been proceeded upon practically, I think it right | produced in them, or any one of them, the smallest to give it a full consideration. degree of repentance. Disappointment and morAnd first, I have asked myself who these French-tification undoubtedly they feel: but to them, remen are, that, in the state their own country has been for these last five years, of all the people of Europe, have alone not been able to form a decided opinion, or have been unwilling to act a decided part? Looking over all the names I have heard of in this great Revolution in all human affairs, I find no man of any distinction who has remained in that more than stoical apathy, but the prince de Conti. This mean, stupid, selfish, swinish, and cowardly animal, universally known and despised as such, has indeed, except in one abortive attempt to elope, been perfectly neutral. However his neutrality, which it seems would qualify him for trust, and on a competition must set aside the prince de Condé, can be of no sort of service. His moderation has not been able to keep him from a jail. The allied powers must draw him from that jail, before they can have the full advantage of the exertions of this great naturalist. pentance is a thing impossible. They are atheists. This wretched opinion, by which they are possessed even to the height of fanaticism, leading them to exclude from their ideas of a commonwealth the vital principle of the physical, the moral, and the political world, engages them in a thousand absurd contrivances to fill up this dreadful void. Incapable of innoxious repose, or honourable action, or wise speculation, in the lurking holes of a foreign land, into which (in a common ruin) they are driven to hide their heads amongst the innocent victims of their madness, they are at this very hour as busy in the confection of the dirt-pies of their imaginary constitutions, as if they had not been quite fresh from destroying, by their impious and desperate vagaries, the finest country upon earth. It is, however, out of these, or of such as these, guilty and impenitent, despising the experience of others, and their own, that some people talk of choosing their negociators with those jacobins, who they suppose may be recovered to a sounder mind. They flatter themselves, it seems, that the friendly habits formed during their original partnership of iniquity, a similarity of character, and a conformity in the ground-work of their principles, might facilitate their conversion, and gain them over to some recognition of royalty. But surely this is to read human nature very ill. The several sectaries in this schism of the jacobins are the very last men in the world to trust each other. Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence. The last quarrels are the sorest; and the injuries received or offered by your own associates are ever the most bitterly resented. The people of France, of every name and description, would a thousand times sooner listen to the prince de Condé, or to the archbishop of Aix, or the bishop of St. Pol, or to Monsieur de Cazalès, than La Fayette, or Dumourier, or the vicompte de Noailles, or the bishop of Autun, or Necker, or his disciple Lally Tolendal. Against the first description they have not the smallest animosity beyond that of a merely political dissension. The others they re Except him, I do not recollect a man of rank or talents, who by his speeches or his votes, by his pen or by his sword, has not been active on this scene. The time indeed could admit no neutrality in any person worthy of the name of man. There were originally two great divisions in France; the one is that which overturned the whole of the government in church and state, and erected a republick on the basis of atheism. Their grand engine was the jacobin club, a sort of secession from which, but exactly on the same principles, begat another short-lived one, called the Club of Eighty-Nine, which was chiefly guided by the court rebels, who, in addition to the crimes of which they were guilty in common with the others, had the merit of betraying a gracious master, and a kind benefactor. Subdivisions of this faction, which since we have seen, do not in the least differ from each other in their principles, their dispositions, or the means they have employed. Their only quarrel has been about power in that quarrel, like wave succeeding wave, one faction has got the better and expelled the other. Thus, La Fayette for a while got the better of Orleans; and Orleans afterwards pre-gard as traitors. vailed over La Fayette. Brissot overpowered Orleans; Barrere and Robespierre, and their faction, mastered them both, and cut off their heads. All who were not royalists have been listed in some or other of these divisions. If it were of any use to settle a precedence, the elder ought to have his rank. The first authors, plotters, and contrivers, of this monstrous scheme, seem to be entitled to the first place in our distrust and abhorrence. I have seen some of those who are thought the best among the original rebels; and I have not neglected the means of being informed concerning the others. I can very truly say, that I have not found by observation, or enquiry, that any sense of the evils produced by their projects has The first object of this club was the propagation of jacobin The first description is that of the Christian royalists, men who as earnestly wished for reformation, as they opposed innovation, in the fundamental parts of their church and state. Their part has been very decided. Accordingly they are to be set aside in the restoration of church and state. It is an odd kind of disqualification where the restoration of religion and monarchy is the question. If England should (God forbid it should) fall into the same misfortune with France, and that the court of Vienna should undertake the restoration of our monarchy, I think it would be extraordinary