INDEED it is not in the nature of things, that any strong popular impulse should be satisfied without action. The more sudden, surprising, and violent the action, the more likely is it to gratify and to prolong this impulse. All democracies are governments by popular passions. These cannot exist and be at rest; they cannot be indulged, and yet kept within the limits of moderation or principle. They sweep like whirlwinds, that are not stopped by desolation, but as they destroy, they level obstacles and are quickened in their progress. They pour like torrents from the mountains, and, if they reach the plains in their fulness, they are inundations unconfined by banks the violence of each soon scoops for itself a narrow channel, and that is a dry one.

ONE auxiliory cause of the military passion of the French has not been mentioned in its proper place; it must not be omitted in the examination of characters. The English, their great rivals, ever thought themselves entitled to take rank as a free nation. The French could not vie with the English for liberty; but vanity, repelled from one course, sought and found relief in another: we are the most gallant people of Europe: these islanders, proud of their liberty, shall not be permitted to despise, they shall fear us. Pride, hot in the race of emulation, and smarting with the wound of its imputed degradation by slavery under an absolute monarch, grew prouder, when it wore its armour and surveyed its trophies. In that contemplation, every Frenchman stretched into a giant, and felt persuaded, that France alone was peopled by the race of Anak.

ALL this military fervour, with all its strength and all its blindness, was transferred by the revolution into the people, la Bourgeoisie, who claimed to be nobles, and who knew no other way to display it, than the usual and acknowledged one for men of rank, by military distinction.

ACCORDINGLY, in the first era of the revolution, the formation of the national guards, and the establishment of rank equal to veterans, awakened the sleeping pride of every heart, and mingled the love of liberty with self-love too intimately to

allow them afterwards to be dissociated.

Pride received a

new impulse to its current, but it ran in the old channel.

No sooner had the revolution attracted attention, than each Frenchman felt his individual title to pre-eminence, as well as that of the nation, to be subjected to a trial. He now claimed to be freer than the free, to be freer than an Englishman or American, as he had ever pretended to be the first among polished and brave men. Their common sentiment was, of course, that the friendship of those who resembled them in liberty was a debt; the submission of those who were inferiour to them in force and courage, was a decree of fate. The supposed hatred of kings, because they had made a republick, their contempt, because they had made a vile rabble rulers, alike stimulated their national vanity to assert claims that were thus disputed, and, if possible, to make them indisputable. They perceived, that France was a stage, and that the curiosity of mankind expected something magnificent in the scenes, something preternatural in the actors, something that would dazzle and astonish; that would make criticism distrustful of its rules, and awe contradiction into silence.

THE revolution itself was one of those portentous, but rare events, which originate from the operation of moral causes, from the intestine agitation of the human mind; a fermentative power, that destroys the forms and the essences of the political body, and yet in its progress separates a larger portion of that pungent spirit, that was formerly the hidden aliment of its life, and is now its preservative from corruption. But, while all France was steaming with this pervading heat, and twitching with the spasms of enthusiastick passion, its popular leaders, assuming imposing names, and exercising a despotism that had neither known limits nor definition, suddenly found themselves invested with a power, that seemed miraculous. They could lead the nation out like an intoxicated giant; or like a war elephant to tread

down an enemy's ranks, and train him rather to be furious, than intimidated, by his wounds.

THE spirit of the revolution, like that of the crusades, is a fierce and troubled spirit: and, like that, it may take two centuries to quiet it. The reformation of Luther, more necessary and more salutary, entailed three ages of war upon Europe. It is a prodigious power, which the monarchy could not resist; but which the chiefs of the military democracy have successively attempted to guide.

IT may seem to most readers a paradox, that so much weight should be allowed to the popular sentiment, in a country so devoted to despotism as France. It should be remembered, that even a despotism has but a limited physical strength it must depend on other props than mere force; it must make an auxiliary of publick opinion. The grand seignior governs Turkey by the aid of superstition, more than by his janissaries; and, even in France, where the people seem to be annihilated, and are nothing in the subordinate plans of the government, the great objects of policy must be chosen, and conducted, with no small condescension to their wishes. For instance, a peace, that should strip France of her conquests, that should tear the laurels from the army, that should expose the French nation to any loss of the reputation that victory has conferred, would shake the throne of the boldest usurper that has enslaved them. The claims of their vanity have been exorbitant from the first, and every new set of tyrants has promised still further to exalt that vanity. Indeed they have kept their word!

Ir is probable, that sensible Frenchmen have long ago discerned, that they did not possess liberty, and that they were not in the road to attain it; but they appeared to be in that road, and that illusion concealed their chains and soothed their sense of disappointment. They could bear it, that they were not freemen, it was what they were used and reconciled to; but they would not bear not to be conquerors. Their love of liberty was tractable; their vanity untractable. Accordingly, they gloried in the enthusiasm of their efforts to

expel the Prussians, who, by invading, had profaned the territory of the republick; although no tyranny could be more odious or sanguinary than that for which they fought. They have borne taxes, paper money, famine, tyranny in all its worst forms, not merely with ordinary patience, but with alacrity, because the French nation struck Europe with admiration and terrour. While religion and morals took flight, industry starved, and innocence bled, national vanity has had its banquets: its frequent feasts have become its ordinary living, and now it would pine without a profusion of dainties.

diaries were multiplied, and graciously received at the bar of the convention. It seemed to be a Roman senate, sitting judicially to hear the grievances of all nations, and to parcel out the world into provinces. Anacharsis Cloots appeared, and harangued the assembly, as the orator of the human In November, 1792, the safety and independence of all states was formally attacked by the decree, that France would assist the rebels of all countries against their governments. The apologists for French extravagances, after some fruitless attempts to justify the principle of this outrage on all mankind, have next endeavoured to palliate: they say, less was intended than the words of the decree seem to import. When the conduct of France discredited even this palliation, it has been since insisted, that the decree was adopted in times of violence and confusion, and that it has been formally annulled. All periods have been violent, and marked with a more than Roman contempt of the rights, as well as the opinions of mankind. But Gregorei, in his laboured report to the assembly on the laws of nations, in which this monstrous decree is supposed to be annulled, expressly says, that the application of the principles he had exhibited, is the right only of the nations, whose governments are founded on the rights of man. The best proof, however, that France has not, in form, renounced the decree, is, that she has invariably adhered to it in fact.

It appears by the publications of Brissot and others, that the French rulers, like the Roman senate, believed it to be necessary rather to employ the fiery turbulent spirit of the nation in war abroad, than to let it employ itself in sedition at home. It is a general opinion among the democrats of all countries, that France was attacked by a royal coalition, jealous of her republicanism. The fact is, the French began the war in Flanders against the emperour, when his towns were without garrisons, the fortifications had been recently pulled down, and the troops ordinarily kept on foot, for their defence did not amount to half their complement.