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discover that the usual compensatory process has been equally at work, and hail, with sincere satisfaction, the appearance of a monthly journal expressly devoted to this rising literature of the United Service, and conducted (if we may presume, as elder brothers, to say a word on such a subject) in a style that does honour to all concerned; with varied, not seldom with powerful talent, and uniformly, as far as we have observed, in a high, gallant, loyal, old English spirit. To such hands we may safely leave the many questions of professional controversy touched on in these volumes; and consider our conscience, as to the 'general reader,' sufficiently cleared, when we assure him that throughout he will find them lively and diverting-that many detached passages of extraordinary beauty, as well as interest, will 'pull him up' in the course of the perusal-and that, though we do not pretend to know why Captain Hall talks of his book as intended chiefly for young persons, it contains assuredly nothing that can do little people harm, and a great deal that is likely to do them good.

It records, after all, only a small portion of the author's professional career; and if we have been so well amused and edified with his sketches of nautical life between twelve and twenty, we may safely expect still better from the sequel of the story. The Mediterranean, the French coast, and this sharp observer's travels in Hindostan, and on the continent of Europe, are yet untouched; and we are glad he is to bring mature optics to such scenes. Certain novelists seem to consider it as a ruled point that no very exquisite interest can attach to human beings after they have passed the bloom of youth; but the readers of autobiography, and above all of nautobiography, must beg leave to dissent from this conclusion, however flattering to damsels of seventeen, and heroes who have not yet worn out their first razors.

ART. V.-1. Conspiration pour l'Egalité, dite de Babeuf; suivie du Procès auquel elle donna lieu, et des Pièces justificatives, &c. Par Philippo Buonarroti. 2 vols. Bruxelles. 1828. 2. Haute Cour de Justice. Copie des Pièces saisies dans le Local qui Babeuf occupoit lors de son Arrestation. 2 vols. à Paris. De l'Imprimerie Nationale. Nivôse, an V.

WELL

WELL timed as the work of Philippo Buonarroti is, it may be considered not only as the most curious one which has appeared concerning the French revolution, but as the most important also.

The author was born at Florence, in the year 1760; and it

has

:

has been said that he descended in a right line from Michael Angelo, but Michael Angelo was never married. That he was of that family, however, is certain; and when he had finished his course of studies at Pisa, the Grand Duke Leopold, who favoured him because of the illustrious name he bore, made him a knight of the order of St. Stephen, and offered him a place at court and a large pension. He accepted the order, but declined the place, because it would have been inconsistent with his literary pursuits; and it may be believed that he declined the pension also, for the desire of enriching himself seems never to have possessed him his errors were of a very different kind. When the French revolution broke out, he entered into it with all the ardour of an Italian, and with a strength of character which showed that in that respect he had not degenerated from his great ancestor;-happy had it been if he had cultivated the same religious feelings, and been endued with equal sobriety and strength of mind. He made no secret of his opinions, and they were such, that a prince less generous than Leopold would not have been satisfied with banishing him from Tuscany. Corsica was the place to which he removed with his wife and children, and there he published a revolutionary journal entitled L'Amico della Libertà Italica. But when his old friend Salicetti was elected a deputy to the National Convention, Buonarroti was induced to accompany him to Paris, where he presently was enrolled as a member of the Jacobin Club; and becoming intimately connected with the leading members of what was called the Mountain party, was sent back to Corsica as commissioner, with full powers, when a disposition was manifested by that island to throw off its subjection to France. That he failed in suppressing that disposition was not owing to any want of decision on his part; but he had to deal with men not more scrupulous as to means than himself. They attacked him in his house, and he thought himself fortunate in getting through a window, and making his escape from the island. Having returned to Paris. with the reputation of one who was qualified for any service which required intrepidity and obduracy, he was sent with Maillot, as commissioner to Lyons, to suppress the insurrection in that city. But the Lyonese, who had already put to death their Jacobin mayor, seized these commissioners, put them in prison, tried and condemned them; and Buonarroti was only saved from execution by the entrance of the republican army into that unfortunate city.

It is said, that having thus for the second time escaped a violent death, he expressed a wish for an appointment to some more peaceable situation; but such a wish is not likely to have been

formed

formed by Buonarroti, than whom no man was ever less disposed to seek peace and ensue it:' and as little likely is it to have been expressed to Collot d'Herbois. That monster recommended him to his colleagues, Ricord and the younger Robespierre, who were then acting as Representative Commissioners with the army of Italy; and by them he was appointed, first, a member of the military tribunal of that army, and after the conquest of Piedmont in the following year, agent of the republic in all the conquered countries. In this office he is said to have acted with a disinterestedness as characteristic of the individual as it was extraordinary in any person so employed; for among that host of harpies, he never resorted to any means of acquiring riches, but, on the contrary, expended his salary in relieving those of his own party who were in need. On being asked why he preferred poverty to affluence, he replied, that if affluence had been his choice, he would not have left Florence. This appointment he held at the time of Robespierre's downfall; and not long afterwards, the party who had obtained the ascendency, knowing his principles and dangerous character, despatched orders for apprehending him, and sending him to Paris. Tureau, the representative at Nice, to whom these orders were addressed, wishing to give him an opportunity of escaping, exclaimed publicly, Voilà encore une victime du Fréronisme! and delayed executing them for several days. Buonarroti, therefore, was apprized of his danger; and his secretary advised him to decamp with the chest of the administration, which contained about 300,000 livres. But he chose the better part, waited patiently for his arrest, and was carried prisoner to Paris. Opinions were not then, as during the reign of terror, punished with death; his imprisonment was a measure of precaution, not of vengeance; and it could not have been rigorous, because he supported himself while a prisoner by teaching music. 'I find,' said he, that Rousseau was right, when he recommended to his Emilius the attainment of some art which might prove useful to him in time of need. I studied music for my recreation; I am now obliged to have recourse to it for my subsistence.'

