holy insurrection, commenced the thirty-first of last May. As the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on insurrection, and of that rebellion improving upon rebellion, the sacred irresponsible character of the members of the Convention was laughed to scorn. They had themselves shewn in their proceedings against the late king, how little the most fixed principles are to be relied upon, in their revolutionary constitution. The members of the Girondin party in the Convention, were seized upon or obliged to save themselves by flight. The unhappy author of this piece, with twenty of his associates, suffered together on the scaffold, after a trial, the iniquity of which puts all description to defiance.

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

Our confidence in those who watch for the public will not be lessened. We shall be sensible that to alarm us in the late circumstances of our affairs, was not for our molestation, but for our security. We shall be sensible that this alarm was not ill-timed-and that it ought to have been given, as it was given, before the enemy had time fully to mature and accomplish their plans, for reducing us to the condition of France, as that condition is faithfully and without exaggeration described in the following work. We now have our arms in our hands; we have the means of opposing the sense, the courage, and the resources of England, to the deepest, the most craftily devised, the best combined, and the most exten

sive design, that ever was carried on since the beginning of the world, against all property, all order, all religion, all law, and all real freedom.

The reader is requested to attend to the part of this pamphlet which relates to the conduct of the jacobins, with regard to the Austrian Netherlands, which they call Belgia, or Belgium. It is from page seventy-two to page eighty-four of this translation. Here the views and designs upon all their neighbours are fully displayed. Here the whole mystery of their ferocious politics is laid open with the utmost clearness. Here the manner in which they would treat every nation into which they could introduce their doctrines and influence is distinctly marked. We see that no nation was out of danger, and we see what the danger was with which every nation was threatened. The writer of this pamphlet throws the blame of several of the most violent of the proceedings on the other party. He and his, friends, at the time alluded to, had a majority in the National Assembly. He admits that neither he nor they ever publicly opposed these measures; but he attributes their silence, to fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain, that whether from fear, or from approbation, they never discovered any dislike of those proceedings, till Dumourier was driven from the Netherlands. But whatever their motive was, it is plain that the most violent is, and since the revolution has always been, the predominant party.

If Europe could not be saved without our interposition, (most certainly it could not) I am sure there is not an Englishman, who would not blush to be left out of the general effort made in favour of the general safety. But we are not secondary parties in this war; we are principals in the danger, and we ought to be principals in the exertion. If any Englishman asks whether the designs of the French assassins are confined to the spot of Europe which they actually desolate, the citizen Brissot, the author of this book, and the author of the declaration of war against England, will give him his answer. He will find in this book, that the republicans are divided into factions, full of the most furious and destructive animosities against each other: but he will find also that there is one point in which they perfectly agree-that they are all enemies alike, to the government of all other nations, and only contend with each other about the means of propagating their tenets, and extending their empire by conquests.

It is true, that in this present work, which the author professedly designed for an appeal

to foreign nations and posterity, he has dressed up the philosophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he could to make her appearance in public; but through every disguise her hideous figure may be distinctly seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to see her in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him to a private letter of Brissot written towards the end of the last year, and quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet du Pan. "We must," (says our philosopher) "set fire to the four corners of Europe;" in that alone is our safety. "Dumourier cannot suit us. I always distrusted him. Miranda is the general for us; he understands the revolutionary power, he has courage, lights, &c." Here every thing is fairly avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal conflagration of Europe; the only real dissatisfaction with Dumourier is a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of that preference which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without assigning his reasons, is declared to be the superior fitness of that foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and destruction. On the other hand, if there 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 thirtyfirst of May; and the flagitious orthodoxy of his writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by the jacobin club, when they saved him from that guillotine "which he grazed." In the beginning of his work he displays "the task of glory," as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention. All is summed up in two points: "to create the French republic, and to disorganize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants by the eruption of the volcanic principles of equality." The co

* See the translation of Mallet Du Pan's work, printed for Owen, page 53.

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

incidence is exact; the proof is complete an irresistible.

In a cause like this, and in a time like the present, there is no neutrality. They who are not actively, and with decision and energy, against jacobinism, are its partisans. They who do not dread it, love it. It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing made to produce a powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of jacobinism, such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded either with enthusiastic admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation, resentment and 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 innova tions, from an hope that we may be able to limit their mischievous operation at our pleasure, and by our policy to secure ourselves against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to the world. This lesson is taught through almost all the important pages of history; but never has it been taught so clearly and so awfully as at this hour. The revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious death, under the sentence of the revolutionary tribunal (a tribunal composed of those with whom they had triumphed in the total destruction of the ancient government) where by no means ordinary men, or without very considerable talents and resources. But with all their talents and resources, and the apparent momentary extent of their power, we see the fate of their projects, their power, and their perWe 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.

sons.

