adds he with considerable ingenuity, and no doubt very truly, "though I may be supposed to have changed my principles, quite the contrary is the case-I have changed my opinion with regard to the French Revolution precisely because I preserved my original principles. If I had maintained the same opinion, I must have changed my principles. I wished France might be free, and my opinion once was that she was likely to become so. The experiment has totally failed, and, preserving my principles, I have therefore changed my opinion of the Revolution."

Mr. Young acted like a sagacious practical agriculturist: with a view to raise the best crops he can, he follows the system he has in his mind till he finds it fails, and that another is better; when, keeping his original object still steadily in view, he adopts that method which practice and experiment tell him will succeed best, never having the vanity for one moment to give the preference to theory over what is established by practice as being better. Let us hear himself:

"The Writers who have published their sentiments on the events which have passed in France since the Revolution have been so lavish of argument, so exuberant in theory, that they seem to have relied for success with their readers, not so much on force of facts, as où ingenuity in weaving curious webs of reasoning. We have had, on the one hand, panegyrics on Gallic free

dom,

dom, with enthusiastic calls to pursue the same system in order to arrive at the same happiness; on the other hand, every circumstance of the Revolution, from the original wish for liberty, has been condemned and satirized with more wit than truth. To plain men these Writers seem equally removed from that examination, which, attending solely to facts, and their immediate and more remote consequences, is not apt to trust to the cunning of argument, but looks on every side for the more solid support of experi

ment.

"I am inclined to think the application of theory to matters of government a surprising imbecillity in the human mind; for men to be ready to trust to reason in inquiries, where experiment is equally at hand for their guide, has been pronounced by various great authorities to be, in every science, the grossest follywhy the observation should not equally extend to the science of legislation, will not easily ap pear.

"My personal pursuit, for a long series of years, has confirmed me in the habit of experimental inquiry: I have observed, on so many occasions, the fallacy of reasoning, even when exerted with great force of talents, that I am apt, whenever facts are not clearly discerned, to question rather than to decide; to doubt much more readily than to pronounce; and to value the citation of one new experimented

1

case in point, more than a hundred brilliant declamations. Having resided a good deal in France during the progress of the Revolution, to which I was, for some time, a warm friend; having passed through every province of the kingdom; examined all her principal manufac tures; gained much instruction relative to the state of her commerce, and attended minutely to the situation of her people; it was natural for me, on my return to England, to consult with attention the legislative acts of the new government; and to procure, by correspondence and conversation, with persons on whom I could depend, such intelligence as was necessary to en able me to satisfy my curiosity concerning the result of the most singular Revolution recorded in the annals of mankind. I should consider myself as a bad subject of Britain, if I did not use every endeavour to render the knowledge, thus acquired, of use to my countrymen; and it is solely with this view that I now throw together a few short Essays, inserted originally in the Annals of Agriculture, somewhat improved in form, and with such additions as the events. of the period afford.

"But in attempting to give expressions adequate to the indignation every one must feel at the horrible events now passing in France, I am sensible that I may be reproached with changing my politics, my principles,' as it has been called. My principles I certainly have not

changed

changed--because if there be one principle more predominant than another in my politics, it is the principle of change. I have been a farmer too long to be governed by any thing but events; I have a constitutional abhorrence of theory, of all trust in abstract reasoning; and consequently I have a reliance merely on experience; in other words, on events, the only principle worthy of an experimenter.

"The circumstance of there being men who having been friends to the Revolution, before the 10th of August, yet continue friends to it, proves clearly one of two things: that they are either republicans, and therefore approved of the Revolution before the 10th of August merely as a step to the 21st of January, thinking, with Dr. Priestley, the Revolution of the 10th necessary and HAPPY ;—or, that they have changed their principles. The Revolution before the 10th of August was as different from the Revolution after that day as light from darkness; as clearly distinct in principle and practice as liberty and slavery; for the same man to approve therefore of both must either be uncandid or changeable; uncandid in his approbation before that period -changeable in his approbation after it. How little reason therefore for reproaching me with sentiments contrary to those I published before the 10th of August! I am not changeable, but steady and consistent; the same principles which directed me to approve the Revolution in its commencement (the principles of real liberty

1

berty), led me to detest it after the 10th of August. The reproach of changeableness, or something worse, belongs entirely to those who did not then change their opinion, but approve the republic, as they had approved the limited monarchy. Upon sure ground of experiment, it shall be my business, in the ensuing pages, to bring to the reader's notice some facts proper to explain.

“But let us examine facts, as reported by Jacobin authority

"The freedom of elections seems to be curiously attended to.-Resolution of the Jacobin Club of September 13, sent to all the clubs of the kingdom :- Let us not lose a single moment to prevent, by firm measures, the danger of seeing these new legislators oppose, with impunity, the sovereign will of the nation. Let us be inspired with the spirit of the electoral body of Paris, whose decrees express, that a scrutiny shall be made of the National Convention, for the purpose of expelling from its bosom such suspected members as may, in their nomination, have escaped the sagacity of the primary assemblies.' (Polit. State, No. 6, p. 449.) What a beautiful lesson is this to the men who complain of our representation in England, and wish it reformed! Here is a delicious reform, and at the hands of republicans! The world, probably, never contained a proof of more determined confusion; this is truly a digest of anarchy! For

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