagreeable, it may renounce it: for it may say, upon a good foundation, that it would not have entered into an alliance with that Nation, had it been under the present form of Government.

We may say here, what we have said on a personal alliance: however just the cause of that King may be, who is driven from the throne, either by his subjects or by a foreign usurper; Not an eternal war.his Allies are not obliged to support an eternal war in his favour. After having made in­effectual efforts to restore him, they must at length give peace to their people, and come to an accommodation with the Usurper, and for that purpose treat with him as with a lawful Sovereign. Louis XIV. exhausted by a bloody and unsuccessful war, offered at Gertruidenburg to abandon his grandson, whom he had placed on the throne of Spain: and when affairs had changed their appearance, Charles of Austria, the rival of Philip, saw himself, in his turn, abandoned by his Allies. They grew weary of exhausting their states, in order to give him the possession of a Crown, which they believed to be his due, but which, to all appearance, they should never be able to procure for him.

DANGEROUS POWER

BOOK III. CHAP. III. § 45.

All nations may join.IT is still easier to prove, that should this formidable Power betray any unjust and ambitious dispositions, by doing the least injustice to another, every Nation may avail themselves of the occasion, and join their forces to those of the party injured, in order to reduce that ambi­tious Power, and disable it from so easily oppressing its neighbours, or keeping them in continual awe and fear. For an injury gives a Nation a right to provide for its future safety, by taking away from the violator the means of oppression. It is lawful, and even praise-worthy, to assist those who are oppressed, or unjustly attacked.

SYSTEM OF EUROPE.

§ 47. Europe forms a political system, a body, where the whole is connected by the relations and different in­terests of Nations inhabiting this part of the world. It is not, as anciently, a confused heap of detached pieces, each of which thought itself very little concerned in the fate of others, and seldom regarded things which did im­mediately relate to it. Europe a Republick to preserve order and liberty.The continual attention of Sove­reigns to what is on the carpet, the constant residence of ministers, and the perpetual negociations, make Europe a kind of a Republick, the members of which, though inde­pendent, unite, through the ties of common interest, for the maintenance of order and liberty. Hence arose that famous scheme of the political equilibrium, or balance of power; by which is understood such a disposition of things, as no power is able absolutely to predominate, or to prescribe laws to others.

§ 49. Confederacies would be a sure way of preserving the equilibrium, and supporting the liberty of Nations, did all Princes thoroughly understand their true interests, and regulate all their steps for the good of the state.

CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY.

BOOK III. CHAP. IX. § 165.

INSTEAD of the pillage of the country, and defence­less places, a custom has been substituted more humane and more advantageous to the Sovereign making war: I mean that of contributions. Whoever carries on a just war *, has a right of making the enemy's country contribute to the support of the army, and towards defraying all the charges of the war. Thus he obtains a part of what is due to him, and the subjects of the enemy, on submitting to this imposition, are secured from pillage, and the country is preserved: To be mo­derate.but a general who would not fully his reputation, is to moderate his contributions, and pro­portion them to those on whom they are imposed. An excess in this point, is not without the reproach of cruelty and inhumanity: if it shews less ferocity than ravage and destruction, it glares with avarice.

ASYLUM.

BOOK I. CHAP. XIX. § 232.

IF an exile or banished man is driven from his country for any crime, it does not belong to the nation in which he has taken refuge to punish him for a fault committed in a foreign country. For nature gives to mankind and to nations the right of punishing only for their defence and safety; whence it follows that he can only be punished by those whom he has offended.

§. 233. But this reason shews, that if the justice of each nation ought in general to be confined to the punish­ment of crimes committed within its own territories, we ought to except from this rule the villains who, by the quality and habitual frequency of their crimes, violate all [Page] public security, and declare themselves the enemies of the human race. Poisoners, assassins, and incendiaries by pro­fession, may be exterminated wherever they are seized; for they attack and injure all nations, by trampling under foot the foundations of the common safety. Thus pirates are brought to the gibbet, by the first into whose hands they fall. If the Sovereign of the country where those crimes have been committed reclaims the authors of them, in order to bring them to punishment, they ought to be restored to him, as one who is principally interested in punishing them in an exemplary manner: and it being proper to convict the guilty, and to try them according to some form of law; this is a second [not sole] reason, why malefactors are usually delivered up at the desire of the state where their crimes have been committed.

Ibid. § 230. Every nation has a right of refusing to admit a stranger into the country, when he cannot enter into it without putting it into evident danger, or without doing it a remarkable prejudice*.

FOREIGN MINISTERS.

BOOK IV. CHAP. 5. § 66.

THE obligation does not go so far as to suffer at all times, perpetual Ministers, who are desirous of residing with a Sovereign, though they have nothing to negociate. It is natural, indeed, and very agreeable to the sentiments which nations owe to each other, that these resident Mi­nisters, when there is nothing to be feared from their stay, should be friendly received: but if there be any solid reason against this, what is for the good of the State ought un­questionably to be preferred; and the foreign Sovereign cannot take it amiss if his Minister, who has concluded the affairs of his commission, and has no other affairs to nego­tiate, be desired to depart†. The custom of keeping every [Page] where Ministers continually resident, is now so strongly established, that the refusal of a conformity to it would, without very good reasons, give offence. These reasons may arise from particular conjunctures; but there are also common reasons always subsisting, and such as relate to the constitution of a Government, and the state of a Nation. The Republicks have often very good reasons of the latter kind, to excuse themselves from continually suffering Foreign Ministers, who corrupt the Citizens, in order to gain them over to their Masters, to the great prejudice of the Republick, and fomenting of the Parties, &c. And should they only diffuse among a Nation, formerly plain, frugal, and virtuous, a taste for luxury, avidity for money, and the manners of courts, these would be more than sufficient for wise and provident Rulers to dismiss them.

FINIS.

This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal. The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.