invited, therefore, to break their chains, they listened with most pleasure to those who ranted most violently about liberty, or who flattered them with the most outrageous promises. In the beginning they might have been satisfied with little, if it had been freely given to them; but when they discovered that they had broken out of prison by the strength of their own hands, and were become lawgivers, they embraced anarchy to murder despotism. They did not want a republic because they did not know what it was all they wanted, was to domineer in their turn, and they did so most violently. How different was the conduct of the Americans when they rose to assert their liberties? As they had been educated in a healthful respect for lawful government, and a detestation of usurped authority alone, they comprehended what they asked for. Accordingly, when they perceived the measure of encroachment to be filling up for them, they rose in revolution, not to put down all government, but to limit its powers and define their boundaries. In France, the people never interfered directly in public affairs, until the government was dissolved; nor did they exercise any coer cion over the new authorities, until the country was thrown into confusion by the rejection of the only form of government then suited to the circumstances of France. Three months were suffered to pass away, after the Bastile was taken and the powers of government suspended, without the adoption of any plan of policy to allay the distractions of the public mind; or to serve as a centre towards which the national enthusiasm might gravitate. Visionary schemes and empirical conceits-presumptuous assertions and ridiculous witticisms, were incessantly let loose to whip up the mob into commotion, and by the end of those three months all the heads of that Hydra that slept in Paris were awakened. Accordingly, in the month of October, 1789, it drew itself off from Paris to Versailles, for the purpose, as it expressed, "d'entourer Monsieur Louis Bourbon de bons patriots" and there, like the serpent of Laocoon, it entwined itself around the king and the National. Assembly, nor ever released them from the folds of its fraternal hug, until every symptom of life was extinguished.

One might imagine, that after the court had been thus dragged to Paris, the aristocrats would have seen the weakness of their

cause, and have been reconciled to the loss of their privileges and the establishment of a limited monarchy. If they were too much puffed up with vain-glorious ambition to discover the expediency of this step themselves, they might have found an useful lesson on the subject in their favourite Machiavel—if not in their text book, his Prince, at least in a better part of his works,his Commentary on Livy. Among other things they might have there learned how absurdly those who prefer establishing a despotism before a republic or limited monarchy, throw away renown, honour, security, and peace of mind, for infamy, shame, vituperation, danger, and inquietude. "Ne si auvegono per questo partito quanta fama, quanta gloria, quanto honore, sicurta, quiete, con satisfatione d'animo et fuggono, et in quanta infamia, vituperio, biasimo, pericolo et inquietudine incorrono."

The aristocrats and the jacobins who occupied the extreme right and the extreme left of the Assembly, were a majority of the Chamber; and although they bitterly detested each other, they often concurred and voted together from the impulses of revenge on the one part, and the calculations of malice on the other. The rash conduct of these factions paralyzed the government, so that it fell defenceless into the arms of the popu lace, and had no alternative left but to fall backwards into tyranny, or plunge forward into anarchy. This happened at a time, too, when every fresh evidence of the impotence of the fallen government rendered the rising throughout the kingdom more general and more terrific. There are no people, I believe, more amiable and forgiving than the French-certainly none who are more easily ruled, if their governors catch the drift of their vanity; but it must be admitted, at the same time, that they are endowed with a mercurial vivacity of temper, which is peculiarly apt to transport them beyond the bounds of moderation. They had suffered too much to revolt with temperance, and their conduct in the first hours of their triumph proved the truth of the maxim, that "la violence de la revolte est toujours en proportion de l'injustice de l'esclavage."

LETTER VIII.

Paris, Feb. 25th, 1820.

MY DEAR SIR,

When the executive branch of the government in France was broken down and the legislative had fallen into the hands of the Parisian mob, there remained but few hopes for the liberties of the country. The characteristic feature of all classes in this metropolis is an omnivorous passion for novelty; and when the Constituent Assembly had done so much as in reason and sound judgment it ought to have done, it was still obliged to go on to gratify this guilty appetite for change. The hall of a deliberative Senate was converted into the arena of a polemic ampitheatre, whose boxes were filled with a furious and ferocious rabble, that adjudged the prize of popularity, not to the eloquent and the just, not to the virtuous and the wise, but to the unprincipled and the turbulent, who flattered their vanity by gaudy eulogiums, or who justified their wickedness by preposterous epigrams. As yet, however, the party of the jacobins was but a feeble minority, and although it was augmented by all, whom the love of applause could estrange from duty, or the fear of popular resentment bias from principle, it could never have usurped the government of this great nation, if the privileged orders would have joined the friends of rational liberty, or have ceased to inflame and agitate the public by attacks against the new order of things But although the judgment of the higher orders was as usual on political subjects in the rear of common sense, they had sagacity enough to know that the quarry was sometimes lost by over-running. They therefore calculated, that by hurrying on. the torrent of revolution with unprincipled velocity, they might create an eddy in the stream, and that by embracing that opportune moment to bring in foreign troops, they might produce a

counter current, and thus recover every thing which had been swept away.