to object to the admission of Mr. Pitt, or Lord Grenville, or Mr. Dundas, into any share in the management of that business, because in a day principles. of trial they have stood up firmly and manfully, as I trust they always will do, and with distinguished powers, for the monarchy and the legitimate constitution of their country. I am sure if I were to suppose myself at Vienna at such a time, I should, as a man, as an Englishman, and as a royalist, protest in that case, as I do in this, against a weak and ruinous principle of proceeding, which can have no other tendency than to make those, who wish to support the Crown, meditate too profoundly on the consequences of the part they take-and consider whether for their open and forward zeal in the royal cause, they may not be thrust out from any sort of confidence and employment, where the interest of crowned heads is concerned. These are the parties. I have said, and said truly, that I know of no neutrals. But as a general observation on this general principle of choosing neutrals on such occasions as the present, I have this to say that it amounts to neither more nor less than this shocking proposition-that we ought to exclude men of honour and ability from serving their and our cause; and to put the dearest interests of ourselves and our posterity into the hands of men of no decided character, without judgment to choose, and without courage to profess any principle whatsoever. Such men can serve no cause, for this plain reason they have no cause at heart. They can at best work only as mere mercenaries. They have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites; they are only miserable fowls, whose flight is not above their dunghill henroost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrours. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy miscreants to be the only men qualified for great affairs if you set them to transact with such persons, they are instantly subdued. They dare not so much as look their antagonist in the face. They are made to be their subjects, not to be their arbiters or controulers. These men to be sure can look at atrocious acts without indignation, and can behold suffering virtue without sympathy. Therefore they are considered as sober dispassionate men. But they have their passions, though of another kind, and which are infinitely more likely to carry them out of the path of their duty. They are of a tame, timid, languid, inert temper, wherever the welfare of others is concerned. In such causes, as they have no motives to action, they never possess any real ability, and are totally destitute of all resource. Believe a man who has seen much, and observed something. I have seen in the course of my life a great many of that family of men. They are generally chosen because they have no opinion of their own; and as far as they can be got in good earnest to embrace any opinion, it is that of who ever happens to employ them, (neither longer nor shorter, narrower nor broader,) with whom they have no discussion or consultation. The only thing which occurs to such a man when he has got a business for others into his hands, is how to make his own fortune out of it. The person he is to treat with is not, with him, an adversary over whom he is to prevail, but a new friend he is to gain; therefore he always systematically betrays some part of his trust. Instead of thinking how he shall defend his ground to the last, and, if forced to retreat, how little he shall give up, this kind of man considers how much of the interest of his employer he is to sacrifice to his adversary. Having nothing but himself in view, he knows, that, in serving his principal with zeal, he must probably incur some resentment from the opposite party. His object is to obtain the good will of the person with whom he contends, that, when an agreement is made, he may join in rewarding him. I would not take one of these as my arbitrator in a dispute for so much as a fish-pond-for if he reserved the mud to me, he would be sure to give the water that fed the pool to my adversary. In a great cause I should certainly wish, that my agent should possess conciliating qualities; that he should be of a frank, open, and candid disposition, soft in his nature, and of a temper to soften animosities and to win confidence. He ought not to be a man odious to the person he treats with by personal injury, by violence, or by deceit, or, above all, by the dereliction of his cause in any former transactions. But I would be sure that my negociator should be mine, that he should be as earnest in the cause as myself, and known to be so; that he should not be looked upon as a stipendiary advocate, but as a principled partisan. In all treaty it is a great point that all idea of gaining your agent is hopeless. I would not trust the cause of royalty with a man, who, professing neutrality, is half a republican. The enemy has already a great part of his suit without a struggle and he contends with advantage for all the rest. The common principle allowed between your adversary and your agent gives your adversary the advantage in every discussion. Before I shut up this discourse about neutral agency (which I conceive is not to be found, or, if found, ought not to be used) I have a few other remarks to make on the cause which, I conceive, gives rise to it. In all that we do, whether in the struggle or after it, it is necessary that we should constantly have in our eye the nature and character of the enemy we have to contend with. The jacobin revolution is carried on by men of no rank, of no consideration, of wild, savage minds, full of levity, arrogance, and presumption, without morals, without probity, without prudence. What have they then to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds? One thing, and one thing only-but that one thing is worth a thousand-they have