rate. ous means, will have the whole of your poeple out of whom to choose persons for your service; but, if once you were to be persuaded to rule by means of corruption, you yourself would become a slave. You must then take the instruments that corruption would offer you; you must submit to the impudence, the insolence, the ignorance, the imbecility, that an oligarchy of corruption would impose upon you; and you must agree with that oligarchy in plunder ciency to support your splendor and that of your family.-In such a state of things, the French people would be made to labour for the support of persons as lazy as monks, and much more insolent and numerous. The monks, at any rate, lived upon what they called their own property; they did not live upon the taxes. Bat, a swarm, hatched by corruption, would fall immes power, it will always be remembered, that real merit was the object of his rewards and praises; and, that, though he did assail the liberties of France, he assailed them openly, and not by a hypocritical and base system of corruption, calculated at once, to ruin freedom and to secure himself. His attacks were manly, at any He was a soldier, and he governed too much like a soldier; but, his rod was a feather, compared to what he might have made it, if he had chosen the base meansing your people, in order to obtain a suffiof corruption; covering his tyranny by au eternal clatter about liberty and his constitution, and making the Corps Legislatif the channel of his frauds, and the partaker in his power and plunder. Happily for France, he proceeded by storm and not by sap. I hope your Majesty will shun both. You are luckily freed from all apprehensions of any combinations of an oligarchy. The new nobility have no families; no deep-diately upon the public revenues, as the rooted and wide-spreading connections; no foulest of vermin fall upon a diseased huhold upon the soil and population; no ac- man or other carcase: and, besides, mouks cursed influence over the actions of men by were single men, whereas corruption means of their purses. The old nobility hatches whole broods at a time, female as are in the same state. Time has so dis-well as male: father and mother, sons and persed them, that they are no longer a daughters, uncles and aunts, and cousins body capable of acting in concert. They too numerous to be counted, would fall, will have no influence over the minds of all together upon your poor devoted peothe people, who are, in general, placed ple; fasten upon them for life; mount quite out of their reach. Your Majesty, them, as the weazle does the hare, ride therefore, may, if you choose, be a real them and suck their blood at the same time, Sovereign, hearing and listening to the free and, in answer to their piteous cries, insult voice of your people; for, though the node them, perhaps, by telling them, that they of electing representatives is not quite what ought not to grudge the sacrifice, seeing I could have wished, the people will, at that it was the price of their freedom!any rate, have something to say they will Nevertheless, I am far from being certain, have some weight in the choosing of those that your Majesty will not find persons to who are to have the holding of their purses. advise you to slide, as soon as possible, into The elections, as far as they go, may be a system of this sort. But, you will, I free. The thing will not be a mere sham; hope, perceive the danger as well as the a mere delusion of the ignorant; a mere wickedness of such advice, and that you show of freedom for the purpose of more will be even more resolute in rejecting it, securely practising a real despotisin.--Your than you would in rejecting the advice to Majesty is happily relieved from the exist-establish an open and undisguised tyranny; ence of the great source of corrupt in fluence, and, it ought to be an object of your special care to prevent the arising of such a source; for, the moment it arises, the miseries of your Majesty and of your brave and excellent people will begin. They may still call themselves free; but, they will not only be, in reality, slaves, but will become mean and dastardly, each endeavouring to seek, by obtaining a share in the public plunder, a compensative for his losses and his disgrace. Your Majesty, while you keep your people clear of corrupt influence, while you govern by virtu the latter being far less injurious to the morals and interests of the people, as well as less disgraceful to the ruler. Under an open and avowed despotism, men are not hypocrites. They submit to force, and do not attempt to disguise their submission. What is the lot of one is the lot of all. The ruler has no need of subaltern despots. He insults nobody, because he does not affect to consider any one as free. But, if you were to govern by corruption, the unhappy people of France would become a race of dissimulating knaves; each would be seeking to undermine the other; every ever existed in France; that you will make the scaffold groan with severed heads and quartered carcasses; that you will involve your people in bloody and long civil wars; that you will so cripple the power of France, that she will be unable to look abroad for centuries; that you will accept of peace with other powers upon the most injurious and degrading terms; that you will debase, lacerate, devastate, France, ashamed to live in; but, above all things, they hope, that you will extinguish the very name and idea of freedom, thereby destroying a gem that might, at one time or another, spread itself over the world.In some of these their fiend-like hopes, I know that they will be disappointed, and I trust, that they will be disappointed