But now they that dare to fpeak out; now: that they are in retrospect fo purely virtuous and fo profoundlywife,what, in fact, do their enquiries amount to? The blackest scenes are developed daily; each fresh difcuffion brings forth fome greater abominations; and the human fancy is puzzled to conjecture where the monftrous volume is to end. But are not their accufations of their colleagues direct criminations of themfelves? For who, or what, were thofe bloodhounds who are now acknowledged to have confounded perfons and properties in one common. wreck, and to have blended, in promifcuous flaughter, all ages, fexes, ranks, and characters? Were they not the confidential members; the felected Commiffioners of the Convention? Were they not thofe, too, who once used as plaufible language, and laid claim to as pure a patriotism, as any of their accufers? And is not candour itfelf obliged to fufpect that the chief difference. between the one and the other lay rather in their fituations than in their principles and tempers? All of them could not have authoritative trufts in the Departments; but, it appears, that few who had the opportunity to be villains fuffered it to escape unimproved; and thofe who had not the opportunity, have, in feveral inftances, fhewn what they would have done, had it been in their power. Every one recollects Jean de Brie's fa

mous motion for a band of affaffinating Miffionaries; and Tallien's propofal for executing thofe who were accufed, without the unneceffary forms of a trial, can scarcely be forgotten. And yet Jean de Brie fits quietly to this hour in the Convention, and Tallien is little lefs than a lea der of the prefent prevailing party. But even the few proceffes which have commenced feem fcarcely to have been inftituted in earneft: we hear of numerous accufations, but of few or no punishments; and Barrere, though accused of the groffeft crimes, does not appear to be, as yet, even brought to trial.

But be the proceedings against the culprits fincere or hypocritical, the crimes are such as the world has scarcely before witneffed. Cruel as the Spaniards may have been in South Ame rica, the circumftances of the Natives did not admit of a fimilar pillage; and the fhorter duration of the former maffacre of Paris could not have left room for fuch diverfified barbarity. It is in free Revolutionary France only that at one moment, and in the fame perfons, Nero would have feen himself rivalled in malignity, and Heliogabalus in buffoonery; it is in free revolutionary France only that Voltaire's ideal Monfter, the blended Monkey and Tiger, is realized to a nicety; it is on that high-raised thea

tre

tre and in the view of an astonished world, that men, acting as Magiftrates, and calling themfelves Philofophers, have "played fuch fantaf"tic tricks before high Heaven," not barely as would make "Angels weep," but as Ideots would defpife, and Savages abhor.

Is this declamation? Let the man that thinks fo, if fuch can be, advert to the reports of the Convention, as given in an Irifh Oppofition paper, the Hibernian Journal, of Wednesday, Auguft the 19th. Let him read the account of Lequinio, a Commiffioner from the Convention; one moment embracing, in the view of the multitude, a ruffian who had offered voluntarily to be the minifter of his malice-another moment acting the part of an affaffin himself; now haranguing the people from the blood-ftained Guillotine, and then forcing the defencelefs victims of his tyranny to afcend it, merely that he might make them trample on the remains of their flaughtered relatives! Let him read the laconic epistle of Piorry, another Deputy, and Commiffioner, to the People of Poitiers: "Lofe "not a moment, every thing must be destroyed, "burnt, guillotined, carried off, regenerated!" And, laftly, let him attend to the merciful project of Bo, for giving plenty to France, by cutting off one half of its inhabitants.

G 2

"Be of

"good

good cheer, France has enough for twelver millions of people; the reft of its inhabitants ❝will be put to death, and then provifions will be abundant !"

Surely, fince men began to multiply on the face of the earth, fuch fcenes never were exhibited in it before. I will not infult the underftanding and the feelings of my reader by asking what connection all this has with Liberty? But I call upon the man of candour and reflection to fay, whether it is not amazingly like the retributive juftice of God? France would not even allow existence to the humane, tender hearted, too gentle Louis; it faw him, approvingly faw him, hunted down, and worried to death by an infernal pack of Jackals and Hyænas. What then could be more equitable, than that the monsters should turn upon those who had encouraged them, and glut their whetted appetite with the blood, the treasures, and the happiness of France itself?

ESSAY

ESSAY VI.

DEMOCRATIC CONSISTENCY.

Sept. 19, 1795.

THIS, doubtless, is the age of political prodigies. The well-known Metamorphofes of the. Roman Poet feem almoft to fhrink within the limits of nature and probability, when compared with the tranfmutations juft now exhibited in the French Convention.

Legendre, the butcher, the leader, and the mouth-piece of that rabble of savages, who, with a pair of old black breeches on a pole, and the heart of a calf on the point of a pike, for their ftandards, burft into the Caftle of the Thuilleries on the memorable 20th of JuneLegendre, who propofed that Manuel (who, though a democrat, had a confcience and a heart,) fhould be voted mad, merely becaufe, while the trial of the King was pending, he fuggefted that tickets of admiffion fhould be diftributed among the real Citizens, in order to prevent the galleries from being filled by a domineering mob-This fame Legendre, now pathetically laments-what? That the Convention. are trenching on the fovereignty of his old affo

ciates;