A general amnesty for those who called themselves patriots restored him to liberty; the use he made of that liberty was to engage in Babeuf's conspiracy. Good fortune had prevented him throughout the revolution from being as atrocious in act as he was in intention; and as he had the reputation of a sincere and honourable man, even among those who thought him most erroneous, it was intimated to him by the ambassador of the grand duke, when he was arrested for that conspiracy, that if he would engage to return to Florence, and resume his rank there, the ambassador would intercede for him with the Directory, and his

sentence

sentence should be nothing more than banishment from France. The lingering hope of success, the pride of consistency, and attachment to his fellow-conspirators, made him reply that he had relinquished for ever his rank in Italy, and that he wished to remain in France to enjoy the vestigia morientis libertatis. Of the conspiracy we shall presently speak. Buonarroti was one of those who were sentenced to be transported to Guiana; that sentence, however, was not carried into effect. He was confined first at Cherbourg, then at some place in the Maritime Alps, there he was in 1806; and from that time till the publication of these volumes, nothing was heard of one whom his English biographer calls this magnanimous and accomplished character, the gallant and unfortunate Buonarroti.'

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These epithets were employed by the biographer in their usual eulogistic acceptation. He supposed that the object of the conspirators ، was to overturn the constitution of 1795, (that of the Directory,) which they called the patrician code of Boissy d'Anglas, and to renew that of 1793, the true democratic constitution, founded on the principles of Thomas Paine;' and as those principles served, with him, to cover a multitude of sins, he seems not to think the worse of Buonarroti for having been connected with some of the most bloodthirsty miscreants that ever outraged humanity. But that the conspiracy had a further object in view he ought to have known, because it clearly appeared in the papers concerning it, which were officially published at the time. The subject obtained far less attention than it deserved, because the public were weary of conspiracies and revolutionary schemes,— because curiosity was diverted by Buonaparte's first career of victory, and because the Directory, satisfied with having suppressed the plot, gave to it the least possible publicity. Only two of the conspirators were put to death; and the clemency which spared others, who were equally implicated, might at any time have been deemed remarkable. But they who were then in authority had good reason for this. The appetite of the revolutionists for blood, which, during a long and dreadful time, had 'grown by what it fed on,' had at last been palled: they themselves had gained their ends in the revolution, and therefore wished it to stop where it was; and they were conscious, moreover, that against them Babeuf and his associates had but too strong a

case.

In the interval between the verdict and the sentence, when the public accuser had required that Babeuf and Darthé should be condemned to death, and Buonarroti, with six others, to deporta

Biographical Anecdotes of the Founders of the French Republic. Vol. i. pp. 365

-373.

tion,

tion, the two former received from Buonarroti a promise that he would vindicate their memory, by publishing an exact recital of their common intentions.

I might,' he says, have published this work much sooner, if I had not been withheld by the fear of affording new pretexts for enmity and persecution. At present, pressed by age, I have determined to let it appear, with the more confidence, because, on the one side, the men of that epoch have almost disappeared, and the actual political doctrines being at an infinite distance from those which the democrats of the fourth year of the French republic professed, a dangerous application is not any longer to be feared. Moreover, it is just that the democratic party should at last be known in its true colours.

I am not ignorant that the political and economical principles which I must avow, will meet with many disapprovers; this is no reason for not publishing them: other opinions, which have been opposed as errors, have been incontestable truths. Are there not men whom the tinsel of civilized society has not dazzled, nor the systems which are preached up by those who arrogate to themselves the right of directing opinion? They, perhaps, will appreciate the importance of these opinions, and will give some regret to the memory of those courageous citizens, who, being penetrated with their justice, and proud of exposing their lives in supporting them, sealed them at last with their blood. Strongly bound to them by the conformity of our sentiments, I partook in their conviction and their efforts; and if we were deceived, our error was at least complete. They persevered in it to the grave; and for me, after subsequent long reflection, I remain convinced, that that equality which they loved is the only institution proper for conciliating all real wants, for directing the useful passions, restraining the dangerous ones, and giving to society a form, free, happy, peaceful, and durable.'

In these words, Buonarroti concludes his preface. Upon the verge of threescore years and ten, he looked back upon the part which he had taken in the revolution, and in this conspiracy, with complacency in that feeling he expected to die, as he had lived; and this is the legacy which he bequeathed to the world!

Among the parties who figured in that bloody tragedy, the second part of which has now commenced, there was one, Buonarroti says, which deserves to fix the attention of the philosopher, because of the constant devotion with which it consecrated its efforts to the real deliverance of humanity. A great movement had been brought about by ambition, jealousy, cupidity, and the blind desire of innovation. Some endeavoured to place a new dynasty upon the throne of France; some to transfer power from one caste to another, that they might secure it exclusively for themselves; and pretended legislators believed they had founded a republic, because they had put a king to death, and substituted the authority of many for that of one. The divisions during the

revolution

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