Chatham's genius, was just then in the meridian of its sublime career, illuminating the parliament of Great Britain by its effulgence, and leading on, like the pillar of fire in the desert, her arms to glory. For my part, I confess I was never surprised, that this noble nation should have been inspired with dissatisfaction by this humiliating contrast; nor that authors, who, like Voltaire, Diderot, and their coadjutors, wrote one day in their own apartments, and the next in the chambers of the Bastile or the dungeons of Vincennes, should have pushed their observations far on the subject of tyranny, and even been willing to shoot, like flying Parthians, their arrows with a deadly aim at the institutions which pampered their oppressors.

Despotism and the general diffusion of knowledge are incompatible. The arches of a fabric, whose foundations are laid on ignorance and force, cannot maintain their stability after their butments are undermined. The French writers were probably aware of this truth, and knowing that a revolution in things must follow a revolution in opinion, were glad to carry on their work in any way. The governors of Austria, Prussia, and Italy, have now discovered it likewise, and therefore labour, with unwearied vigilance, to bar out every beam of light that approaches their frontiers. Their officers garrison every road to arrest the books and journals of foreign countries, and to rummage even the trunks of travellers; and, in some places, exercise the right of domiciliary visits, to secure any stray volume that may have escaped the vigilance of the first scrutiny.

For twenty years after the middle of the last century, the history of France is the mere repetition of puerile debauches and pusillanimous intrigues. Such was the beastly sensuality of the monarch, that he was incapable of giving any impulse to the nation, and the government became so weak, that it was called "la bonne machine qui va toute seule."

To rail at the government, deceive women, and ridicule religion, now became the light and fashionable accomplishments of the day; for, as most men imitated, as far as they were able, the habits of the court, a general similitude of manners and vices began to prevail. The national vanity, or patriotism itself, fell so low, that the return of peace in 1763, although purchased at the price of honour, was celebrated by a public jubilee. Such a

vehement admiration of England had taken possession of the imaginations of some, that they were scarcely wounded by her success over their own country. All these circumstances tended to loosen the machine of state, and if it still continued to revolve, it did so as the deer continues his course, even after he has received the ball of death.

During the war which preceded that peace, the treasures of France had been lavished on Madame de Pompadour, instead of the army. She received for herself, en perpetuité, an annual income of a million and a half of livres; and found ample means of gratifying the avarice of her subordinate harpies, by "acquits du comptant," or notes requiring nothing but the signature of the king to be paid. The French historians glide as smoothly as possible over this disgraceful period of their history, and yet state, that such was her wealth, that the sale of her furniture lasted for more than a year after her death.

In reviewing the moral state of France under "Louis le bien aimé" it is impossible to pass over in silence one enormity unparalleled in modern times. Posterity may be disposed to doubt, whether that monarch really presided at a council of physicians 'assembled to devise the means of torturing Damiens, and then requested not to know when the sentence was put in execution, lest it might affect his nerves; but alas! it cannot doubt the existence of the "Parc aux cerfs." This establishment is said to have been devised by Madame de Pompadour, who imagined that the best means of eluding the dangers of rivalship, would be, to create such a seraglio for the king as might so glut and debase his passions, as to prevent the possibility of his becoming attached to any one. Some elegant houses in the Park of Versailles were accordingly fitted up in the style of an eastern harem, and united by a subterraneous passage with the palace, for the accommodation of his most christian majesty. Emissaries were scattered over the kingdom in search of beauty, and hundreds of young ladies, either sold by the parents, or violently torn from them, were hurried to that establishment, and soon after turned adrift, without the chance of ever beholding their destroyer again. "Corruption," says Lacretelle,* "entered into the most peaceful circles and obscure families; whole years were

* Vol. iii. p. 171.

:

employed to seduce persons under the age of puberty, and to combat in others the sentiment of shame and fidelity." The cost of this infamous establishment has been variously estimated by historians; some have carried it as high as two hundred millions of dollars, and others have brought it as low as one hundred millions of livres, or twenty millions of dollars.

But independent of the depravity of the morals of the court, the records of the tribunals go far to prove, that the administration of justice was not immaculate, nor all the world very virtuous and wise in these good old times. What moral sense of justice could be possessed by such a people as those of Thoulouse, who lighted bon fires, and moved in solemn procession of thanksgiving, to ornament the rack on which Calas was to suffer martyrdom; or to celebrate the anniversary of the day on which four thousand of their citizens had been once murdered, for a different interpretation of the sixth chapter of John?

Can you think, that a nation, in which an old man, like Calas, of seventy; a father of the most exemplary character, with no other evidence against him but his religion and his virtue;* could be condemned to torture and death, because his maniac son had hanged himself, can bring forward any strong claim to the possession of a just criminal code, or even to much rectitude of conscience? Can you believe, that a capital city like this of Paris, in which a boy of seventeen (the Chevalier de la Barre,) was condemned to the ignominy of the wheel and the scaffold, because, in the language of the parliament that condemned him, he was "suspected of having broken a crucifix”—can you think, I ask, that such a city required the frenzy of the revolution to lift up the flood-gates of ferocious fanaticism, in order to deluge it with iniquity? I might go on multiplying examples; but as your own memory can supply them, I will only ask, whether you think a nation, in which outrages of this character were events of frequent occurrence, can deserve to have its vile submission to an iniquitous government ennobled in the language of Mr. Burke, by the terms, "proud submission, and dignified obedience;" or whether its moral sensibility is entitled to the praise of being so delicate as "to have felt a stain as a wound?" It

* See Voltaire's History of his Trial.

should be remembered, likewise, that Mr. Burke wrote those reflections on the revolution before the frenzy of faction had entirely disgraced that enterprize, and that the bitterness of his invectives, which exasperated the passions of the mob against the noblesse, may have served to bring on those sanguinary excesses which he predicted, and afterwards so eloquently described.

MY DEAR SIR,

LETTER IV.

Paris, Feb. 15th, 1820.

THE hints I have thrown together in the preceding letters, are sufficient, I apprehend, to show, that however much despotism may have done to soften and polish the manners of the French, it did not lay itself out at all to rectify their moral sentiments, or to heighten their respect for virtue. Nor is this surprising when we recollect, that rectitude of principle and the diffusion of knowledge, are by no means essential to the prosperity of a form of government, which relies principally for its splendour on the union of dishonesty with a sufficient degree of animal courage, not to allow any man to mention it.

You may observe by the memoirs of the minority of Louis XIV. that although absolute incredulity in matters of religion had not spread itself much beyond the precincts of the court, yet there was no disposition any where shown in society to restrain the assaults of mere wit and ridicule. A narrow system of selfish philosophy had already gone far in turning into derision every generous sentiment or enthusiasm of our nature, except the admiration of genius. This preference of the brilliant accomplishments of the mind over the integrity of the heart, and the useful qualities of the understanding, may be regarded as one of the most pernicious effects of false education and the refinements of artificial society. No country has ever run into a greater extreme in this particular, or paid more dearly for its aberration than France. Here, when the system of debasing the dignity of our species by risible pleasantries, and of bottoming all human action on self interest, became united to an admiration of brilliant levity of morals, the best regulated sensibilities fell into disrepute, and the possession of wit atoned for the absence of every virtue. It became the fashion to live for plea