twenty millions of men. It was particularly enacted, that all regulations affecting civil and criminal justice, the nature, amount, and collection of publick contributions, and all alterations in the current coin, or circulating medium should require the previous sanction of the whole collective body of the people; certain objects of inferiour importance were to be determined by the decrees of the representative body without any reference to their constituents; the representative body was to be changed annually; the executive council, in which was solely vested whatever executive authority was suffered to remain in the state, was to be selected by the convention from a list framed by the electoral assemblies of the people, one half of which list was to be renewed every six months; the municipal officers were to be chosen absolutely by the people in the departments. In order to render the administration of criminal justice independent of the executive or legislative authority it was enacted, that the judges in all the ordinary courts of justice should be annually chosen by the electoral assemblies; and that there should be a court of general appeal, the judges of which should be elected in the same manner. Certain leading principles were solemnly recognised both in the declaration of rights and in the concluding part of the constitution, which is entitled the guarantee of the rights of man-these principles were, " that no man should be judged and punished, until he had been heard. That punishments should bear a due proportion to crimes; that the right of property was that right which belongs to every citizen, of enjoying and desposing of, according to his pleasure, his goods, his income, the fruits of his labour and of his industry. That no person could be deprived of the least portion of his property, without his own consent, unless under the pressure of a publick necessity legally proved, and under the condition of a just and previous indemnity; that the right of petitioning ought in no case to be interdicted, suspended, or limited. That the people have always the right to review, reform, and change the constitution; and finally, that the constitution guaranties to the whole people of France, liberty, safety, property, the publick debt, the free exercise of religious wor. ship, the right of petitioning, and the right of assembling in popular societies." And for the better security of the people against any violation of these rights and privileges, it was declared, "that the oppression of a single member of the society was to be deemed the oppression of the whole body; and that whenever the government should violate the rights of the people, insurrection became both the most sacred right, and the most indispensable duty not only of the people at large, but of every portion and division of them."

This formal recognition of some principles of incontestable truth, mingled with many of the most incoherent dreams, and many of the most pernicious doctrines which ever occurred to the most enthusiastick zealot, or to the most wicked conspirator in the cause of absolute and unqualified democracy, was tendered to the people in the several departments for their acceptance; and, if we are to believe the reports made to the convention, was actually accepted by a large rnajority. The acceptance of this model of perfection which was to secure for ever the happiness and prosperity of France, was solemnly celebrated by a civick feast on a day aptly chosen for such a ceremony, on the anniversary of the massacre of the 10th of August, when the last constitution to which the people of France had sworn was overthrown by force, when magistrates were murdered for executing the laws, citizens for defending property, and troops for obeying the orders of those to whom by law they owed obedience. But mark the sequel of this solemnity. The dissolution of the convention, the necessary and immediate consequence of this new constitution, would have destroyed the power of the now reigning party; many other branches of this constitution would have been equally incompatible with the duration of their authority; not only therefore those articles which related to the form of the executive

power and to the election of the legislature were left unexecuted, but the whole municipal constitution, and every article in any degree favourable to personal liberty, to life, or to property, were continually violated without scruple, and without disguise; until on the 10th of October the entire system of the indeseisible, inalienable rights of man, from which nothing can derogate, which admit of no modifications of expediency, which neither bend to times nor circumstances, nor even to the practical happiness of society, was formally and openly suspended; and in defiance of the sovereign people a new and unheard of species of government was established, which, growing out of the theory of impracticable liberty, was to be maintained by the practice of the most unmitigated tyranny. A decree was passed, by which the whole executive authority of the state was drawn into the hands of the committee of publick welfare. Provision was made for the rapid execution of what are termed revolutionary laws; and for the direction and employment of a revolutionary army in order to repress every symptom of a counter-revolutionary spirit; and among the great fundamental articles of this counter-constitution it was decreed, that the corn and grain in the several departments should be seized at the discretion of the new government; and that garrisons should be placed in all counter-revolutionary towns, to be paid and maintained at the sole charge of persons of property. This decree was proposed expressly for the purpose of punishing "not traitors only, but even those who dared to be indifferent to the cause of the existing government, who had the audacity to be passive, and to do nothing for the sovereignty of the people." It was said, "that such persons must be governed by the sword, since it was impossible to govern them by the maxims of justice." It was said, "that the constitution of the 10th of August, 1793, was not sufficiently violent to repress such dangerous attempts against liberty;" it was said, that revolutionary laws could never be executed, unless the government itself was constituted in a revolutionary manner." Such was the origin, and such is the form of that monster in politicks, of which, as the very notion involves a contradiction of ideas, the name cannot be expressed without a contradiction in terms-a revolutionary government! a government which, for the ordinary administration of affairs resorts to those means of violence and outrage which had been hitherto considered, even in France, as being exclusively appropriated to the laudable and sacred purpose of subverting all lawful and regular authority. The sense of the epithet revolutionary, which is so lavishly applied by the convention to every part of this new system, requires some explanation. An extract from the proceedings of the National Convention will serve to exemplify the manner in which that singular phrase is understood and admired by the most unquestionable authority in the science of revolutions. Barriere makes a report rerespecting the situation of the republick in the month of December; he reads a variety of despatches from the national commissioners in various parts of the republick; and at length he produces a letter from Carrier, one of the commissioners of the convention, dated Nantz, December the 10th. This letter, after giving an account of a successful attack against the royalists, concludes with the following remarkable words: "This event has been followed by another which has however nothing new in its nature. Fiftyeight individuals known by the name of refractory priests arrived at Nantz from Angers. They were shut up in a barge on the river Loire, and last night they were all sunk to the bottom of that river.---What a revolutionary torrent is the Loire!"-You expect perhaps to hear, that the disgusting relation of this inhuman action raised some emotions of horrour, if not of compassion in the audience; you expect to hear, that the convention manifested their resentment at this abuse of the revolutionary language; but does any symptom of such sentiments appear? No! after having listened to this interesting report, the convention votes the following resolution: "The national convention, highly satisfied with the report of Barrere, orders it to be printed, inserted in the votes, and sent to all the armies."

Highly satisfied with this figurative illustration of the style and title of that gracious and mild government which they had so lately instituted, they order it to be proclaimed and published over the whole territory of the republick, to conciliate the affections of a free people, and to animate the enthusiasm of a brave and generous army. Here you learn the full force and energy of their new phraseology. The Loire is a revolutionary torrent, because it has been found a useful and expeditious instrument of massacre, because it has destroyed by a sudden and violent death fifty-eight men, against whom no crime was alleged but the venerable character of their sacred function, and their faithful adherence to the principles of their religion. But this event is truly said to have nothing new in its nature. I dwell upon it for the application of the phrase, not for the singularity of the fact. Every proceeding since the commencement of the troubles in France which has been dignified by the title of revolutionary, is marked with similar characters of violence or blood. The seizure of the property of the clergy and of the nobility was a revolutionary measure. The assassinations of Foulon and Berthier at Paris, and of the king's guards at Versailles in the the year 1789, were revolutionary measures. All the succeeding outrages, the burning of the title deeds and country houses of all gentlemen of landed property, the numberless confiscations, banishments, proscriptions, and murders of innocent persons-all these were revolutionary measures. The massacres of the tenth of August, and of the second of September -the attempt to extend the miseries of civil discord over the whole world, the more successful project of involving all Europe in the calamities of a general war, were truly revolutionary measures. The insulting mockery of a pretended trial, to which they subjected their humane and benevolent sovereign, and the horrid cruelty of his unjust, precipitate, and exe