XL. istence, submitted to the tyranny, otherwise intolera- CHAP. ble, of Robespierre, the leader of the jacobins, who, by means of a Parisian mob, had rendered himself master of the national convention, and despot of the commonwealth. But when, by the immense internal strength of the nation, compressed by the common danger, and energised by a spirit of liberty, the independence of France was secured, a tremendous insurrection repressed at home of the furiously bigoted peasants of Poictou and Bretagne, and the foreign armies of invaders repelled with dreadful slaughter by hosts of republicans precipitated on them with vengeful enthusiasm, a plan was formed and put in execution for the overthrow of the mountain faction, whose chief, the terrific Robespierre, suffered death by the guillotine. To the system of terror, maintained by the jacobins, whose energetic tyranny, successful against the enemies of the new commonwealth, had stained the land with butcheries in cold blood to a degree hardly credible, succeeded a more moderate system, in which men of property began to assume their due places in the body politic. In 1795 the executive authority, with the sovereign rank, was committed to five men, who constituted a body termed the directory; and the legislative or two councils, elected by the people, faintly resembling the two houses of the British parliament. tain. On the affairs of Britain the influence of the Its influFrench revolution was truly momentous. The Bri-ence on Bri tish court appears from the beginning to have regarded with unfavourable eyes the presumptuous at tempts XL. CHAP. tempts for the abridgement of regal power in the neighbouring kingdom; and to have been much offended by the galdness of British subjects, generously felt, perhaps indiscreetly expressed, for the emancipation of a rival people. Also from apprehensions of a dangerous prevalence of republican and revolutionary notions, alarms were propagated among men of wealth and rank, many of whom became jealous of the liberty enjoyed by their fellowsubjects, and wished earnestly for a state of polity approximating to despotism, under the indefinite name of a strong government. Doubtless a vigilant, active, and firm conduct, of administration was necessary to prevent revolution, which can no where be unattended with calamity, and which was totally irrequisite in a country already blessed with a political constitution the best ever known in the old continent: but unhappily mankind are prone to ex-tremes, to imbibe a spirit of faction; and, in a collective capacity, never stop at the just limit in political transactions, When a class of any persons of predominant power in a nation is once observed to de decidedly actuated by a spirit of party, men intent solely on their own private interest, regardless of the public welfare, seize the opportunity of emolument by the violence of acts and expressions in favour of the prejudices of the commanding faction. An Irishman, Edinund Burke, a member of the British house of commons, whose transcendently splendid talents had hitherto been exerted in favour of liberty, suddenly changed sides, pronounced an invective XL invective in parliament in the February of 1790, CHAP. and, eight months after, published a pamphlet of extraordinary size and fury of declamation, against the late restrictions of monarchy in France. In the composing of this treatise, calated to draw odium on those British people who had rejoiced at French emancipation, and to arm the powers of Europe against France in a war in which no law of nations should be observed, Burke may have been partly instigated by resentment against those Frenchmen, who had subverted the exclusive establishment of the Roman catholic religion in their country, a religion to which the writer seems to have been cordially attached, though a protestant by profession. Like the fabulous torch of the furies, his book excited a strange combustion. By the acrimony of his wild invective were the moderate friends of constitutional freedom exasperated against the principles of the tory faction; while the fire of a republican and revolutionary spirit was rapidly disseminated by pamphlets in answer, called into existence by this aggressive act, chiefly by one styled Rights of Man, written by Thomas Paine, who with unhallowed hand levelled his darts at even the vital principles of the constitution. On the other side the ministers of his Majesty's cabinet, secure of support from a powerful tory faction, whose number was vastly augmented by a dread of revolution, proceeded, when they had alarmed the nation with rumours of plots, of which no evidence ever appeared, to adopt a system of arbitrary government, VOL. II. astonishing Y CHAP. astonishing to those who had conceived an inviolability of British freedom. XL. Associations were formed under the sanction of ministers for the forcible suppression of republicanism and of writings inimical to monarchy. To mention liberty with approbation, to speak of the expediency of limits to the royal prerogative, was reprobated as a species of treason, as a proof of disaffection to the existing government, and of a wish to promote the levelling system of democratic revolution. The act of Habeas Corpus was suspended, and prisons were filled with men not destined to be tried for overt acts, but to be punished by confinement for opinions; and this punishment is said to have been dreadful in the prison of Cold-bath Fields near London. To be enabled to carry more fully into effect a plan of coercion at home, and to extinguish in the blood of the French revolutionists a spirit of democracy abroad, the British cabinet, instead of the dignified and advantageous part, then offered by fortune, of commanding the peace of Europe, drew their country as a principal into a war against France in the spring of 1793, and completed that immense confederacy, which could not fail, in the opinion of shallow politicans, of in a short time. overwhelming the French nation. Unfortunately statesmen are as little exempt from human frailty and error as any other class of their fellow-creatures, and often effectually promote by their schemes the very purposes which they labour to prevent. This tremendous coalition of potentates, this war unex XL. ampled for greatness in the annals of Europe, served CHAP. chiefly to throw the absolute government of France into the hands of a democratic junto, and, as had been foreseen by the most enlightened men, to exalt the French power to a pitch truly alarming to the independence of all the neighbouring countries. The subjugation of France, with the extirpation of its democrats, must in all probability have involved the extinction of British freedom, an event which a wise and patriotic prince could never wish; for, as, on one hand the wildness of unbridled democracy leaves neither safety of person, stability of government, nor permanent strength of union for national independence; so, on the other, unlimited submission to the will of a master so enervates the mental faculties, that a nation in such a predicament can neither preserve itself from the thraldom of superstition, nor maintain its independence against powerful neighbours. Only in a just medium between these extremes can consist that political excellence which gives individual protection inviolate, and stability of national power. ence on Ire Still much more violently than in Britain was felt Its influthe influence of the French revolution, of the in-land. flammatory writings of Burke and Paine, in Ireland, where popular discontents had been more prevalent, where notions of revolution were in consequence more extensively and seriously adopted, and where a system of coercion was gradually strained to a pitch truly horrible. So early as the year 1789, some severities beyond the due limits of the law were exercised Y 2 |