temporary a power as the clerkships and secretaryships of the Ministry of France. They all had that moment of bitter power, and in the next moment were flung under the feet of the populace, and trampled out of the world. It is now the custom to charge the crimes which especially blackened the history of the Revolution in 1793, on the Allied proclamations. But Jacobinism must answer for its own sins. The language of the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto was the language which every man of honour in Europe would have used at the time, and which is as much the language of honour at this hour. Let us look into this calumniated document. It declared that " those who had usurped the reins of government in France, had trampled the social order, and overturned the legitimate government; had committed outrages on the King and Queen; and had, in an arbitrary manner, invaded the rights of the German Princes in Alsace and Lorraine, and declared war unnecessarily against the King of Hungary and Bohemia." Every syllable of this was undeniably true. It declared, that," in consequence, the Allied Sovereigns had taken up arms to stop the anarchy that prevailed in France, to check the dangers which threatened the throne and the altar, to give liberty to the King, and restore him to the legitimate authority of which he had been deprived, but without any intention whatever of individual aggrandizement: that the National Guards would be held responsible for the maintenance of order until the arrival of the Allied forces, and that those who dared to resist, must expect all the rigour of military execution." And what other language could be used, when the purpose was to suppress a furious succession of rabble outrages; to restrain a populace already guilty of the most dreadful violences, and in a state of direct rebellion against all that bore the name of Government in their country. What must have been the language of their own Monarch at the head of an army, but death to those who persisted in rebellion? Or what is the universal language of authority to rebels in arms? The Allies were the troops of the Government, in all true meanings of

the word; and acting not against the defenders of an enemy's territory, but against the outlaws of a terri tory against which they disclaimed all views of conquest, and which they came to protect and restore.

"Finally, it warned the National Assembly, the Municipality and city of Paris, that if they did not forthwith liberate the King, and return to their allegiance, they should be held personally responsible, and answer with their heads for their disobedience; and that if the Palace were forced, or the slightest insult offered to the Royal Family, an exemplary and memorable punishment should be inflicted, by the total destruction of the city of Paris." The last sentence of this proclamation is the only one to which we should object; because no man should use that as a menace, which he is not determined to execute as a fact; and the intention of the Allies could not have been to effect a destruction which must involve so heavy a national calamity, and the fortunes of so many innocent and loyal people. But what would be the language of an officer commanding a siege to the Governor of a fortress who was about to hang up his prisoners? And what strength of menace would not be justified by the knowledge that an Allied King, with his family, and his chief nobility, were in the hands of a horde of savages, clamouring hour by hour for their blood? Or what would deservedly be thought of the sincerity or the feelings of those who came expressly to rescue the King of France from his cruel captivity, if they made it a matter of simple remonstrance, or delicate suggestion; diplomatized on revolt, and insinuated the error of regicide?

Of the truth and justice of this document there can be no question, Its policy is another view; so far as policy consists in attaining an object by all means. In this humiliating sense of the word, it might have been more politic to compliment the Assembly on their firmness, the Jacobins on their virtue, and the populace on their temper. The Allied army might have declared itself the rectifier of abuses, the restorer of rights, and the general dispenser of privileges to every rank of society;

and when it had once planted its foot on the neck of France, spoiled and slaughtered according to its original programme. For this was the policy of France on the first opportunity, this was the policy of Napoleon, and this will be the policy of all who think that deception is the great art of success, and negotiate in the baseness of the human heart.

In the spirit of prophecy after the event, this proclamation has been assigned as the cause of that military outbreak which so suddenly swept away all invasion. But the fact is against the theory. The first impression was fear; the populace, the Jacobins, and the Assembly, were equally terrified; they found that they had advanced to the edge of ruin, and were all busy in looking about for the way to recede. If the Duke of Brunswick had been animated by the manly feelings of his proclamation, he would have marched to the capital without firing a shot, or his only volley would have been over the grave of democracy. But his sword was feeble, where his pen was the pen of truth and honour; the policy which he justly disclaimed in his language was soon suffered to guide his councils; he began to traffic with his great cause, to linger for the effect of his menaces until they became impotent, and shrink from hurting the feelings of the rabble until they were turned into contempt. Thus diplomatizing when he should have marched, and with his eyes fixed on the Prussian Cabinet, when every step should have been pressing to the Tuileries, he intrigued himself across the border, remained there only long enough to shew that he was utterly incapable of command; a diplomatist to the last, negotiated for the escape of his army; and with a force which still might have walked over all the levies of republicanism, hid his politic head in Prussia, and left the unhappy monarch to the grave.