energy. In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigour of his mind. If we meet this dreadful and portentous energy, restrained by no consideration of God or man, that is always vigilant, always on the attack, that allows itself no repose, and suffers none to rest an hour with impunity; if we meet this energy with poor common-place proceeding, with trivial maxims, paltry old saws, with doubts, fears, and suspicions, with a languid, uncertain hesitation, with a formal, official spirit, which is turned aside by every obstacle from its purpose, and which never sees a difficulty but to yield to it, or at best to evade it; down we go to the bottom of the abyss-and nothing short of Omnipotence can save us. We must meet a vicious and distempered energy with a manly and rational vigour. As virtue is limited in its resources-we are doubly bound to use all that, in the circle drawn about us by our morals, we are able to command. I do not contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in it is but too necessary. Some of old call it the very sinews of discretion. But what signify common-places, that always run parallel and equal? Distrust is good or it is bad, according to our position and our purpose. Distrust is a defensive principle. They who have much to lose have much to fear. But in France we hold nothing. We are to break in upon a power in possession; we are to carry every thing by storm, or by surprise, or by intelligence, or by all. Adventure, therefore, and not caution, is our policy. Here to be too presuming is the better errour. still be considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy. This contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a colour of fraud to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politicks, that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them. I have Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard that in taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust, that is, to hold them for the use of the owner, and, in the mean time, to employ them for our common service. These ships are now so circumstanced, that if we are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the enemy, or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides. Are we then so poor in resources that we can do no better with eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them? Had we sent for French royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had, and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, who are all over Italy to be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English commanders-in-chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours. It may be said that these French officers would take them for the king of France, and that they would not be in our power. Be it so. The islands would The world will judge of the spirit of our pro- not be ours, but they would not be jacobinized. ceeding in those places of France which may fall This is however a thing impossible. They must into our power, by our conduct in those that are in effect and substance be ours. But all is upon already in our hands. Our wisdom should not be that false principle of distrust, which, not confidvulgar. Other times, perhaps other measures: ing in strength, can never have the full use of it. but in this awful hour our politicks ought to be They that pay, and feed, and equip, must direct. made up of nothing but courage, decision, manli-But I must speak plainly upon this subject. The ness, and rectitude. We should have all the French islands, if they were all our own, ought magnanimity of good faith. This is a royal and not to be all kept. A fair partition only ought to commanding policy; and as long as we are true be made of those territories. This is a subject of to it we may give the law. Never can we assume policy very serious, which has many relations and this command if we will not risk the consequences. aspects. Just here I only hint at it as answering For which reason we ought to be bottomed enough an objection, whilst I state the mischievous consein principle not to be carried away upon the first quences which suffer us to be surprised into a virprospect of any sinister advantage. For depend tual breach of faith, by confounding our ally with upon it, that, if we once give way to a sinister our enemy, because they both belong to the same dealing, we shall teach others the game, and we geographical territory. shall be outwitted and overborne: the Spaniards, the Prussians, God knows who, will put us under contribution at their pleasure; and, instead of being at the head of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish quarrels; the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced, whilst all Europe, England included, is left open and defenceless on every part, to jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms. In the case of the king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will My clear opinion is, that Toulon ought to be made, what we set out with, a royal French city. By the necessity of the case, it must be under the influence, civil and military, of the allies. But the only way of keeping that jealous and discordant mass from tearing its component parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is to put the place into the nominal government of the regent, his officers being approved by us. This, I say, is absolutely necessary for a poise amongst ourselves. Otherwise is it to be believed that the Spaniards, who hold that place with us in a sort of partnership contrary to our mutual interest, will see us By principle, and with very little judgment. means, however, of this foolish, mean, and jealous policy on our side, all the royalists whom the English might select as most practicable, and most subservient to honest views, are totally excluded. Of those admitted, the Spaniards are masters. As to the inhabitants they are a nest of jacobins which is delivered into our hands, not from principle, but from fear. The inhabitants of Toulon may be described in a few words. It is differtum nautis, cauponibus atque malignis. The rest of the seaports are of the same description. absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with Gib- | raltar on one side, and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble body of the Spanish dominions, in that part of the world, absolutely at our mercy, without any power to balance us in the smallest degree? Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or fear. Spain must think she sees, that we are taking advantage of the confusions which reign in France to disable Another thing which I cannot account for is, that country, and of course every country, from the sending for the bishop of Toulon, and afteraffording her protection, and in the end to turn wards forbidding his entrance. This is as directly the Spanish monarchy into a province. If she contrary to the declaration, as it is to the practice saw things in a proper point of light, to be sure, of the allied powers. The king of Prussia did she would not consider any other plan of poli- better. When he took Verdun, he actually reinticks as of the least moment in comparison of the stated the bishop and his chapter. When he extinction of jacobinism. But her ministers (to thought he should be the master of Chalons, he say the best of them) are vulgar politicians. It is called the bishop from Flanders, to put him into no wonder that they should postpone this great possession. The Austrians have restored the clergy point, or balance it, by considerations of the com- wherever they obtained possession. We have promon politicks, that is, the questions of power posed to restore religion as well as monarchy; between state and state. If we manifestly endea- and in Toulon we have restored neither the one vour to destroy the balance, especially the mari- nor the other. It is very likely that the jacobin time and commercial balance, both in Europe and sans-culottes, or some of them, objected to this the West Indies, (the latter their sore and vulner- measure, who rather choose to have the atheistick able part,) from fear of what France may do for buffoons of clergy they have got to sport with, till Spain, hereafter, is it to be wondered, that Spain, they are ready to come forward, with the rest of infinitely weaker than we are, (weaker indeed than their worthy brethren, in Paris and other places, such a mass of empire ever was,) should feel the to declare that they are a set of impostors, that same fears from our uncontrouled power, that we they never believed in God, and never will preach give way to ourselves from a supposed resurrection any sort of religion. If we give way to our jacoof the ancient power of France under a monarchy ? bins, in this point, it is fully and fairly putting the It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right government, civil and ecclesiastical, not in the in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to king of France, to whom, as the protector and Spain, with such principles followed up in prac- governour, and in substance the head, of the Galtice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial lican church, the nomination to the bishopricks If belonged, and who made the bishop of Toulon; it does not leave it with him, or even in the hands of the king of England, or the king of Spain; but in the basest jacobins of a low sea-port, to exercise, pro tempore, the sovereignty. If this point of religion is thus given up, the grand instrument for reclaiming France is abandoned. We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is a religious war. It includes in its object undoubtedly every other interest of society as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplishment of all their other views. The French Revolution, impious at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestick power and foreign empire. Look at all the proceedings of the National Assembly from the first day of declaring itself such in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of their business to be directly on this subject. In fact it is the spirit of the whole. The religious system, called the constitutional church, was, on the face of the whole proceeding, set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and so constantly stated in all alliance can subsist between the two nations. Spain goes, Naples will speedily follow. Prussia is quite certain, and thinks of nothing but making a market of the present confusions. Italy is broken and divided; Switzerland is jacobinized, I am afraid, completely. I have long seen with pain the progress of French principles in that country. Things cannot go on upon the present bottom. The possession of Toulon, which, well managed, might be of the greatest advantage, will be the greatest misfortune that ever happened to this nation. The more we multiply troops there, the more we shall multiply causes and means of quarrel amongst ourselves. I know but one way of avoiding it, which is to give a greater degree of simplicity to our politicks. Our situation does necessarily render them a good deal involved. And, to this evil, instead of encreasing it, we ought to apply all the remedies in our power. See what is, in that place, the consequence (to say nothing of every other) of this complexity. Toulon has, as it were, two gates, an English and a Spanish. The English gate is, by our policy, fast barred against the entrance of any royalists. The Spaniards open theirs, I fear, upon no fixed their conversations, till the time should come, have behaved shockingly since the very beginning when they might with safety cast off the very ap- of this rebellion, and have been uniformly conpearance of all religion whatsoever, and persecute cerned in its worst and