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

The translator has only to say for himself, that he has found some difficulty in this version. His original author, through haste, perhaps, or through the perturbation of a mind filled with a great and arduous enterprise, is often obscure. There are some passages too, in which his language requires to be first translated into French, at least into such

French as the academy would in former times have tolerated. He writes with great force and vivacity; but the language, like 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.

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

The anarchy of the administration of Pache, 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.

Who could, however, doubt the frightful evils that were occasioned in our armies by that doctrine of anarchy which under the shadow of equality of right, would establish equality of fact? This is universal equality, the scourge of society, as the other is the support of society. An anarchical doctrine which would level all things, talents, and ignorance, virtues, and vices, places, usages, and services; a doctrine which begot that fatal project of organizing the army, presented by Dubois de Crance, to which it will be indebted for a complete disorganization.

system of this equality of fact, entire equality. It had been projected and decreed even at the very opening of the Dutch campaign. If any project could encourage the want of discipline in the soldiers, any scheme could disgust and banish good officers, and throw all things into confusion at the moment when order alone could give victory, it is this project, in truth so stubbornly defended by the anarchists, and transplanted into their ordinary tactic.

How could they expect that there should exist any discipline, any subordination, when even in the camp they permit motions, censures, and denunciations of officers, and of generals? Does not such a disorder destroy all the respect that is due to superiours, and all the mutual confidence without which success cannot be hoped for? For the spirit of distrust makes the soldier suspicious, and intimidates the general. The first discerns treason in every danger; the second, always placed between the necessity of conquest, and the image of the scaffold, dares not raise himself to bold conception, and those heights of courage which electrify an army and insure victory. Turenne, in our time, would have carried his head to the scaffold; for he was sometimes beat: but the reason why he more frequently conquered was, that his discipline was severe: It was, that his soldiers confiding in his talents, never muttered discontent instead of fighting.-Without reciprocal confidence between the soldier and the general there can be no army, no victory, especially in

Is it not to the same system of anarchy, of equalization, and want of subordination, which has been recommended in some clubs, and defended even in the Convention, that we owe the pillages, the murders, the enormities of all kinds which it was difficult for the officers to put a stop to, from the general spirit of insubordination; excesses which have rendered the French name odious to the Belgians? Again, is it not to this system of anarchy, and of robbery, that we are indebted for the revolutionary power, which has so justly aggravated the hatred of the Belgians against France?

What did enlightened republicans think before the tenth of August, men who wished for liberty, not only for their own country, but for all Europe? They believed that they could generally establish it, by exciting the governed against governors, in letting the people see the facility and advantages of such insurrection.

But how can the people be led to that point? By the example of good government established among us; by the example of order; by the care of spreading nothing but moral ideas among them; to respect their properties and their rights; to respect their prejudices, even when we combat them; by disinterestedness in defending the people, by a zeal to extend the spirit of liberty among them.

This system was at first followed.* Excellent pamphlets from the pen of Condorcet prepared the people for liberty; the tenth of August, the republican decrees, the battle of Valmy, the retreat of the Prussians, the victory of Jemappe, all spoke in favour of France; all was rapidly destroyed by the revolutionary power. Without doubt, good intentions made the majority of the assembly adopt it; they would plant the tree of liberty in a foreign soil, under the shade of a people already free. To the eyes of the people of Belgium it seemed but the mask of a new foreign tyranny. This opinion was erroneous; I will suppose it for a moment; but still this opinion of Belgium deserved to be considered. In general we have always considered our own opinions and our own intentions, rather than the people whose cause we defend. We have given those people a will; that is to say, we have more than ever alienated them from liberty.

How could the Belgic people believe themselves free, since we exercise for them, and over them, the rights of sovereignty; when without consulting them, we suppress all in a mass, their ancient usages, their abuses, their

The most seditious libels upon all govern. ments, in order to excite insurrection in Spain, Holland, and other countries. Translator.

prejudices, those classes of society which without doubt are contrary to the spirit of liberty, but the utility of whose destruction was not as yet proved to them; How could they believe themselves free and sovereign, when we made them take such an oath as we thought fit, as a test to give them the right of voting? How could they believe themselves free, when openly despising their religious worship, which religious worship that superstitious people valued beyond their liberty, beyond even their life; when we proscribed their priests; when we banished them from their assemblies, where they were in the practice of seeing them govern; when we seized their revenues, their domains, and riches, to the profit of the nation; when we carried to the very censer those hands which they regarded as profane? Doubtless these operations were founded on principles; but those principles ought to have had the consent of the Belgians, before they were carried into practice, otherwise they necessarily became our most cruel enemies.

