can be any man in this country so hardy as to undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers of France; and if it should be said in their favour, that it is not just to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have actually tried and condemned him on the very same charges among others; we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of this part of his book against them : it comes from among themselves. Camille Desmoulins published the "History of the Brissotins" in answer to this very address of Brissot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last Holy Revolution of the thirty-first of May; and the flagitious orthodoxy of his writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by the jacobin club, when they saved him from that guillotine "which he grazed." In the beginning of his work he displays "the task of glory," as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention. All is summed up in two points: "to create the French republick, and to disorga"nize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants,

by the eruption of the volcanick principles of equality.*" The coincidence is exact; the proof is complete and irresistible.

See the translation of the History of the Brissotins, by Camille Desmoulins, printed for Owen, p. 2.

In a cause like this, and in a time like the present, there is no neutrality. They who are not actively, and with decision and energy, against jacobinism, are its partisans. They who do not dread it, love it. It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing made to produce a powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of jacobinism, such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded either with enthusiastick admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation, resentment, and horrour.

Another great lesson may be taught by this book, and by the fortune of the author, and his party I mean a lesson drawn from the consequences of engaging in daring innovations, from a hope that we may be able to limit their mischievous operation at our pleasure, and by our policy to secure ourselves against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to the world. This lesson is taught through almost all the important pages of history; but never has it been taught so clearly and so awfully as at this hour. The revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious death, under the sentence of the revolutionary tribunal (a tribunal composed of those with whom they had triumphed in the total destruction of the ancient government) were by no means ordinary men, or without very considerable

considerable talents and resources.

But with all

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

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

robbers and murderers.

The translator has only to say for himself, that he has found some difficulty in this version. His original author, through haste, perhaps, or through the perturbation of a mind filled with a great and arduous enterprise, is often obscure. There are some passages, too, in which his language requires to be first translated into French, at least into such French as the academy would in former times have tolerated. He writes with great force and vivacity; but the language, like every thing else in his country, has undergone a revolution.

The translator thought it best to be as literal as possible; conceiving such a translation would perhaps be the most fit to convey the author's peculiar mode of thinking. In this way the translator has no credit for style; but he makes it up in fidelity. Indeed the facts and observations are so much more important than the style, that no apology is wanted for producing them in any intelligible

manner.

APPENDIX.

[The address of M. BRISSOT to his Constituents being now almost forgotten, it has been thought right to add, as an Appendix, that part of it to which Mr. BURKE points our particular attention, and upon which he so forcibly comments in his Preface.]

****TH

****THREE sorts of anarchy have ruined our affairs in Belgium.

The anarchy of the administration of Paché, which has completely disorganized the supply of our armies: which by that disorganization reduced the army of Dumourier to stop in the middle of its conquests; which struck it motionless through the months of November and December; which hindered it from joining Bournonville and Custine, and from forcing the Prussians and Austrians to repass the Rhine, and afterwards from putting themselves in a condition to invade Holland sooner than they did.

To this state of ministerial anarchy, it is necessary to join that other anarchy which disorganized the troops, and occasioned their habits of pillage; and lastly, that anarchy which created the revolutionary power, and forced the union to France of the countries we had invaded, before things were ripe for such a measure.

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