dists avowed their intention of establishing the popular branch of the legislature in full dominion. Their personal object, almost equally avowed, was to climb by that legislature into place; but a new antagonist now started up between them and ambition. Federalism, the furious championship of the Sections, the patriotism of the hovels of Paris, sprung forward with the pike and the red cap. The once obscure names of Danton, Robespierre, and Marat, the triple-headed monster that kept the gates of the Democratic Hell, were instantly names of power. The Vergniauds and Guidots, the men of polished periods and wellbred treason, the Judases who betrayed with a kiss, were flung aside to groan over their own treachery, and perish abhorred of mankind; and the work was given into hands that scorned disguise when the business was blood, followed their career through all its gradations of torture, scoffing and blasphemy, and finally achieved an act of ostentatious and triumphant crime, for which the double devastation of the country, and the gore of its millions, scattered over every soil of Europe, may not have yet atoned.

The Liberals triumphed, but they were to taste of speedy vengeance. Their desires were limited to the supremacy of the French House of Commons. To accomplish this, the King must be first a slave or a corpse. But patriotism has objects too illustrious to waste its eyes on the calamities of individuals. The Giron

"At length at midnight, on the 9th of August, a cannon was fired, the tocsin sounded, and the générale beat in every quarter of Paris. The survivors of the bloody catastrophe which was about to commence have pourtrayed in the strongest colours the horrors of that dreadful_night, when the oldest monarchy in Europe began to fall. The incessant clang of the tocsin, the rolling of the drums, the rattling of artillery and ammunition waggons along the streets, the cries of the insurgents, the march of columns, rang in their ears long after, and haunted their minds even in the midst of festivity and rejoicing. The club of the Jacobins, that of the Cordeliers, and the Section of Quinze Vingt, in the Fauxbourg St Antoine, were the three centres of the insurrection. The most formidable forces were assembled at the club of the Cordeliers. The Marseillois were there, and the vigour of Danton gave energy to all their proceedings. It is time,' said he, to appeal to the laws and legislators-the laws have

made no provision for such offences -the legislators are the accomplices of the criminals. Already have they acquitted La Fayette! To absolve that traitor, is to deliver us to him, to the enemies of France, to the sanguinary vengeance of the Allied Kings. This very night the perfidious Louis has chosen to deliver to carnage and conflagration the capital, which he is prepared to quit in the moment of its ruin. To arms! to arms! no other chance of escape is left to us.' The insurgents, and especially the Marseillois, impatiently called for the signal to march, and the cannon of all the Sections began to roll towards the centre of the city."-Vol. I. p. 324.

Against this furious force the infatuated Court had made but slight and hurried preparation. The fatal policy of soothing down rebellion had beguiled the weak King to send away the greater portion of the Swiss, the only troops who were not rotten to the core with republican gold and brandy. These were times when villainy was brought to the surface by every roll of the popular wave. The household troops, sworn tenfold to live and die for their Sovereign, were marked by pre-eminent treachery. "The forces on the royal side," we are told, "were numerous, but little reliance could be placed on a great proportion of them. And the gendarmerie à cheval, a most important force in civil conflicts, soon gave a fatal example of disaffection, by deserting in a body to the enemy. This important corps was chiefly composed of the former French guards, who had thus the infamy twice, in the same convulsions, of betraying at once their Sovereign and their oaths."

But what did the purified legislature do on this occasion? They vindicated the majesty of representation by the most immediate subserviency to the will of the rabble. They had not yet arrived at the determination to overturn the throne; but they received the law on that subject from the host of miscreants in the streets, and they prepared for the overthrow accordingly. During the tumult, they had assembled, as if for the purpose of giving an eternal lesson of the utter incompetence of a house which has built its strength

upon the rabble, and mistaken the mob for the nation. The murderers in the streets had only to declare their will. The National Assembly sat there, with their liberal president Vergniaud, only to register it. Trembling for their lives, and not daring to make the slightest attempt to protect even themselves, much less to retrieve the disorders of the time, they sat from hour to hour, the puppets of representation.