Arrived ourselves at the last bounds of liberty and equality, trampling under our feet all human superstitions, (after, however, a four years' war with them,) we attempted all at once to raise to the same eminence, men, strangers even to the first elementary principles of liberty, and plunged for fifteen hundred years in ignorance and superstition; we wished to force men to see, when a thick cataract covered their eyes, even before we had removed that cataract; we would force men to see, whose dulness of character had raised a mist before their eyes, and before that character was altered.*

*It may not be amiss once for all to remark on the style of all the philosophical politicians of France. Without any distinction in their several sects and parties, they agree in treating all nations who will not conform their govern ment, laws, manners, and religion, to the new French fashion, as an herd of slaves. They consider the content with which men live under those governments as stupidity, and all attachment to religion, as the effects of the grossest ignorance.

The people of the Netherlands, by their constitution, are as much entitled to be called tree, as any nation upon earth. The Austrian government (until some wild attempts the emperour Joseph made on the French principle, but which have been since abandoned by the court of Vienna,) has been remarkably mild. No people were more at their ease than the Flemish sub. jects, particularly the lower classes. It is cu rious to hear this great oculist talk of couching the cataract by which the Netherlands were blinded, and hindered from seeing, in its proper colours, the beautiful vision of the French Re

Do you believe that the doctrine which now prevails in France, would have found many partisans among us in 1789? No; a revolution in ideas, and in prejudices, is not made with that rapidity; it moves gradually: it does not escalade.

Philosophy does not inspire by violence, nor by seduction, nor is it the sword that begets love of liberty.

Joseph the Second also borrowed the language of philosophy when he wished to suppress the monks in Belgium, and to seize upon their revenues. There was seen on him a mask only of philosophy, covering the hideous countenance of a greedy despot, and the people ran to arms. Nothing better than another kind of despotism has been seen in the revolutionary power.

We have seen in the commissioners of the National Convention, nothing but pro-consuls working the mine of Belgium for the profit of the French nation; seeking to conquer it for the sovereign of Paris; either to aggrandize his empire, or to share the burdens of the debts, and furnish a rich prize to the robbers who domineered in France.

Do you believe the Belgians have ever been the dupes of those well-rounded periods, which they vended in the pulpit, in order to familiarize them to the idea of an union with France? Do you believe they were ever imposed upon by those votes and resolutions, made by what is called acclamation, for their union, of which corruption paid one part,* and fear forced the remainder? Who, at this time of day, is unacquainted with the springs and wires of their miserable puppet shew? Who does not know the farces of primary assemblies, composed of a president, of a secretary, and of some assistants, whose day's work was paid for? No; it is not by means which belong only to thieves and despots that the foundations of liberty can be laid in an enslaved country. It is not by those means, that a

public, which he has himself painted with so masterly an hand. That people must needs be dull, blind, and brutalized by fifteen hundred years of superstition, (the time elapsed since the Introduction of Christianity among them) who could prefer their former state to the present state of France. The reader will remark, that the only difference between Brissot and his adversaries, is in the mode of bringing other nations into the pale of the French RepublicThey would abolish the order and classes of society and all religion at a stroke: Brissot would have just the same thing done, but with more address and management. Translator. * See the correspondence of Dumourier, especially the letter of the 12th of March.

new born republic, a people who know not yet the elements of republican governments, can be united to us. Even slaves do not suffer themselves to be seduced by such artifices; and if they have not the strength to resist, they have at least the sense to know how to appreciate the value of such an attempt.

If we would attach the Belgians to us, we must at least enlighten their minds by gr writings; we must send to them missionarias”, and not despotic commissioners.* Weght to give them time to see; to perceive by themselves the advantages of liberty; the unhappy effects of superstition; the fatal spirit of priesthood. And whilst we waited for this moral revolution, we should have accepted the offers which they incessantly repeated, to join to the French army, an army of 50,000 men; to entertain them at their own expense: and to advance to France, the specie of which she stood in need.

But have we ever seen those fifty thousand soldiers who were to join our army, as soon as the standard of liberty should be displayed in Belgium? Have we ever seen those treasures which they were to count into our hands? Can we either accuse the sterility of their country, or the penury of their treasure, or the coldness of their love for liberty? No! despotism and anarchy, these are the benefits. which we have transplanted into their soil We have acted, we have spoken like masters; and from that time we have found the Flemings nothing but jugglers, who made the grimace of liberty for money; or slaves, who in their hearts cursed their new tyrants. Our commissioners address them in this sort; you have nobles and priests among you, drive them out without delay, or we will neither be your brethren nor your patrons." They answered, give us but time; only leave to us the care of reforming these institutions. Our answer to them was, "No! it must be at the moment, it must be on the spot, or we will treat you as enemies; we will abandon you to the resentment of the Austrians."

What could the disarmed Belgians object to all this, surrounded as they were by 70,000 men? They had only to hold their tongues, and to bow down their heads before their masters! They did hold their tongues, and their silence is received as a sincere and free assent.