be the executioners of his bloody wishes. Morise son-The first and most natural of all my affections would be, to see that sanguinary monster (Louis XVI.) expiate his guilt by the most cruel torments*:-and another (Gonchon, Dec. 12.), says, 'Kings will pass away! but the Declaration of Right and Pikes will never pass away! Here let the tyrant hear his condemnation.' Deputation of the Section of Gardes Francoises, The Section of Luxemburg has sworn to poignard Louis XVI, if you do · not condemn him to perish on a scaffold; we were invited to accede to it.' As if the Declaration of Rights were not laid in the dust, when such language could be spoken of a prisoner unheard; and amidst unanimous and reiterated applauses!. The applauses of those whose pikes were ready.

"In the full face of such authentic facts, given on the authority of their own ministers and friends, we read, in the Political State of Europe, printed by Jordan, and written by Paine and Co. No. 6, p. 435,. that in Paris a respect is paid to the sacred preservation of property, and that the laws are no where so universally respecte de and obeyed!!! What will not Jacobin impudence reach!

"The infamous Marat, deeper in the blood of the 2d of September than any other person, ex. cept perhaps Petion, seeks to prove it the act. not of a few, but of the people. As to the massacres of the 2d and 3d of September, it is an atro- . * Monit. Nov. 14.. + Dec. 29.

city to represent them as the work of a gang of brigands. If so, the Assembly, the Minister of the Interior, and the Mayor of Paris, were the culpables; and nothing in the world can wash them clean from the crime of not having prevented assassinations that lasted three days; but they will doubtless say, it was impossible, being equally the act of the National Guards, the Federates, and the People. Petion rested tranquil at table, with Brissot and his friends, and disdained to quit the party even for receiving the Commissioners sent by the Assembly, to charge him to stop those excesses *!

"Such has been the attention to personal liberty, under the Reign of Philosophers, established on the ruins of the mildest and most benignant government in Europe, our own only excepted; a government cruelly libelled in the character given by one of our reforming orators, who thus describes it; a species of government that trampled on the property, the liberty, and the lives of its subjects; that dealt in extortions, dungeons, and tortures; and that prepared, beforehand, a day of sanguinary vengeance t.' Expressions so singularly applicable to the fabric erected by the Revolution, that one can with difficulty believe it possible that they were meant for any other."

* Journal de Marat, No. 105. + Mr. Sheridan's Speech.

"Security

Security of Property.

"If I had not heard Jacobin conversation in England, there would have been little occasion for this paragraph; to a reader that reflects, it must at once be apparent, that where there is no personal freedom, there can be no secure property."

"In a parish in the Clermontois (Crote-le-Roy), the steward of a gentleman residing at a distance, came to receive the rent of three considerable farmers. He was told that the Convention had decreed Equality, and that paying rent was the most unequal thing in the world; for it was a man who did much to receive a little, paying to one, who, receiving much, did nothing at all! The steward replied, that their joke might possibly be good, but that he came not for wit, but money; and money he must have; he was ordered instantly to depart, or to stay and be hanged! The proprietor demanded justice, but in vain; the Municipality was applied to; and the only result was, that body (the Vestry) ordering the farmers to yield up the lands; they were taken possession of by themselves, in depo, sit redeemable for the nation; and actually divided in portions among the labouring poor, that is among themselves. What the event may be is nothing to the purpose: what becomes in the mean time of the Right of Property? The probable event however is, that the proprietor

will be driven to emigration, for the more convenience of retaining their plunder.

"It can hardly be doubted but that robbery, even of land itself, must spread throughout the kingdom, when the Committee of General Security could thus report to the Convention :- The national resources may be augmented by imposing contributions upon persons of fortune, personnes aisees, and the obstinate who wait with tranquillity at home the event of the Revolution *. Contributions imposed on persons for two reasons: first, for the crime of being men of fortune; and, secondly, for remaining in tranquillity! With such a legislation, can property be respected?

"With such a principle, recognised in the Convention, we need not ask how taxes are levied. The poor and small proprietors of a few acres, who every where form the majority of each municipality, escape all taxation; but are vigilant in forcing those of more considerable property to pay to the last farthing; and as all taxes are assessed and levied by the parochial Tote at assemblies to which all resort, the men without property order every thing at will, and have various ways, much more effective, for the division of property, than a direct Agrarian: Law would be.

"Let the farmers of this kingdom represent to themselves a picture of what their situation would be, if their labourers, their servants, and the

* Monit. Oct. 18.

paupers

paupers whom they support by poor's rates, were all armed, and, in some measure, regimented, and in possession of the Vestry, voting not only money to be raised by rates, but the division of it among themselves; decreeing what the price of all the farmer's products should be; what wages should be paid to servants, and what pay to labourers! Under such a system of go vernment, I beg to ask, what security would remain for a single shilling in the pockets of those who are at present in a state of ease and affluence? And whether such a tyranny would not be worse than the most determined despotism at present in Europe?

"While the farmer is thus exposed to parochial oppression, at the mercy of those who were so lately his inferiors, and who are even fed and supported by him, he is not exempted from attacks of a very different nature; to authorise the seizure of horses and arms was, in the National Assembly, a measure of violence and tyranny; but as it issued from the Legislature de facto, it had the authority of admitted power; but the Municipality of Paris have gone much farther: September 13, the Minister of the Home Depart4ment complains to the Assembly, that the Commissioners of the Municipality of Paris are sent into the country with such arbitrary orders as are utterly inconsistent with his own responsibility; their orders are signed by four of the Administrators of the Public Safety, for seizing suspected