peaceful, but now bloody and depopulated plains of Biscay, declare to an astonished world.

People of Ireland! are you not very miserable that you have not yet participated in these invaluable bleffings? Have you not reason to lament that your friends in this city were not able to lay their schemes better, and that the English Fleet was not a little weaker, and the French Fleet somewhat stronger? Then you too might have been enriched like the Dutch, and made happy like the Bifcayans? Then in truth you would have been greatly emancipated; your country would have been emancipated from its wealth; your wives and daughters would have been emancipated from their chastity; and yourselves, perhaps, as the last bleffing of which you would have been capable, would have been emancipated from existence.

ESSAY

ESSAY V.

DEMOCRATICK LIBERTY CONTINUED.

SEPT. 10, 1795.

MONTESQUIEU has obferved, that the political liberty of the Subject, confifts" in a tranquillity of mind arifing from the opinion each "perfon has of his own fafety," and, he adds, that in order to have this liberty, it is requi"fite the Government be fo conftituted as that "one perfon need not be afraid of another."

This is plain common fenfe, obvious to every man's reason, and correfponding with every man's feelings; but if so, what estimate are we to form of the effects of French Democracy?

The statements made daily in the Convention are indifputable, because the Convention itself authenticates them, by making them the ground of its decrees. But if these accounts are authentick, may it not fairly be asked, in what country, or at what period, has the very reverse of political liberty been fo completely exemplified as in

France,

France, fince its adoption of the Democratick system?

Where or when had individuals fo little ground to reckon upon their own personal safety? Where or when had every one man fo much reason to be afraid of every other man?

What, by its own confeffion, has been the Convention? Has it been the temple of rational liberty, the bright focus of national light, the terror of the oppreffor, the afylum of the wretched? Has it not, on the contrary, been at one period the mean unrefifting inftrument of a Robespierre; at another the weak, hood-winked dupe of its own villainous Commiffioners; blind as a mole to the mischiefs of the hour, and fharpfighted as the eagle to those that had gone by; a giant in theory and a pigmy in practice?" We "were forced," fays Pouzalles, "to fubmit to "the empire of an execrable faction, which shed "our blood, and afterwards extended its ravages "to every part of the Republick; the signal of "diftrefs was given, but we had no fuccour." An honourable acknowledgment from a body calling itself a Legislature! Is it not strange that though none could difprove this miferable confeffion, fome fhould not have objected to its being handed down as an historical document to posterity?

But

But now that they dare to speak out; now that they are in retrospect fo purely virtuous and fo profoundly wife, what in fact do their inquiries 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 monstrous 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 promiscuous flaughter all ages, fexes, ranks and characters? Were they not the confidential members, the selected Commiffioners of the Convention? Were they not those too, who once used as plausible 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 trusts in the Departments; but it appears, that few who had the opportunity to be villains, fuffered it to escape unimproved; and those 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 famous motion for a band of affaffinating Miffionaries;

G

naries; and Tallien's propofal for executing those 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 leader of the prefent prevailing party. But even the few proceffes which have commenced, feem fcarcely to have been inftituted in earnest: 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 fuch as the world has fcarcely before witneffed. Cruel as the Spaniards may have been in South America, 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 diversified 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 revolu tionary France only, that Voltaire's ideal Monfter, the blended Monkey and Tyger, is realized to a nicety; it is on that high-raifed theatre, and in the view of an aftonifhed world, that men acting as Magiftrates, and calling themfelves