in them all. The French people, under a one would be working to sell himself at the | family, or your interests. They see you highest possible price; there would be an about to be at the head of a nation, which universal struggle for a share in the gene- will be great, because it cannot be made ral plunder, whence must arise a baseness little. These low-minded and malignant of national character too odious to be en- men (I mean the mere writers and such dured. Your Majesty's restoration forces like people, of course) have renewed upon one's mind the recollection of the their old hope of "clupping the wungs of elevation of SIXTUS V. to the Popedom. France," as one of our North British worHe, who had before been suffered to live thies called it in the year 1793. They almost wholly unnoticed, became, all of a hope, that your Majesty will attempt the sudden, surrounded with flatterers and ad-restoration of every abuse of power that mirers. The old ass of Ancona," as the Cardinals used to call him, but who was, in fact, a very wise man, became, in a moment, an object of fulsome eulogium with the haughty family of Medici, and of others not less haughty or less unworthy of the name of noble. Your Majesty is now an object of flattery, and with some from motives similar to those of the family of Medici, upon the occasion referred to. Those who gathered themselves round Six-making her a country for a man to be tus V. congratulated him on his elevation; told him of his mended health and his fair prospect of long life; and who even went so far in their officiousness as to intrude their aid in adjusting, with their own hands, his newly assumed robes, were soon assured, from his own lips, that he stood in no need of their assistance. If your Majesty be wise, your conduct will, in this respect, resemble that of this cele-wise and just system of government, will brated Pope, whose congratulators, whose be an example to all nations; their lanflatterers, whose officious new friends, guage is the most general; their science thought, by such means, to become the the greatest; they possess the arts in the masters of his mind, or, at least, to obtain highest degree; they have the finest cliand secure great influence in the directing mate and soil; their natural productions of his measures, and who were so far from are the most various and most relished; succeeding in their views, that they very their temper is the most gay; and their resoon became objects of his censure, and nown in arms surpassing that of all the other had, in various ways, to feel the effect of nations of the earth put together. Whathis power. The consequence was, that ever such a people does, must necessarily they, when too late, cursed the hour that be of great weight in the world; and, they lent a hand to his exaltation. This what that people will do, depends, in a will, I am quite certain, if you act wisely, great degree, upon your Majesty, whose happen in your case. If you act with jus-interest is inseparable from that of your tice and moderation; if you take care not to sacrifice the honour and interests of France; if you return to your people with a mind free from all thoughts of revenge and resentment; and especially if you show that you are resolved to maintain the rights and liberties of the people; if you act thus, I am quite certain, that, in a very few months, you will see yourself vilified in those very prints which have been the forwardest in hailing your restoration. Those who promulgate their views, or effect their purposes, through the channel of these prints, have no regard for you, your people, and who cannot be truly great, unless they be truly free.--The fact, as stated in the public prints, that the Statue of Liberty has been placed on the pedestal, from which that of Napoleon had been hurled, is, I hope, an undeceiving sign of what is to take place under your Majesty. At any rate, it is strikingly expressive of the sentiments of the nation; and, it has this great merit, that it proclaims to the world at large, that the principles of liberty, after all the storms of revolution, have prevailed in the fairest part of Europe. There is much for your Majesty to lament in what has passed during your exile; but, you find you never saw while you resided in those France much better than you left her. countries. Your entrance into this counClear of all debts, calculated to corrupt try, for instance, must have appeared to and degrade her; a circulating medium you quite wonderful when you come to that the whole world receives; manufac. witness the crowds at your departure. I tures ready to start into activity; informa- dare say, that your Majesty must have tion every where possessed; a great dimi- philosophised on this sudden burst of feelnution in the distress and number of pau- ing for your long sufferings; and, I will pers; an augmentation of the number of venture to say, that it was so pleasing to proprietors; industry instead of monkish you, that you will take care to do nothing laziness; all exclusive privileges abolished; that shall put you in a situation to deprive the road of preferment open to talent and you of the chance of witnessing such scenes virtue; an army that wants no training, a in future in your own country. You have people capable of defending their country now seen, that it is to the power and not against all Europe combined. To restore to the person that the herd of mankind a sufficiency of trade to such a nation is the pay respect; and, in order to preserve work of a month. Indeed, it is no work power, in your case, you must, and I trust at all. Trade will come of itself.