Their attachment to the privileges they had inherited was extremely natural, but their perseverance in applauding the old regime, which, in their minds, time had rendered venerable and submission sacred, was as absurd as it was impolitic. For, unquestionably, this pretended constitution of France, during thirteen or fourteen centuries, is the merest chimera that ever amused the imagination of a political sophist. A royal authority always existed, it is true, but in a state of perpetual vacillation between the submission to law and the indulgence of caprice. To say that in the earlier ages of her history, under the Merovingian and Carlovingian Princes, the government was a representative and limited monarchy, and that despotic power was gradually usurped by the houses of Valois and Bourbon, is not enough, although this fact alone might sanction the beautiful observation of Madame de Stael, that it is liberty which is ancient, and despotism that is modern in France. In fact, the govern ment of this country was perpetually varied by the personal character of its monarchs, scarcely any one of whom ever reigned after the fashion of his predecessor, so that a multitude of constitutions, more or less rude, absurd, and infamous, have, at different periods, fallen to its lot.* Even in the year of 1788, the laws all over France were presented on the point of the bayonet, and the carriers charged with the publication of a royal order, were sometimes in danger of their lives.

I fear, however, I shall provoke your patience by a too frequent recurrence to the abuses of the old regime; but there is no other mode of effectually vindicating the spirit of liberty against the foul aspersions which have been cast on it, but by ferreting out the causes of the revolutionary crimes, and exhibiting them to view. My object is to hold up to you a faithful picture of the political disorders of the time; of the chaos of royal, feudal, clerical and judicial usurpations, and to ask, whether, if you were to transport yourself back to the year '89, and forget the events which have warped your judgment, you would not think the Constituent Assembly had strong reason to throw this crude

*See Les Constitutions des tous les peuples par le Comte Lanjuinais.

mass of ore into the crucible of revolution, and melt it down to its proper standard. If the feudalists and jacobins threw dross into the political mint, and debased the pure metal by a vile alloy, it is certainly unjust to attribute its worthlessness to the friends of rational reform. That some of the later acts of that assembly were rash and impolitic, I do not pretend to deny, but no man, I think, can look dispassionately into these very acts without seeing that it was dragged into them by a chain of invincible circumstances, every link of which had been forged in the furnace of despotism. Believe me, my dear sir, the belief that the government of France was broken down by the spirit of liberty, and that the assemblies which accomplished its ruin, were composed of republicans, is the falsest vision that was ever conjured up in the brain of distempered and designing politicians to impose on the credulity of mankind. The nation was tired of oppression, and was resolved to get rid of it. Take the leaders of each party that raised the cry of discontent; examine them in detail, and show me the republicans among them. One half of the Constituent Assembly consisted of nobles and priests, who were essentially anti-republican from interest and habit, and but a fraction of whom was disposed to limit at all the prerogatives of the crown. The representatives of the Tiers Etat were unanimous in favour of reformation, but divided in opinion as to the extent to which it should be carried. The larger party of them marched under the banner of Mirabeau, who was, we know, neither a republican in practice nor in theory; who, in spite of the intemperance into which his abhorrence of tyranny and his projects of ambition led him, was a resolute admirer of dignity in the crown, and whose eloquence would have been exerted if he had lived beyond the month of April, '91, in defending it. The more moderate reformers, the friends of Mr. Neckar; the Mouniers, the Mallets, the Lanjuinais, the Lally Tollendals, &c. were the admirers of the British constitution, and the advocates of its adoption in France. The remainder of the Assembly consisted of a small corps of jacobins, who detested republicanism as sincerely as they did royalty; who voted on all occasions from the calculations of self-interest; who were, what St. John called the Pharisees, a generation of vipers, and whose tongues, if they had not been envenomed by the rancorous hos