quarrels between the court and the parliament; but, in this question of the States-General, lay concealed the actual Revolution.

States-General first appear in the history of France during the reign of Philippe-le-Bel. The great popular assemblies, which the conquering race brought from the wilds of Germany, the Champ-de-Mars and Champs-de-Mai, had fallen into desuetude along with the developement of the feudal system. In 1301, Philip assembled the barons of the Kingdom,the prelates, abbots, and deputies of chapters, the proctors

and syndics of the commons, not to obtain subsidies, but to aid him in withstanding the pretensions of the Pope. But the next year, they again met, on his requisition for subsidies to carry on the war of Flanders; and the precedent was too valuable to be forgotten. Thenceforth, meetings of the States General occur continually, although not at fixed intervals, nor with any précise form of organization, neither the relative members of the several orders, nor the mode of deliberating, whether in one, two, or three bodies, being de. finitively established. In a majority of cases, they seem to have deliberated together in convention, or at least to have presented the results of joint action. The States of 1614, however, like several which preceded them, were assembled in three separate chambers. It consisted of deputies, 144 for the clergy, 130 for the noblesse, and 188 for the tiers-état. Their separation into three independent bodies led to serious differences between the orders, which enabled the parliament of Paris to interfere in their deliberations, and also subjected each to the direction of the King.*

When Louis XVI, therefore, resolved to summon the States General, the parliament, misled by its knowledge of the course of things in 1614, and regarding the subject in the narrow views of its own particular aim, and insensible to the magnitude of the crisis, proposed the States of 1614 as the model of the intended assembly. But opinion strongly * See Mounier's Observations sur les Etats-Généraux.

and resolutely condemned this, claiming a larger representation of the tiers-état, and the constitution of the assembly as one integral body. Instead of positively settling these questions beforehand, at once, and by an act of authority, Neckar convoked the Notables for advice, and then, contrary to their advice, decided for a representation of the tiers-état equal in number to the aggregate of the other two orders, and left the mode of assembling and voting to be decided by time and fortune. This uncertainty, and this vacillation of temper in the commencement, followed by the concession made to the tiers-état of a double representation in the hope by their means to support the King against the aristocracy, proved to be the salvation of France. Here we turn over a leaf, that unfolds the page of revolution. In the preparation of this crisis, the people, we see, have not intervened, at least not directly: they were spectators merely of passing events; interested spectators, critical and speculative ones, but still spectators. It was the several privileged bodies, which precipitated the national convulsion. First, the magistracy compelled the retirement of Turgot, and the abandonment of his comprehensive policy; then, the courtiers overthrew the economical Neckar; next, Calonne was displaced by the noblesse and clergy of the Assembly of Notables; lastly, the magistracy again interfered to thwart Brienne. tion was the immediate consequence; and the circumstanOf all this, revoluwhich threw the public authority into the hands of the tiers-état, and swept away the noblesse and clergy in a sea of blood, were clearly of their own seeking. In England,' as Mr Crowe justly observes, the prevailing sentiment has been to regard the French nation as if it were an individual actuated by one perverse will, and flinging itself, from pure love of mischief, into the agonies of suffering and the depths of crime.' -Absurd! The government of Louis XVI saw the Kingdom on the brink of bankruptcy. sought relief from the privileged orders first, and threw it

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assemblies, is a rare event, v at long intervals in the annal happens, it attracts to the s than the occasion requires. passion, were to govern our easy to show that better men spared by their country, perist Convention, in overstepping th tions, and sentencing Louis to a crime; they committed a ne less, that is, upon their own pre”. cessary to the establishment or e His death was the signal for the tion of the principal powers of Euro time, the precursor of that Reign the Revolution seemed bent, like S children, and the scaffold took the p government of the French.

At first, the effect of the King's de the expectations of the Jacobins. I parties to the republican cause, and h watchword of the day. To excite the p the name of liberty, equality, and frateri. the enemies of the Revolution by terror a ploy insurrection as a regular instrument of lic affairs, to legalize the despotism of t such was the policy of Danton. He differ pierre and Marat, in this: - Danton had. government of terror as a transitory one, sisting foreign attack for the time being; and Robespierre, it was a settled political er naticism regarded revolutionary violence as manent system. The Gironde, alone, hinder the Jacobins ; and it now became the great latter to free themselves, by whatever means, tagonists. In a word, the destruction of the Giron

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formidable aspect. Neither in the South nor in the North of Europe did men clearly see the magnitude of the danger they incurred by collision with France. They observed and dreaded the political propagandism of the French Republic; they understood the social relations of the question; but they did not comprehend its military relations. Their calculations, in this respect, had reference to the rules and means of warfare, of which they had experience; which grounds of calculation were become altogether illusory in regard to France.

In his Letter on the Genius of Napoleon's Government, Mr Walsh gives a just representation of the effect of the Revolution upon the military resources of France. The balance of power, which previously subsisted in Europe, was an equilibrium, not of counteracting national strength, but of weakness in their military constitutions. Each state was accustomed to proportion its armies to its population and pecuniary resources in the ordinary condition of diversified local interests. These interests constituted so many checks on the capacity of the government to mantain a war. by the Revolution, France rent asunder the shackles of Kind, which had previously limited her military capa*s, in common with those of the rest of Europe. Aus, Great Britain, were moving in their accustomloosened as it were from the political ely to strike into any path, at the impul

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tinent; nor could it fail, if it embraced the Continent, to become a struggle of extreme desperation.

As usually happens in case of war, each side blames the other for beginning it. On the French it is charged, that, in the clubs and in the Constituent Assembly, individuals uttered language of contemplated fraternization with the people of other countries; but as the government, and indeed the great body of the nation, manifested and felt a pacific temper, it is clear that a few intemperate expressions, thrown out in public assemblies, afforded no cause of war. As little did the confiscation of Avignon and the Venaissin, small possessions of the Pope in the heart of France, which Burke, however, denounced as the indications of a determined spirit of conquest.· Yet in May 1791 occurred the Treaty of Mantua, by which Austria, Sardinia, and Spain leagued themselves to provide five armies, destined to act on their respective frontiers, in aid of the malcontents in France, and of the troops which had preserved their allegiance to the throne.' Then followed the Declaration of Pilnitz, made by Prussia and Austria, to the effect that they would employ their forces and invoke the cooperation of others, in order to put the King of France in a situation to lay the foundation of a monarchical government, conformable alike to the rights of sovereigns and the well-being of the French nation.' Though no hostilities occurred under these two agreements, yet either of them amounted to a declaration of war. And the offensive demands of Austria, superadded to her public acts, amply justified the menacing speeches of Isnard, Vaublanc, Brissot, and other members of the Legislative Assembly, and led to the formal declaration of war on the part of the French.

We have alluded, before, to the advance of the Allies, their subsequent repulse, the effect of the war upon domestic affairs, and the extension of the Coalition to Great Britain and other powers, in consequence of the dethronement of the King. Now it was that the war began to assume a