-Your you will, endeavour to make your people Majesty will not be, it is hoped, easily in-happy and contented.In conclusion, I veigled to sacrifice the interests of your cannot refrain from observing, what seems people to those of foreign States for the to have been wholly overlooked, that your purpose of preserving the friendship of Majesty, in accepting the title of King of those States. You have had abundant ex-France from the hands of your revolutionperience of the value of that friendship; izing subjects, will now have no nominal and you will, I trust, want nothing to rival in that title. The title of King of convince you, that your best friends, and France was, before the revolution, amongst the only friends you have on earth are the proudest distinctions of our own grayour own subjects. One of our base and cious and beloved Sovereign, who bore the malignant journalists calls on you NOT fleur de lis also in his arms. These were TO FORGET the deeds of certain of discontinued previous to, and just before, the republican generals. And, has your the memorable treaty of Amiens, upon the Majesty nobody else to remember? Are ground, as some said, that it was a disthere no other persons, who ought to grace to our benevolent ruler to associate wish that your Majesty had lost your me- with his titles that of Sovereign of so wicked mory? Have the last twenty-two years a people as the French were then considerfurnished your Majesty with no acts ed. This objection is, indeed, now reworthy of recollection but those which moved; but, I much question whether any have been committed by the valiant lead-alteration will take place in consequence ers of the armies of France? Have you of it; so that your Majesty will now be observed no baseness any where but in the only person in the world called King France? Have you, in your several jour-of France. This, amongst numerous other neys and solitudes, cast your eyes upon great advantages, you will owe to that renothing worthy of your contempt and exe-volution, which, though in its progress, cration? In short, how many times must you and every member of your family have vowed, that, if you were ever reconciled to your people, nothing on earth should again separate you from them! The republican generals possess the love and admiration of your people; they are adored by the armies; they alone are able to give countenance to your authority and stability to your throne. As towards your exter-de cachet and the Bastile, during the whole nal enemies they are a tower of strength. Their very names is a host in your favour; and, in proportion as they are hated and calumniated by foreign writers, they ought to be esteemed and caressed by you. Your Majesty will now see a great numism of France. They were certainly carber of faces from foreign countries, which ried to an excess hardly credible; to the attended with much suffering and many crimes, has improved the lot of mankind in general, and particularly that of the people and even the Sovereign of France. ON THE REVOLUTION OF FRANCE. "The gross infamy which attended lettres reign of Louis XV. made them esteemed in England, by people not well informed, as the most prominent features of the despot length of being sold, with blanks, to be head of each, into whose hands the whole filled up with names at the pleasure of the power of the crown was delegated for every purchaser; who was thus able, in the gra-thing except the military authority; but tification of private revenge, to tear a man particularly for all affairs of finance. The from the bosom of his family, and bury generalities were subdivided into elections, him in a dungeon, where he would exist at the head of which was a sub-delegué, forgotten, and die unknown!-But such appointed by the intendant. The rolls of excesses could not be common in any coun- the taille, capitation, vingtiemes, and other try; and they were reduced almost to no- taxes, were distributed among districts, thing, from the accession of the present parishes, and individuals, at the pleasure of King The great mass of the people, by the intendant, who could exempt, change, which I mean the lower and middle ranks, add, or diminish, at pleasure. Such an could suffer very little from such engines, enormes power, constantly acting, and and as few of them are objects of jealousy, from which no man was free, must, in the had there been nothing else to complain of, nature of things, degenerate in many cases it is not probable they would ever have into absolute tyranny. It must be obvibeen brought to take arms: The abuses ous, that the friends, acquaintances, attending the levy of taxes were heavy and dependants of the intendant, and of all his universal. The kingdom was parcelled into generalities, with an intendant at the and sub-delegués, and the friends of these friends, to a long chain of dependance, might be favoured in taxation at the expence of their miserable neighbours; and that noblemen, in favour at court, to whose 1 An anecdote, which I have from an authority to be depended on, will explain the profligacy of government, in respect to these arbitrary imprisonments. Lord Albemarle, when ambassador in France, about the year 1753, protection the intendant himself would nanegociating the fixing of the limits of the Amte-turally look up, could find little difficulty rican colonies, which, three years after, produced the war, calling one day on the minister for foreign affairs, was introduced, for a few minutes, into bis cabinet, while he finished a short conversation in the apartment in which he usually received those who conferred with him. As his lordship walked backwards and forwards, in a very small room (a French cabinet is never a large one,) he could not