shores of the bay of Biscay. Besides, it is impossible for any one legislative body to watch over the grand interests of such a nation, and to find leisure to attend to the multifarious wants, and trifling necessities of each particular parish. I know it may be asked with seeming plausibility, why a body of national representatives is not as competent to perform all this, as the ministry of an absolute monarch? But besides that there is a much greater dispatch of business in a small and irresponsible junto than in a public assembly, where discussion consumes time, I think the difficulty is much increased by the disposition of the people themselves; for the subjects of absolute monarchs, who know reclamation to be fruitless, submissively acquiesce in innumerable hardships, petty grievances and restrictions, against any one of which, the citizens of a republic would clamour very violently You may oppose to this suggestion the republic of America, which exists over a much larger territory that this of France; but you should hold in mind that we have, independent of our Congress, some four and twenty State Legislatures, Executives, and Judiciaries, for the transaction of local business; so that none but affairs of magnitude, or of general interest, are brought before the Congress, President, and Judges of the Union. Perhaps the average duration of the session of each of these bodies is near three months in the year, and that of Congress five, so that if there was but one parliament in America, it would be necessary for it to set the whole year, and that the year should consist of seventy-six months, in order that the claims of every individual might be heard, and the general interest attended to.

It was not until after the difference of opinion between Bertrand de Moleville, and Narbonne, (on the propriety of conferring with the committee,) had dissolved the constitutional ministry in 1792, that the republican party came into power in the persons of Roland and Claviere. This party, which was known by the name of the Gironde, because its principal members came from Bordeaux, was fully sensible of the advantages of a federal republic; and for this reason alone, could not, in the actual state of the public mind in France, be considered as affording sage counsellors to the king. But whatever may have been the errors or extravagancies into which it fell from a sanguine tem

perament of mind highly inflamed by an enthusiasm for liberty whatever may have been the visionary hopes and schemes with which the delightful indubitability of inexperience inspired it, I believe there are now none-no, not even the most ferocious libellers of republicanism, who do not acquit it of any guiltiness of design. I know that it has been fashionable in some countries I would willingly forget that it had ever been so in mineto confound these virtuous federal republicans with the savage herd of cannibals that afterwards devoured them. The young and splendid Vergniaud, in whose character there was something of "the vast and the unbounded;" the brilliant and accomplished Condorcet, with the intelligent and enthusiastic Brissot, and all those republicans who attempted in vain to interpose the shield of mercy between the king and his vindictive assailants, have been classed with the monstrous Marat, the ferocious Robespierre, the malignant St. Just, and, if possible, the still more frantically cruel Collot D'Herbois, and Billaud Varennes. The French, as Duclos once said, feel without thinking, act without reflecting, and propose without resolving; and hence a phrase has often been more efficacious in raising up or putting down a party among them than the strongest reasoning in the world. Now this nation never comprehended the true nature of a federal republic; and as the erection of several states looked like the division of the kingdom, which did not fall in at all with its schemes of greatness, the cry of a republic, "one and indivisible," sent the federalists to the guillotine. I am far, however, from thinking that every excess would have been avoided by the adoption of a federal government; for the situation of France offered some difficulties in the way of its establishment. To have erected the provinces into republics would have been absurd in the extreme. They were too large and powerful. They had been held together by the compressing weight of despotism, but would have fallen asunder when bound only by laws. They had too respectively preserved their ancient usages and habits, and having been restrained from a free intercourse with one another, were of course full of local prejudices. These circumstances would have caused discord and dissention, instead of harmony and union, to prevail among them; and they must have finally split into independent states, hostile and destructive to the

peace and good order of one another, or fallen under the yoke of their foreign enemies. Even under the self-styled republic, such as it was, "one and indivisible," the danger of allowing such large provinces to remain entire, was so imminent, that the division of the country into eighty-three departments was one of the wisest and happiest conceptions of the new government; although it must be confessed, the refusal to call them after the capital city of each, (which would have so much facilitated the recollection of their names) indicated as stupid a fear of federalism, as the grating, dissonant names, which were selected for them, gave evidence of a poverty of invention. When one looks at the miserable appellations adopted in France and at the still more stupid custom which prevails in America, of substituting for the fine sonorous words of the Aborigines, the names of places in Europe, and of giving the same name to a dozen different places, one is almost disposed to question the inventive genius of the moderns.

