state of imaginary security, the armistice was broken, and the French pushed on their forces, when those of the Swiss were dispersed. Resistance on the part of the latter, whose numbers did not amount to a tenth of those of their flagitious enemy, now became hopeless: and though the little army was brave, though the people were faithful and active, though the last battle was long, obstinate, and bloody; though the Swiss achieved wonders, and though the women fought by the sides of their husbands, inciting them to victory or death, all was in vain; hundreds and thousands perished by the sabres of the French, and while the earth was strewed with their dead bodies, and while the flames ascended from the once happy dwellings of this valiant and innocent people, the hard-earned and longpreserved liberties of Switzerland expired.

Germany, which closes this awful lesson, was invaded by the French in 1796 and 1798. There invasions were attended with crimes too atrocious to be credited, were they not proved by indisputable evidence, and did they not accord with the general practice of the inhuman wretches by whom they were committed. In adverting to these detestable acts of oppression and cruelty, we must recollect, that they were perpetrated upon a people, who had made no resistance of any sort against the invaders, and who in every instance had entered into an agreement with the French generals, to pay them great sums of money, in order to preserve their country from plunder. In consequence of the ransom thus wrung from the people, the invaders declared, by public proclamation, that the persons and property

No

of the inhabitants should be strictly respected; and that their rights, usages, laws, and religion, should remain inviolate and undisturbed. On these assurances, thus solemnly made, the credulous people all implicitly relied, while some of the poorer classes regarded the French, not as enemies, but as their deliverer from taxes and labour. sooner, however, had the invasion taken place, no sooner had the French become masters of the country, than they spread themselves over it like beasts of prey, devouring and destroying every thing before them. They spared neither cities nor towns, neither villages nor hamlets, nor solitary houses; from the church to the cell, from the castle to the cottage; no state of life, however lofty or however humble, escaped their rapacious assaults; no sanctity excited their veneration; no grandeur their respect; no misery their forbearance or their pity. After having plundered the houses of the gentry, the clergy, and the tradesmen; after having pillaged the shops, warehouses, and manufactories, they proceeded to the farmhouses and cottages; they rifled the pockets and chests of the inhabitants, cut open their beds, tore up the floors of their rooms, dug up their cellars, searched the newly made graves, and broke open the coffins in hopes of finding secreted money. They sometimes threatened people with immediate death, sometimes put them to the torture, sometimes lacerated and crippled them, in order to wring from them a discovery of their little pittance of ready money. The deepest and most apparent poverty was no protection against their rapacity; grey hairs and lisping infancy; the sick,

the

the dying, women in child-bed, were alike exposed to the most inhuman treatment; dragged from their beds, kicked, wounded, and frequently killed, under pretence that they were the keepers of concealed treasure. The teams and focks, cattle of every kind, the marauders drove off, cut to pieces on the spot, or left in a state of mutilation; corn, hay, and straw, they wasted or burnt; they demolished the household furniture, destroyed the utensils of the dairies, the barns, and the stables; tore down the gates, Bevelled the fences. In many places they stripped the cloaths from the backs of the people, set their liquor flowing in the cellar, burnt their provisions to ashes. The churches, whether Romish or Protestant, they rendered a scene of indiscriminate robbery, of sacrilege, and blasphemy, too shocking to describe. Towards women of all ages and all conditions, they were guilty of brutality never before heard of: neither extreme youth nor extreme age; neither weakness nor deformity; nor the most loathsome disease; neither the pangs of labour, nor the agonies of death, could restrain them; shrieks, tears, supplications were of no avail; and where fathers, husbands, or brothers interfered, murder seldom failed to close the horrible scene. To spread nakedness and hunger, to introduce misery and disease amongst all ranks, seems to have been their uniform desire; but the lower orders of the people, the artisans and the labourers, were the objects of their direct malignity against them was directed the sharpest bayonet; for their bodies the choicest torment; for their minds the keenest anguish was reserved; from one end of the coun

try to the other, we trace the merciless ruffians through a scene of conflagration and blood; frequently we see them butchering whole families, and retiring by the light of their blazing habitations; but amongst the poor alone, do we find them deferring the murder of the parents for the purpose of compelling them to hear their children shriek amidst the flames!