help seeing a paper lying on the table, written in a large legible hand, and containing a list of the prisoners in the Bastile, in which the first name was Gordon. When the minister entered, Lord Albemarle apologized for his involuntarily remarking the paper; the other replied, that it was not of the least consequence, for they made no secret of the names. Lord A, then said, that he had seen the name of Gordon first in the list, and he begged to know, as in all probability the person of this name was a British subject, on what account he had been put into the Bastile. The minister told him, that he knew nothing of the matter, but would make the proper inquiries. The next best afford to pay, exempted because able! time he saw Lord Albemarle, he informed him,The inrolments for the militia, which that, on inquiring into the case of Gordon, he in throwing much of the weight of their taxes on others, without a similar support. Instances, and even gross ones, have been reported to me in many parts of the kingdom, that made me shudder at the oppres sion to which numbers must have been condemned, by the undue favours granted to such crooked influence. But, without recurring to such cases, what must have been the state of the poor people paying heavy taxes, from which the nobility and clergy were exempted? A cruel aggrava tion of their misery, to see those who could could find no person who could give him the the cahiers call. an injustice without exleast information; on which he had had Gordon ample, were another dreadful scourge on himself interrogated, who solemnly affirmed, that he had not the smallest knowledge, or even the peasantry; and, as married men were suspicion, of the cause of his imprisonment, but that he had been confined thirty years; how. over, added the minister, I ordered him to be immediately released, and he is now at large. Such a case wants no comment. exempted from it, occasioned in some de Nob. Bricy, p. 6, &c. &c. glers, first offence, a fine of 100 liv. Second, 300 liv. Third, flogged, and ba nished the kingdom for life. Husbands responsible both in fine and body. 6. Children smugglers, the same as women.-Fathers and mothers responsible; and for defect of payment flogged. gree that mischievous population, 'which brought beings into the world, in order for little else than to be starved. The corvées, or police of the roads, were annually the ruin of many hundreds of farmers; more than 300 were reduced to beggary in filling up one vale in Lorraine: all these oppressions fell on the tiers etat only; the nobility and clergy having been equally exempted from tailles, militia, and corvées. The penal code of finance makes one shudder at the horrors of punishment inade-pose employed in the salt-works or the requate to the crime. A few features will venue), if smugglers, death. And such as sufficiently characterize the old govern- assist in the theft of salt in the transport, ment of France. hanged. 1. Smugglers of salt, armed and assembled to the number of five, in Provence, a fine of 500 liv. and nine years gallies;in all the rest of the kingdom, death. 2. Smugglers armed, assembled, but in number under five, a fine of 300 liv. and three years gallies. Second offence, death. 3. Smugglers, without arms, but with horses, carts, or boats; a fine of 300 liv. if not paid, three years gallies. Second offence, 400 liv. and nine years gallies.In Dauphiné, second offence, gallies for life. In Provence, five years gallies. 4. Smugglers, who carry the salt on their backs, and without arms, a fine of 200 liv. and if not paid, are flogged and branded. Second offence, a fine of 300 liv. and six years gallies. It is calculated by a writer (Recherches et Consid, par. M. le Baron de Cormeré, tom. ii. p. 187.) very well informed on every subject of finance, that, upon an average, there were annually taken up and sent to prison or the gallies, Men, 2,340; Women, 896; Children, 201. Total, 3,437. 300 of these to the gallies (tom. i. p. 112). The salt confiscated from these miserables amounted to 12,633 quintals, which, at the mean price of 8 liv. are 101,064 liv. 2,772lb. of salted flesh, at 10s. 1,386 1,086 borses, at 50 liv. 54,300 7. Nobles, if smugglers, deprived of their nobility; and their houses razed to the ground. 8. Any persons in employments (I sup 9. Soldiers smuggling, with arms, are hanged; without arms, gallies for life. 10. Buying smuggled salt to resell it, the same punishments as for smuggling.. 11. Persons in the salt employments, empowered if two, or one with two witnesses, to enter and examine houses even of the priviledged orders. 12. All families, and persons liable to the taille, in the provinces of the Grandes Gabelles inrolled, and their consumption of salt for the pot and saliére (that is, the daily consumption, exclusive of salting meat, &c. &c.) estimated at 7lb. a head, per annum, which quantity they are forced to buy whether they want it or not, under the pain of various fines according to the case. The Capitaineries were a dreadful scourge 5. Women, married and single, smug- on all the occupiers of land. By this term, is to be understood the paramountship of certain districts, granted by the king, to princes of the blood, by which they were put in possession of the property of all game, even on lands not belonging to them; and, what is very singular, on manors granted long before to individuals; so that the erecting of a district into a capitainerie, was an annihilation of all manorial rights to game within it. This was a trifling business, in comparison of other circumstances; for, in speaking of the preserva 52 carts, at 150 liv. Fines Seized in houses 7,800 53,207 105,530 223,287 |