REVOLUTION (FRENCH.)

State of France in 1793.

THE State of France is perfectly fimple. It confifts of but two defcriptions-the Oppreffors and the Oppreffed.

The first have the whole authority of the State in their hands, all the arms, all the revenues of the public, all the confifcations of individuals and corporations. They have taken the lower fort from their occupations, and have put them into pay, that they may form them into a body of Janifaries to overrule and awe property. The heads of these wretches they never fuffer to cool. They fupply them with a food for fury varied by the day-befides the fenfual ftate of intoxication from which they are rarely free. They have made the priests and people formally abjure the divinity: they have eftranged them from every civil, moral, and focial, or even natural and inftinctive fentiment, habit, and practice, and have rendered them fyftematically favages, to make it impoffible for them to be the inftruments of any fober and virtuous arrangement, or to be reconciled to any ftate of order, under any name whatfoever.

The other defcription, the Oppreffed-are people of fome property; they are the fmall reliques of the perfecuted Landed Intereft; they are the burghers and the farmers. By the very circumftance of their being of fome property, though numerous in fome points of view, they cannot be very confiderable as a number. In cities the nature of their occupations renders them domeftic and feeble; in the country it confines them to their farm for fubfiftence. The National Guards are all changed and reformed. Every thing fufpicious in the defcription of which they were compofed, is rigouroufly difarmed. Com

mittees, called of Vigilance and Safety, are every where formed; a moft fevere and fcrutinizing in quifition, far more rigid than any thing ever known or imagined. Two perfons cannot meet and confer without hazard to their liberty, and even to their lives. Numbers fcarcely 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 Mafters. Multitudes of all ages and fexes are actually imprisoned. I have reason to believe, that in France there are not, for various ftate crimes, so few as twenty thoufand* actually in jail-a large portion of people of property in any State. If a father of a family fhould fhew any difpofitions to refift, or to withdraw himfelf from their power, his wife and children are cruelly to answer for it. It is by means of thefe hoftages, that they keep the troops, which they force by maffes (as they call it) into the field-true to their colours.

Another of their refources is not to be forgotten. -They have lately found a way of giving a fort of ubiquity to the fupreme Sovereign Authority, which no Monarch has been able yet to give to any reprefentation of his.

The Commiffioners of the National Convention, who are the Members of the Convention itself, and really exercife all its powers, make continual circuits through every province, and vifits to every army. There they fuperfede all the ordinary authorities, civil and military, and change and alter every thing at their pleasure. So that in effect, no deliberative capacity exifts in any portion of the inhabitants. Memorial on the Affairs of France in 1793.

→ Some accounts make them five times as many.

REVOLUTION (FRENCH).

Oppreffive, but fpirited and daring.

FRANCE differs effentially from all those Governments which are formed without fyftem, which exift by habit, and which are confufed with the multitude, and with the complexity of their purfuits. What now stands as government in France, is ftruck out at a heat. The defign is wicked, immoral, impious, oppreffive; but it is fpirited and daring: it is fyftematic; it is fimple in its principle; it has unity and confiftency in perfection. In that country, entirely to cut off a branch of commerce, to extinguifh a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of money, to violate credit, to fufpend the courfe of agriculture, even to burn a city, or to lay wafte a province of their own, does not coft them a moment's anxiety. To them, the will, the wifh, the want, the liberty, the toil, the blood of individuals is as nothing. Individuality is left out of their scheme of government. The state is all in all. Every thing is referred to the production of force; afterwards every thing is trufted to the ufe of it. It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in its fpirit, and in all its movements. The ftate has dominion and conqueft for its fole objects; dominion over minds by profelytifm, over bodies by

arms.

Thus conftituted with an immenfe body of natural . means, which are leffened in their amount only to be increased in their effect, France has fince the accomplishment of the revolution, a complete unity in its direction. It has deftroyed every refource of the ftate, which depends upon opinion and the good will of individuals. The riches of convention difappear. The advantages of nature in fome confiderable meafure remain; the command over them is complete and abfolute. We go about afking when affignats will expire, and laugh at the laft price of them; but what fignifies the fate of thefe tickets of defpotism ?

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The defpotifin will find defpotic means of fupply. They have found the fhort cut to the productions of Nature, while others in pursuit of them are obliged to wind through the labyrinth of artificial fociety, They feize upon the fruit of the labour; they feize upon the labourer himself. The natural means of France are ftill great. They are very materially lef sened, I admit ; but the power over them is increased. Were France but half what it is in population, in compactnefs, in applicability of its force, fituated as it is, and being what it is, it would be too strong for most of the States of Europe, conftituted as they are, and proceeding as they proceed. Would it be wife to estimate what the world of Europe, as well as the world of Afia, had to dread from Jinghiz Khan, upon a contemplation of the refources of the cold and barren fpot in the remoteft Tartary, from whence first iffued that fcourge of the human race? Ought we to judge from the excife and ftamp duties of the rocks, or from the paper circulation of the fands of Arabia, the power by which Mahomet and his tribes laid hold at once on the two moft powerful empires of the world; beat one of them totally to the ground, broke to pieces the other, and, in not much longer space of time than I have lived, overturned governments, laws, manners, religion, and extended an empire from Indus to the Pyrennees.

Material refources never have fupplied, nor ever can fupply the want of unity in defign and conftancy in purfuit. But unity in defign, and perfeverance, and boldness in purfuit, have never wanted refources, and never will. We have not confidered as we ought the dreadful energy of a State, in which the property has nothing to do with the Government. Reflect, my dear Sir, reflect again and again on a Government, in which the property is in fubjection, and where nothing rules but the minds of defperate The condition of a commonwealth not governed by its property, was a combination of things,

men.

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which the learned and ingenious fpeculator Harrington, who has toffed about fociety into all forms, never could imagine to be poffible. We have seen it; the world has felt it; and if the world will fhut their eyes to this ftate of things, they will feel it more. rulers there have found their refources in crimes. The difcovery is dreadful, the mine exhauftlefs. They have every thing to gain, and they have nothing to lofe. They have a boundlefs inheritance in hope; and there is no medium for them betwixt the highest elevation, and death with infamy. Never can those, who, from the miferable fervitude of the desk have been raised to empire, again fubmit to the bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of copying music, or writing plaidoyers by the fheet. It has made me often fmile in bitternels, when I heard talk of an indemnity to fuch men, provided they returned to their allegiance.

From all this, what is my inference? It is, that this new fyftem of robbery in France cannot be rendered fafe by any art, or any means. That it must be destroyed, or that it will deftroy all Europe. That by fome means or other the force oppofed to her. fhould be made to bear, in a contrary direction, fome analogy and resemblance to the force and fpirit he employs.- -Regicide Peace.

REVOLUTION (FRENCH.)

Difference between this Revolution and others.

THERE have been many internal revolutions in the government of countries, both as to perfons and forms, in which the neighbouring states have had little or no concern. Whatever the government might be, with refpect to thefe perfons and these forms, the stationary interefts of the nation concerned have most commonly influenced the new governments in the fame manner in which they influenced the old;