the resources of party policy. They did not venture directly to confront the publick sentiment; for a very short time they seemed to partake of it. They began with a reluctant and sorrowful confession: they deplored the stains, which tarnished the lustre of a good cause. After keeping a decent time of retirement, in a few days crept out an apology for the excesses of men cruelly irritated by the attacks of unjust power. Grown bolder, as the first feelings of mankind decayed and the colour of these horrours began to fade upon the imagination, they proceeded from apology to defence. They urged, but still deplored, the absolute necessity of such a proceeding. Then they made a bolder stride, and marched from defence to recrimination. They attempted to assassinate the memory of those, whose bodies their friends had massacred; and to consider their murder as a less formal act of justice. They endeavoured even to debauch our pity, and to suborn it in favour of cruelty. They wept over the lot of those, who were driven by the crimes of Aristocrats to republican vengeance. Every pause of their cruelty they considered as a return of their natural sentiments of benignity and justice. Then they had recourse to history; and found out all the recorded cruelties, that deform the annals of the world, in order that the massacres of the Regicides might pass for a common event; and even that the most merciful of Princes, who suffered by their hands,

H 4

hands, should bear the iniquity of all the tyrants, who have at any time infested the earth. In order to reconcile us the better to this republican tyranny, they confounded the bloodshed of war with the murders of peace; and they computed how much greater prodigality of blood was exhibited in battles and in the storm of cities, than in the frugal wellordered massacres of the revolutionary tribunals of France.

The

As to foreign powers, so long as they were conjoined with Great Britain in this contest, so long they were treated as the most abandoned tyrants, and, indeed, the basest of the human race. moment any of them quits the cause of this Government, and of all Governments, he is rehabilitated, his honour is restored, all attainders are purged. The friends of Jacobins are no longer despots; the betrayers of the common cause are no longer traitors.

That you may not doubt that they look on this war as a civil war, and the Jacobins of France as of their party, and that they look upon us, though locally their countrymen, in reality as enemies, they have never failed to run a parallel between our late civil war, and this war with the Jacobins of France. They justify their partiality to those Jacobins by the partiality, which was shown by several here to the Colonies; and they sanction their cry for peace with the Regicides of France by some of

our

our propositions for peace with the English in America.

This I do not mention as entering into the controversy, how far they are right or wrong in this parallel, but to show that they do make it, and that they do consider themselves as of a party with the Jacobins of France. You cannot forget their constant correspondence with the Jacobins, whilst it was in their power to carry it on. When the communication is again opened, the interrupted correspondence will commence. We cannot be blind to the advantage, which such a party affords to Regicide France in all her views; and, on the other hand, what an advantage Regicide France holds out to the views of the republican party in England. Slightly as they have considered their subject, I think this can hardly have escaped the writers of political ephemerides for any month or year. They have told us much of the amendment of the Regicides of France, and of their returning honour and generosity. Have they told any thing of the reformation, and of the returning loyalty of the Jacobins of England? Have they told us of their gradual softening towards royalty; have they told us what measures they are taking for "putting the crown in commission," and what approximations of any kind they are making towards the old constitution of their country? Nothing of this. The silence of these writers is dreadfully expressive. They dare

not

not touch the subject: but it is not annihilated by their silence, nor by our indifference. It is but too plain, that our constitution cannot exist with such a communication. Our humanity, our manners, our morals, our religion, cannot stand with such a communication the constitution is made by those things, and for those things: without them it cannot exist; and without them it is no matter whether it exists or not.

It was an ingenious parliamentary Christmas play, by which, in both Houses, you anticipated the holidays ;—it was a relaxation from your graver employment; it was a pleasant discussion you had, which part of the family of the constitution was the elder branch ?-whether one part did not exist prior to the others; and whether it might exist and flourish if "the others were cast into the fire *?" In order to make this saturnalian amusement general in the family, you sent it down stairs, that judges and juries might partake of the entertainment. The unfortunate antiquary and augur, who is the butt of all this sport, may suffer in the roistering horse-play and practical jokes of the servants hall. But whatever may become of him, the discussion itself, and the timing it, put me in mind of what I have read, (where I do not recollect) that the subtle nation of

See Debates in Parliament upon Motions, made in both Houses, for prosecuting Mr. Reeves for a Libel upon the Constitution, Dec. 1795.

the

the Greeks were busily employed, in the church of Santa Sophia, in a dispute of mixed natural philosophy, metaphysics and theology, whether the light on Mount Tabor was created or uncreated, and were ready to massacre the holders of the unfashionable opinion, at the very moment when the ferocious enemy of all philosophy and religion, Mahomet the Second, entered through a breach into the capital of the Christian World. I may possibly

suffer much more than Mr. Reeves, (I shall certainly give much more general offence) for breaking in upon this constitutional amusement concerning the created or uncreated nature of the two Houses of Parliament, and by calling their attention to a problem, which may entertain them less, but which concerns them a great deal more, that is, whether, with this Gallick Jacobin fraternity, which they are desired by some writers to court, all the parts of the Government, about whose combustible or incombustible qualities they are contending, may "not be cast into the fire" together. He is a strange visionary, (but he is nothing worse) who fancies, that any one part of our constitution, whatever right of primogeniture it may claim, or whatever astrologers may divine from its horoscope, can possibly survive the others. As they have lived, so they will die, together. I must do justice to the impartiality of the Jacobins. I have not observed amongst them, the least predilection for any of those

parts,