In this emergency, where all was cowardice that was not frenzy, and the boasted dignity of the French Parliament had evaporated into the alternate fright and fawning of a beaten hound, one character alone threw a ray of honour across the whole terrible history-piece of baseness and crime, the Queen. This high-minded woman, worthy of the Imperial blood, strove successively to recall the fidelity of the French troops, and create the sense of courage in her feeble husband. In their review of the National Guard in the gardens of the Palace, she harangued, she adjured them by every principle of soldiership, to remain firm to their duty on that eventful day.

""

The King returned pale and depressed. The Queen displayed the ancient spirit of her race. Every thing which you hold most dear," said she, to the grenadiers of the Guard, "your homes, your wives, your children, depend on our existence-to-day our cause is that of the people." The Queen had pressed the King to put on a shirt of mail, probably with the intention of placing him at the head of the troops. He refused, and answered her with a speech worthy of a hero of the stage. "No, in the day of battle the King should be clothed like the meanest

of his followers." The speech was all-as is the custom of the country. He sought no day of battle, but fled from the hazard, and lived to waste upon the scaffold the blood which he might have proudly shed for the throne.

The tumults thickened, and Roderer, hurrying back to the unhap py and silent council, poorly and traitorously advised an escape to the safeguard of the Assembly. The Queen nobly spurned at the idea of stooping to the protection of slaves and traitors. "I would rather," ex

claimed she, "be nailed to the walls of the Palace than leave it." She now made a last, bitter appeal to the King; putting a pistol into his hand, she said, "Come, sir, this is the moment to shew yourself." The King sat still and did nothing. At length, on Roederer's suggestion, that if they remained there, it must be to be massacred, he moved"Gentlemen," said he, "there is nothing to be done here."

The Assembly, headed by this man of words, Vergniaud, received the undone Monarch with a highflown promise, to "die in his defence." But while he sat under their ominous protection, the attack on the Tuil eries had begun. Imagination perhaps has never conceived more anxious moments than those of the Royal Family, while the roar of the cannon and musketry told them that their palace was ransacked, their friends perishing, and their throne extinguished. If there could be an increase to this misery, it must have been in the knowledge that the fatal issue of the struggle was chiefly owing to the flight of the King. The Swiss, and the gentlemen of the Palace, had fought gallantly and successfully in the beginning of the struggle. But on its being told that the King had left the Palace, the outcry rose, “For what are we fighting? The King has deserted us!" Some, in indignation, threw down their arms; others in a belief that orders had arrived to desist. The troops, without orders, and disgusted by the retreat of the nobles and gentlemen, who had hitherto continued firing from the Palace windows, now retreated within the gates. They were instantly ruined.

"It was no longer a battle, but a massacre. The enraged multitude broke into the Palace, and put to death every one found in it. The fugitives, pursued into the gardens of the Tuileries by the pikemen of the Fauxbourgs, were unmercifully put to death, under the trees, amid the fountains, and at the foot of the statues.

but the officer who bore it was massacred on the road. As the firing grew louder, the consternation increased, and many deputies rose to escape; but others exclaimed, 'No, this is our post.' The people in the galleries drowned the speakers by their cries, and soon the loud shouts, Victoire, victoire, les Suisses sont vaincus,' announced that the fate of the monarchy was decided."

One of the sophisms of the Republican day, and one of the sophisms of our own time, is, that the "march of Revolution" is irresistible. That something little short of a work of destiny is set in act whenever a popular impulse is given, and that in such cases courage has nothing to do but to make its escape, and wisdom nothing to do but to make common cause with folly. This was the Ca Ira of 93. We have the same burden of the song at this hour. Every partisan of the wildest measures, of the wildest mischief, supports them on the ground that the cause of mischief is the course of fate. But one of the values of Mr Alison's important work is the distinctness with which he marks the epochs at which the ruin might have been totally arrested, and the rights of the nation avenged, by the slightest exertion of intelligence and fortitude.

