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Powers, though large, are far lefs ample

than his Inclinations to do good.

He, therefore, fimply obferves, that,

AS A TESTIMONY OF SINCERE RESPECT,

FOR GENERAL CHARACTER;

AND AS A TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE,

FOR PARTICULAR KINDNESS;

THESE GLEANINGS,

NOW COLLECTED FOR PUBLICATION,

ARE INSCRIBED TO

RICHARD BARWELL, Esq. M. P.

Galloway 12-2-25 12495

30

INTRODUCTION.

IT is neceffary to premife, that the unforeseen delays, which have attended this publication, have given time for great and material alterations, in that part, an inconfiderable one indeed, which relates to the system of the French Republic. Softening, gradually, from wildnefs, ferocity, and tyranny, from the laft exceffes of more than favage rancour and affaffination, into the milder forms of refiftance to authorities, which they are still determined to question, the obferver, who before regarded that people with feelings of utter abhorrence and of complete indignation, as an horde of robbers and of murderers, trampling down every law of Nature, and Nature's God; muft view them, in their now altered state, with different eyes, and with different fentiments. It was impof

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fible for an honeft man to see what was acting on the bloody theatre of the French nation, while fuch an example of human degeneracy as Roberfpierre filled the scene, and conducted the drama, without execrating every measure adopted by that Scourge of Mankind, and all his accomplices. But when, according to the ftricteft law, not fimply of poetical or human, but of divine justice, those

"Bloody inftruments which he taught

"Have return'd to plague the inventor,
"And even-handed Justice has commended

"The ingredients of his poifon'd chalice to his own lips;"

And, when in the fall of that Hero of Enormity, wherein all his petty inftruments were involved when, by the bounty of Providence fhewn in the falvation of his "taking off," the human race was, in a manner, again

The reader is intreated to pardon the liberty here taken with the facred words of Shakspeare, in order to render them more applicable.

redeemed

redeemed from the utter deftruction his infatiate appetite for the blood of man had complotted; in short, when the death of this tyrant proved the resurrection of humanity, the degree of cenfure must diminish in proportion to the diminution of offences.

I should be forry to suppose there existed a man in Great-Britain, however warmly his affections might glow, and his heart beat in her caufe, who thought that the detefted fyftem of those tyrants above-mentioned has not been meliorated by those who fucceeded. The fucceffors were, indeed, the meliorators; and, though there yet remains much to be done, ere a man, who duly poifes civil and political good and evil, shall dare to affert all that was wrong is done away, it would be as palpable an abfurdity to confound their former with their prefent conduct, as to compare utter darkness with the manifest rays of returning light.

3

While

While the French people were the most flagitious amongst exifting mortals, the Gleaner reprobated them as fuch; and he wishes that reprobation may serve the double purpose of record and example. Now that their system is reformed, in many of its worst abuses, he is as earneft to congratulate, as he had been to condemn. And he dares aver, that every confiderate man in England-nay more, every confiderate man, who, in loyalty or terror, had follicited the protection of any other country, feels, that

the diftinction here made is warranted.

He cannot, in any one feature, foften the portrait drawn of the horrors which, to the point of time he held the pencil, deformed a devoted land. Neither can he, with feelings that would fatisfy his own heart, omit the opportunity of foftening many of the fhades, and of expreffing a wish, interesting to every fibre of that heart, and he trufts of a million

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