SCHEMES (FRENCH)

Have nothing in Experience to prove their Tendency beneficial.

IN obtaining and fecuring their power, the affem◄ bly proceeds upon principles the most oppofite from thofe which appear to direct them in the ufe of it. An obfervation on this difference will let us into the true spirit of their conduct. Every thing which they have done, or continue to do, in order to obtain and keep their power, is by the moft common arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have done before them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing at all that is new. They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader. They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and ufurpation. But in all the regulations relative to the public good, the spirit has been the very reverse of this. There they commit the whole to the mercy of untried fpeculations; they abandon the dearest interefts of the public to thofe loose theories, to which none of them would chufe to trust the flightest of his private concerns. They make this difference, because in their defire of obtaining and fecuring power they are thoroughly in earneft; there they travel in the beaten road. The public interefts, because about them they have no real folicitude, they abandon wholly to chance; I fay to chance, because their schemes have nothing in experience to prove their tendency beneficial. Ibid.

SENSES

To be fubject to the Judgment in Politics.

In our politics as in our common conduct, we fhall be worse than infants, if we do not put our fenfes under the tuition of our judgment, and effectually

cure ourselves of that optical illufion which makes a briar at our nofe of greater magnitude than an oak at five hundred yards diftance.Thoughts on the Caufe of the prefent Difcontents.

SOLDIERY.

Corruption of the Soldiery of Louis XVI. previous to the Revolution.

THE worst effect of all their proceeding was on their military, which was rendered an army for every purpose but that of defence. If the question was,. whether foldiers were to forget they were citizens, as an abstract propofition, I could have no difference about it; though, as it is ufual, when abstract principles are to be applied, much is to be thought on the manner of uniting the character of citizen and foldier. But as applied to the events which had happened in France, where the abstract principle it cloathed with its circumftances, I think that my friend (Mr. Fox) would agree with me, that what was done there furnished no matter of exultation, either in the act or the example. These foldiers were not citizens; but bafe hireling mutineers, and mercenary fordid deferters, wholly deftitute of any ho, nourable principles. Their conduct was one of the fruits of that anarchic fpirit, from the evils of which a democracy itself was to be reforted to by those who were the leaft difpofed to that form as a fort of refuge. It was not an army in corps and with difcipline, and embodied under the refpectable patriot citizens of the ftate in refifting tyranny. Nothing like it It was the cafe of common foldiers deferting from their officers, to join a furious, licentious populace. It was a desertion to a caufe, the real object of which was to level all thofe inftitutions, and to break, all thofe connections, natural and civil, that regulate and hold together the community by a chain of fubordination; to raise foldiers against their offi

cers; fervants against their masters; tradefinen against their customers; artificers against their employers; tenants against their landlords; curátes againft their, bifhops; aud children against their parents. That this caufe of theirs was not an enemy to fervitude, but to fociety. Speech on the Army Eftimates,

SERMONS (ANNIVERSARY.)

THE kind of anniverfary fermons, to which a great part of what I write refers, if men are not fhamed out of their prefent courfe, in commemorating the. fact, will cheat many out of the principles, and deprive them of the benefits of the revolution they commemorate. I confefs to you, Sir, I never liked this continual talk of refiftance and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of the constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of fociety dangerously valetudinary: it is taking periodical doses of mercury fublimate, and fwallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our love of liberty.

This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and wears out, by a vulgar and proftituted ufe, the fpring of that fpirit which is to be exerted on great occafions. It was in the moft patient period of Roman fervitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys at fchool-cum perimit fœvos claffis numerofa tyrannos. In the ordinary state of things, it produces in a country like ours the worst effects, even on the caufe of that liberty which it abufes with the diffolutenefs of an extravagant fpeculation.-Reflections on the Revolution in France.

STATE.

We have confecrated the State,

To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconftancy and verfatility, ten thousand times worfe than thofe of

obftinacy and the blindeft prejudice, we have confecrated the State, that no man fhould approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due cau tion; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its fubverfion; that he fhould ap proach to the faults of the State as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling folicitude. By this wife prejudice we are taught to look with horror on thofe children of their country, who are prompt rafhly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal conftitution, and renovate their father's life.-Ibid.

STATE, (REASONS OF.)

1 ADMIT that reafon of ftate will not, in many circumstances, permit the difclofure of the true ground of a public proceeding. In that cafe filence is manly and it is wife. It is fair to call for truft when the principle of reafon itself fufpends its public ufe. I take the diftinction to be this. The ground of a particular measure, making a part of a plan, it is rarely proper to divulge. All the broader grounds of policy on which the general plan is to be adopted, ought as rarely to be concealed. They who have not the whole caufe before them, call them politicians, call them people, call them what you will, are no judges. The difficulties of the cafe as well as its fair fide, ought to be prefented. This ought to be done: and it is all that can be done. When we have our true fituation diftinctly prefented to us, if we refolve with a blind and headlong violence, to refift the admonitions of our friends, and to caft ourselves into the hands of our potent and irreconcileable foes, then, and not till then, the minifters stand acquitted before God and man, for whatever may come. Regicide Peace.

STATES (ECCLESIASTICAL.)

Seeds of Revolution not wanting in the Ecclefiaflical

States.

IN the eftates of the church, notwithstanding their ftri&tnefs in banishing the French out of that country, there are not wanting the feeds of a revolution. The fpirit of Nepotifm prevails there nearly as ftrong as ever. Every pope of courfe is to give origin or reftoration to a great family, by the means of large donations. The foreign revenues have long been gradually on the decline, and feem now in a manner dried up. To fupply this defect the refource of vexatious and impolitic jobbing at home, if any thing, is rather encreafed than leflened. Various, well intended but ill understood practices, fome of them exifting, in their spirit at leaft, from the time of. the old Roman empire, ftill prevail; and that government is as blindly attached to old abufive cuf toms, as others are wildly difpofed to all forts of innovations and experiments. These abuses were lefs felt whilft the pontificate drew riches from abroad, which in fome measure counterbalanced the evils of their remifs and jobbifh government at home. But now it can fubfift only on the refources of domeftic management; and abufes in that management of courfe will be more intimately and more feverely felt.

In the midst of the apparently torpid languor of the ecclefiaftical ftate, those who have had opportunity of a near obfervation, have feen a little rippling in that fmooth water, which indicates fomething alive under it. There is in the ecclefiaftical ftate, a perfonage who feems capable of acting (but with more force and fteadinefs) the part of the tribune Rienzi. The people once inflamed will not be destitute of a leader. They have fuch an one already in the Cardinal or Archbishop Buon Campagna. He is, of all men, if I am not ill-informed, the most turbulent, feditious, intriguing, bold, and desperate.