most atrocious acts. Their Christianity throughout Europe with fire and clergy are just the same atheists with those of the sword. The constitutional clergy are not the mi- constitutional catholicks; but still more wicked and nisters of any religion they are the agents and daring. Three of their number have met from their instruments of this horrible conspiracy against all republican associates the reward of their crimes. morals. It was from a sense of this, that in the As the ancient catholick religion is to be restored English addition to the articles proposed at St. for the body of France, the ancient Calvinistick Domingo, tolerating all religions, we very wisely religion ought to be restored for the protestants refused to suffer that kind of traitors and buffoons. with every kind of protection and privilege. But This religious war is not a controversy between not one minister concerned in this rebellion ought sect and sect as formerly, but a war against all sects to be suffered amongst them. If they have not and all religions. The question is not whether clergy of their own, men well recommended as you are to overturn the catholick, to set up the untainted with jacobinism, by the synods of those protestant. Such an idea in the present state of places where Calvinism prevails and French is the world is too contemptible. Our business is spoken, ought to be sought. Many such there are. to leave to the schools the discussion of the con- The presbyterian discipline ought, in my opinion, troverted points, abating as much as we can the to be established in its vigour, and the people proacrimony of disputants on all sides. It is for Chris- fessing it ought to be bound to its maintenance. tian statesmen, as the world is now circumstanced, No man, under the false and hypocritical pretence to secure their common basis, and not to risk the of liberty of conscience, ought to be suffered to subversion of the whole fabrick by pursuing these have no conscience at all. The king's commisdistinctions with an ill-timed zeal. We have, in sioner ought also to sit in their synods as before the the present grand alliance, all modes of govern- revocation of the edict of Nantz. I am conscious ment as well as all modes of religion. In govern- that this discipline disposes men to republicanism: ment, we mean to restore that, which, notwith- but it is still a discipline, and it is a cure (such as it standing our diversity of forms, we are all agreed is) for the perverse and undisciplined habits which in as fundamental in government. The same prin- for some time have prevailed. Republicanism reciple ought to guide us in the religious part; pressed may have its use in the composition of a conforming the mode, not to our particular ideas, state. Inspection may be practicable, and respon(for in that point we have no ideas in common,) sibility in the teachers and elders may be estabbut to what will best promote the great, general lished in such an hierarchy as the presbyterian. ends of the alliance. As statesmen we are to see For a time like ours, it is a great point gained, that which of those modes best suits with the interests people should be taught to meet, to combine, and of such a commonwealth as we wish to secure and to be classed and arrayed in some other way than promote. There can be no doubt, but that the in clubs of jacobins. If it be not the best mode catholick religion, which is fundamentally the re- of protestantism under a monarchy, it is still an ligion of France, must go with the monarchy of orderly Christian church, orthodox in the fundaFrance; we know that the monarchy did not sur-mentals, and, what is to our point, capable enough vive the hierarchy, no not even in appearance, for many months; in substance, not for a single hour. As little can it exist in future, if that pillar is taken away, or even shattered and impaired. If it should please God to give to the allies the means of restoring peace and order in that focus of war and confusion, I would, as I said in the beginning of this memorial, first replace the whole of the old clergy: because we have proof more than sufficient, that whether they err or not in the scholastick disputes with us, they are not tainted with atheism, the great political evil of the time. I hope I need not apologize for this phrase, as if I thought religion nothing but policy; it is far from my thoughts, and I hope it is not to be inferred from my expressions. But in the light of policy alone I am here considering the question. I speak of policy too in a large light; in which large light, policy too is a sacred thing. There are many, perhaps half a million or more, calling themselves protestants, in the south of France, and in other of the provinces. Some raise them to a much greater number, but I think this nearer to the mark. I am sorry to say, that they of rendering men useful citizens. It was the impolitick ambition of their discipline which exposed them to the wild opinions and conduct, that have prevailed amongst the Hugonots. The toleration in 1787 was owing to the good disposition of the late king; but it was modified by the profligate folly of his atheistick minister the Cardinal de Lomenie. This mischievous minister did not follow in the edict of toleration the wisdom of the edict of Nantz. But his toleration was granted to noncatholicks a dangerous word, which might signify any thing, and was but too expressive of a fatal indifference with regard to all piety. I speak for myself: I do not wish any man to be converted from his sect. The distinctions which we have reformed from animosity to emulation may be even useful to the cause of religion. By some moderate contention they keep alive zeal. Whereas people who change, except under strong conviction, (a thing now rather rare,) the religion of their early prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity, and often downright atheism. |