"The 10th of August was the last occasion in which the means of saving France were placed in the hands of the King; and there can be little doubt, that had he possessed a firmer character, he might have accomplished the task. The great bulk of the nation was disgusted with the excesses of the Jacobins, and the outrage of the 20th of June (the day of the red cap) had excited a universal feeling of horror. If he had acted with vigour on that trying occasion, repelled force by force, and seized the first moments of victory to proclaim as enemies the Jacobins and Girondists who had a hundred times violated the constitution; if he had dissolved the Assembly, closed the clubs, and arrested the leaders of the revolt, that day would have reestablished the royal authority."

"While these terrible scenes were going forward, the Assembly was in the most violent agitation. At the first discharge of musketry, the King declared that he had forbid the troops to fire, and signed an order to the Swiss Guards to stop the combat;

Of this fact there can be no doubt in the mind of any man capable of understanding the lessons of history. The King of France had not merely this opportunity, but a dozen oppor

tunities, in any one of which a man of common sense and common vigour would have blown the Revolution into the air.

The proof of this was given in the complete overthrow of this very multitude a few years after by Bonaparte; at a time when they were flushed with victory, in the habit of disposing of the commonwealth, and organized into almost regular battalions. The Directory committed their cause to a daring little man, who disdained to tamper with street rebellion, opened a few guns on them, and allaying their legislative propensities with grape-shot, drove them within cellars and stalls, never to appear again until they came shouting in his train, and licking the dust at his footstool. Such would have been the true way to treat the Jacobinism of 93. Such will be the true way to treat it at our interval of forty years, and such will be the true way as long as rabble rapine dares to perplex the order of the State. Political Unions, Birmingham mob-parliaments, Repealers, debating volunteers, the whole Jacquerie and jargon of plunder and regicide, the paraders of tricoloured Hags, the annual parliament and universal suffrage faction, must be dealt with, not by sufferance, but by law, seized on their first motion, put into the hands of justice, and consigned, under the verdict of twelve honest men, to that exile from which they shall never return. Authority has been too supine among us. We have seen the King hunted with hissings and groans through the streets, until it became almost a merit with the first half-mad, halfdrunken ruffian that could reach his person, to attempt his murder. We have seen, with scarcely less indignation, Wellington, the military light of the land, the first living name of Europe, put in danger of his life in the most public streets of London, on the anniversary of his own unrivalled victory. Where were our Magistrates when those things were done? And what were our Privy Councils and great official protectors of the state doing when the ruffians who perpetrated these gross and dangerous outrages on majesty were rambling loose about the metropolis, and boasting of what they had done? And where is the autho

rity that still suffers designs to be avowed to which that boasting was innocent? If our public men have still to learn the ruin that follows submission to the multitude, let them read the facts of the history before us, if they would draw the conclusions of national safety and personal honour, let them listen to the reasonings of its intelligent and manly writer.

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The Parisian parliament, made by the mob, flattering the mob, and, of course, the mere tool of the mob, was the mere echo of the street outcry on this occasion. Vergniaud and the House had sworn, like the senators of one of their own melodrames, to perish for their King." Their conduct from that hour was a mixture of affectation and beggary, the pomp of political coxcombry, and the nakedness of the most corrupt and crouching pusillanimity. While those theatric phrases were still on their lips, their masters in the street commanded them to proceed without delay to the final overthrow of the Monarchy. The Municipality, the self-elected sovereigns of Paris and of France, ordered the National Assembly to register an act nullifying the throne. The mandate was accepted." Yielding to necessity," as Mr Alison tells, " but a necessity which they had made for themselves, and which could have been a yoke only on the profligate and the vile," the Assembly, on the motion of Vergniaud! passed a decree, suspending the King, and dismissing the Ministers. They had now filled up the measure of their faithlessness; they were next to exhibit the depths of their pusillanimity. The Municipality unhesitatingly demanded that the National Assembly, having done all the mischief of which it was capable, should now give place to a more rapid minister of evil, and declare itself extinct! The National Assembly bowed its head, received the order with the due veneration, put the bow-string round its neck, and passed a decree for the immediate calling of a National Convention.

The following observations are of incomparable importance in our troubled time. "It is the middling ranks who organize the first resistance to Government, because it is their influence only which can withstand the shock of established power.