Such are the barbarities which have been inflicted on other nations. The recollection of them will never be effaced; the melancholy story will be handed down from generation to generation, to the everlasting infamy of the republicans of France; and as an awful warning to all those nations whom they may hereafter attempt to invade. We are one of those nations; we are the people who they are now preparing to invade: awful, indeed, is the warning, and, if we despise it, tremendous will be the judgment. The same generals, the same commissaries, the same officers, the same soldiers, the very same rapacious and sanguinary host, that now hold Holland and Switzerland in chains, that desolated Egypt, Italy, and Germany, are, at this moment, preparing to make England, Ireland, and Scotland, the scenes of their atrocities. For some time past, they have had little opportunity to plunder: peace, for a while, suspended their devastations, and now, like gaunt and hungry wolves, they are looking towards the rich pastures of Britain: already we hear their threatening howl; and if, like sheep, we stand bleating for mercy, neither our innocence nor our timidity will save us from being torn to pieces and devoured. The robbe ries, the barbarities, the brutalities

they

and exercise a tyranny, such as the world never before witnessed. All the estates, all the farms, all the mines, all the land and the houses, all the shops and magazines, all the remaining manufactories, and all the workshops of every kind and description, from the greatest to the smallest; all these they would bring over Frenchmen to possess, making us their servants and their labourers. To prevent us from uniting and rising against them, they would crowd every town and village with their brutal soldiers, who would devour all the best part of the produce of the earth, leaving us not half a sufficiency of bread, They would, besides, introduce their own bloody laws, with additional severities: they would divide us into separate classes; hem us up in districts; cut off all communication between friends and relations, parents and children; which latter they would breed up in their own blasphemous principles; they would affix badges upon us, mark us in the cheek, shave our heads, split our ears, or clothe us in the habits of slaves !— And, shall we submit to misery and degradation like this, rather than encounter the expences of war; rather than meet the honourable dangers of military combat; rather than make a generous use of the means which Providence has so bounteously placed in our hands? The sun, in his whole course round the globe, shines not on a spot so blessed as this great, and now united kingdom. Gay and productive fields and gardens, lofty and extensive woods, innumerable flocks and herds, rich and inexhaustible mines, a mild and wholesome climate, giving health, activity, and vigour to fourteen millions of people; and shall we, who

they have committed in other countries, though, at the thought of them, the heart sinks, and the blood runs cold, will be mere trifles to what they will commit here, if we suffer them to triumph over us. The Swiss and the Suabians were never objects of their envy; they were never the rivals of Frenchmen, either on the land or on the sea; they had never disconcerted or checked their ambitious projects, never humbled their pride, never defeated either their armies or their fleets. We have been, and we have done all this: they have long entertained against us a hatred engendered by the mixture of envy and of fear ; and they are now about to make a great and desperate effort to gratify this furious, this unquenchable, this deadly hatred. What then, can we · expect at their hands? What but torments even surpassing those which they have inflicted on other nations. They remained but three months in Germany; here they would remain for ever; there, their extortions and their atrocities were, for want of time, confined to a part of the people; here they would be universal; no sort, no part, no particle of property would remain unseized; no man, woman, or child would escape violence of some kind or other. Such of our manufactories as are moveable, they would transport to France, together with the most ingenious of the manufacturers, whose wives and children would be left to starve. Our ships would follow the same course, with all the commerce and commercial means of the kingdom. Having stripped us of every thing, even to the stoutest of our sons, and the most beautiful of our daughters, over all that remained they would establish VOL. XLV.

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are thus favoured and endowed; shall we, who are abundantly supplied with iron and steel, powder and lead; shall we, who have a fleet superior to the maritime force of all the world, and who are able to bring two millions of fighting men into the field; shall we yield up this dear and happy land, together with all the liberties and honours, to preserve which, our fathers so often dyed the land and sea with their blood; shall we, thus, at once, dishonour their graves, and stamp disgrace and infamy on the brows of our children; and shall we too, make this base and dastardly surrender to an enemy, whom, within these twelve years, our countrymen have defeated in every quarter of the world! No; we are not so miserably fallen; we cannot, in so short a space of time, have become so detestably degenerate: we have the strength and the will to repel the hostility, to chastise the insolence of the foe. Mighty, indeed, must be our efforts, but mighty also is the meed. Singly engaged against the tyrants of the earth, Britain now attracts the eyes and the hearts of mankind; groaning nations look to her for deliverance; justice, liberty, and religion, are inscribed on her banners; her success will be hailed with the shouts of the universe, while tears of admiration and gratitude will bedew the heads of her sons, who fall in the glorious contest*.