It was not, however, by the territorial division of the kingdom of France into departments of an equal number of square leagues, but by dividing it as Mirabeau recommended, into proportions nearly equal in population, wealth, and importance, that the collection of taxes and the administration of justice could have been properly facilitated. Nature had created an almost insurmountable obstacle to a mathematical and ideal division, by the fertility she had given to the soil in some parts, and the sterility in others; nor did habit and circumstances oppose a less formidable barrier against it; for infinite inconvenience resulted from cutting up neighbourhoods without regard to towns, roads, and A judicious division, with due attention to density of population and fertility of soil, might have mingled the heterogeneous members of the state together and melted them down into one mass, so as to prevent the danger of dismemberment. But when statesmen forget the excellence of moderation, and act with the desperate precipitancy of mad empirics, we ought not to be surprised at their throwing their patient into convulsions by the boldness of their operations. Young politicians are naturally sanguine and full of confidence; they chase with eagerness the phantoms of their own brain; are deaf to the remonstrances of wisdom, and are only tamed in their aspirations

water courses.

after change, by the disappointments of experience. Unfortunately for France, such were all her leading politicians, or they would have perceived that any other than a federal republic in their country must necessarily sting itself, like the scorpion, to death. Had each of the departments been given a legislature, an executive and judiciary, for its local concerns; and had a general government been created to superintend the general interests of the empire; for the embodying an uniform code of laws, the regulation of commerce, and the encouragement of manufactures; the opening of roads and the cutting of canals, together with the sole power of making war, and organizing the army and navy, what a world of trouble might have been spared this distracted people, and what innumerable blessings might their success have secured to mankind! The National Assembly might have become, in this case, the lever of Archimedes in politics, and Paris the centre of motion The centrifugal tendency of no department, could have interrupted its swing, since no one would have been heavy enough to impede the momentum of the whole, and the independence of each would have eloigned the danger of a factious coalition. These departmental governments would have been schools of free principles, to rear up the young men to the exercise of republican duties, and sharpen their abilities; at the same time, they would have been so many jealous eyes watching over the preservation of the public liberty, and controlling the accidental errors of one another. It would be extravagant to suppose, that the adoption of this system would have prevented all the iniquities which followed, but that it would have prevented many of them, there is no doubt. It was disdainfully rejected, however, by the Parisian mob, and in consequence of this, the only breath of freedom which this nation drew during five and twenty years of revolution, was perhaps in those intervals in which she was bounding from one despotism. to another.

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MY DEAR SIR,

LETTER IX.

Paris, March 11th, 1820.

It was in the summer of 1792, that the clubs of Paris took the administration of the government entirely into their own hands; and it is certainly unfair to condemn the whole French nation for the atrocity of the crimes which they perpetrated. Among these clubs, that which met in the ancient convent of the Jacobins, and which triumphed over all the others, was animated by the soul of vengeance and rapine-that of the Cordeliers was inflamed by a spirit of still more brutal ferocity, and that of the Societé Fraternelle, exhaled only such an odour as might be expected to arise from the dregs of creation. Their liberty was despotism, their religion was blasphemy, and their pastime massacre. By the slaughter of the Swiss guards on the 10th of August, and the demand for a Convention which followed it, they announced to the world their assumption of absolute power into their own hands. But as the voice of the nation, in spite of the inflammatory harangues and pamphlets which were scattered abroad, and the fatal conjunction of circumstances that tended to inflame it, could never have been in unison with the yell of these wretches; the massacres of the first week of September were resolved on, to prevent the better part of the nation from voting at the elections. The consequence was, that a majority of such creatures as suited the designs of the Jacobins were returned, and the abolition of the nominally existing government was decreed the day after they assembled.

I confess I have never looked on the madness of the National Convention without feeling a sentiment of profound regret, for the wickedness of human beings; nor ever been able to remember the degraded spectacle which this great and valiant nation exhibited, whilst trampled on by its tyranny, without deep afflic