Trial of Colonel Marcus Despard.

The commission appointed to try col. Despard, was opened before

lord chief justice Ellenborough, Mr. justice Le Blanc, Mr. justice Chambré, and Mr. Baron Thompson. The grand jury being sworn, lord Ellenborough addressed and informed them that they were assembled for the purpose of entering upon trials for high treason and misprision of treason. He said that the statute of the 36th of the present reign particularly applied to the case about to be considered: it provides, with peculiar care, for the safety of his majesty's person. A statute of the 37th of the present king was enacted to punish the seduction of any of his majesty's forces from their allegiance, or their incitement to rebellious meetings: and another statute, of the same year, to prohibit the administering of unlawful oaths. The law had guarded, with the most zealous anxiety, against every attempt to injure the person of his majesty, and, therefore, the operations of the mind, the secret workings of malevolence, which indicate a disposi tion hostile to the existence of the king, is, by law, equally regarded with the perpetration of the crime, and any attempt to subject the king's person to restraint, or to depose him from his authority, implied the most flagitious purpose of treason, and also that any consultation, agrecment, or resolution, to effect this design, although nothing was actually done, was yet demonstrative of treasonable intentions.

The bill of indictment being found, on Feb. 5, col. Despard was brought to the bar and arraigned. The indictment consisted of three counts, setting forth eight distinct and separate overt acts.

The first stated, that the prisoner

and

and others conspired to seduce several soldiers, for the purpose of subverting the government, and with intent to destroy the king.

The second set forth the administration of illegal oaths, in order to bind certain persons to effect the aforesaid purpose.

The third charged the possession of printed forms of an oath, binding the conspirators not to give evidence of each other.

The fourth charged the administration of the said oath to Thomas Blades, &c.

The fifth charged the prisoners with meeting to concert on a plan to assassinate the king, &c.

The sixth charged them with a conspiracy to seize on the bank, the tower, &c.

The seventh charged the prisoners with meeting, the better to effect the murder of the king.

The eighth and last, charged them, generally, with the intent of shooting the king on the day he should meet his parliament, &c. &c.

On Monday, Feb. 7, 1803, the court met, and proceeded to try E. M. Despard. The attorney-general addressed them, observing, that there were three counts in the indictment, charging the different acts to have been done with three several intentions that the prisoner, in conjunction with others, had established a society professedly for the extension of liberty, had frequently attempted to seduce soldiers into the association, and that he had printed copies of an oath to be administered to their proselytes, and had formed a plan to destroy his majesty on the 16th of November: to prove which, he called the following witnesses.

1st. John Stafford.-He, together

with a number of police officers, went, on the 16th November, to the Oakley Arms, Lambeth, where they found col. Despard and several others. On the floor of the room in which they were, three printed papers were found-they were as follow:

"Constitution! The independence of Great Britain and Ire land-an equalization of civil, political and religious rights-an ample provision for the wives of the HEROES who shall fall in the contest→→→ a liberal reward for distinguished merits. These are the objects for which we contend; and to obtain these objects, we swear to be united in the awful presence of Almighty God!"

Form of the Oath.

"I, A. B. do voluntarily declare, that I will endeavour, to the ut most of my power, to obtain the objects of this union, namely, to recover those rights which the Supreme Being, in his infinite bounty, has given to all men: that neither hopes, fears, rewards, nor punishments, shall ever induce me to give any information, directly, or indirectly, concerning the business, or of any member of this, or any similar society. So help me God."

These facts other police officers attested. Thomas Windsor, a private in the guards, was called, and swore, that he received printed papers from John Francis, who told him that the object of those concerned with him was to unite in overturning the present tyrannical system of government, to unite in different companies, and to get arms; that they met frequently, and, to avoid detection, at different public houses. The object of the mem bers was to unite, to raise subscripQq2 tions,