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By havis C. Karpinske
15-18.45

MONGST the peculiar circumftances attending the French revolution; the most interesting, and the moft remarkable, is the general horror with which it is viewed by the European Monarchs, and the extenfive and powerful combination which has been formed amongst them to fupprefs it. The terror it has produced feems to have totally absorbed every other confideration, to have united the moft difcordant interefts, destroyed the moft inveterate prejudices, and the most violent jealoufies. It has even driven the Pope to seek refuge in a nation, which has for more than two centuries had the misfortune to lie under his interdiЯ, and to that monarch whofe fubjects he has moft folemnly difcharged from their allegiance to him. An inveftigation into the caufe of this political phenomenon may not be uninterefting, even exclufive of the important confequences likely to refult from it.

The revolt of fubjects against their fovereigns, is not a very rare occurence; the king of Great Britain has recently experienced an important one, by which he loft the far greater part of his dominions, without exciting any very great concern amongst his fellow monarchs, or any very powerful combination of them in his fupport. Even republicanism has not heretofore appeared to excite any confiderable alarm; America, Holland, Switzerland, nay, England, in the last century, renounced the authority of their fovereigns, and formed republics, yet the monarchs of Europe abetted their revolt, and fought their alliance. An antipathy to republicanifin cannot be pretended, in this cafe, to be the motive for this confederacy against France, becaufe it exifted at a time, when instead of dethroning their monarch, though intirely at their difpofal, they voluntarily left him a fhare of power, dangerous to the fafety and peace of the kingdom, and granted him a civil lift to the utmost of his defire, and much larger than that enjoyed by the king of England. Far lefs can the recent cruelties in France be deemed the caufe, as those were the effect, and not the cause of the royal confederacy. For when it was first formed, far lefs blood had been shed in France than in any revolution of equal importance, and a limited monarchy appeared to be peaceably

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established. No part of the abhorrence of the French revolution can therefore be attributed to the inftability of the government, or the changes it has undergone, because they were the natural confequences of the hoftile measures purfued against it. Mr. Pitt acknowledges, that the limited monarchy of France appeared to have been formed with the general concurrence of the people. Had that government then been left undisturbed. Had not the king, the clergy, and nobles of France been tempted by the hope of powerful foreign aid, to endeavour the fubverfion of the new formed government, its permanency, its peaceable establishment, was far more promifing than could reasonably have been expected, from the nature of the convulfion, and the importance of the change which had taken place. All the calamities which have fince appeared, and the perilous fituation of the royal family of France, may therefore be far more properly attributed to Meffrs. Burke and Calonne, who have been indefatigable in inciting the prefent clamour, than to the people of France.

At the time these men undertook the horrid task of inciting all Europe against that people, they had declared, that having obtained liberty with the fword, they wished to fheath it for ever. They expressly difclaimed any hoftile defign on the most defencelefs ftate; they did not appear to entertain any views inimical to the peace of the furrounding nations, nor the leaft intention of interfering in their concerns. They appeared difpofed to fit down peaceably, to enjoy the happiness they expected to derive from the revolution they had effected. To us they were naturally led to look rather as allies, than as enemies; they confidered us as the nation in Europe, whofe government approximated the nearest to that which they had recently established; and when they faw the continent of Europe arming against them, they threw themselves on our juftice, and proffered us the office of mediator: when this was declined, when Mr. Burke was allowed to ftigmatize them with impunity, when the French princes were inciting all Europe against them, when almost every European monarch appeared difpofed to attack them, and their king was fuppofed to be em

ploying the immenfe revenue they had granted him in fupporting thefe meafures, we cannot much wonder at the rage of the French populace or its confequences, nor will any man believe it to be the real reafon of any meatures which may be adopted against them. Indeed whatever may be the catastrophe of the royal family of France, or whatever may have been its origin, it can hardly be deemed a fufficient caufe for deluging Europe in blood. Tranfitions from the throne to an untimely grave, occur in almoft every page of hiftory, they enforce the argument of the moralift, embellish the works of the poet, and form the principle pathos of the drama. In the space of about half a century the blood of four queens, as beautiful and accomplished as the queen of France, Streamed on an English fcaffold, and although it was an age of chivalry, not a fword started from its scabbard to avenge them. Even fovereigns themselves do not in general feem to poffefs very fympathetic feelings, they rarely concern themselves in the fate of those fellow monarchs, with whom their own interefts are not interwoven. The prefent age has feen a fovereign precipitated from his throne to a prifon, and from thence to his tomb; not by injured fubjects, but by her whom he had raised to empire, and who now fways the bloody fcepter, without having excited thofe exclamations of horror which feem to have been referved for the prefent occafion.

Ifa regard for the Bourbons be not the real motive. for this confederacy, far lefs can we fuppofe it to be a concern for the people of France. Mr. Burke and his affociates, indeed, are extremely pathetic in lamenting the mifery which they have brought upon themfelves. That unhappy people! That miferable, deluded, unfortunate country! are the epithets we apply to France; and it is perhaps the most extraordinary circumstance, in this memorable event, that thirty millions of people fhould fo univerfally, and fo pertinacioufiy perfift in being miferable, and that it should require fuch very extraordinary means to compel them to be happy. It must be prefumed that the illuftrious and beneficient monarchs of Ruffia, of Pruffia, and of Auftria have placed their own fubjects at the fummit of happiness, that they are thus fo perfectly at leifure to give happiness to the people of another country. And

that the luminous geniuses of Ruffia of Brandenberg, and of Auftria, have fet out with fwords in their hands to convince the French that they have mistaken the road to felicity, and that the true principles of government, of focial order, and national profperity, are not to be judged of by human reason, but to be adopted from the banks of the Wolga, the Don, and the Oder, where antient and venerable fyftems of government are established, which were framed by the wifdom of antient times, improved through a fucceffion of ages and fanctioned by happy expeirence. But however powerfully the Ruffian, Auftrian, and Pruffian armies may contend in favor of these systems, it becomes us to paufe on the fubject, because it is poffible the illuftrious monarchs may be interested in the queftion, and fome perfons may be apt to furmife, that were the misery refulting from the French principles, real, the benevolent monarchs would have left thefe people undisturbed, to have been as miferable as they pleased, as a terrible example to deter furrounding nations, from fubverting antient fyftems, or rebelling against their dread fovereigns.

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Let us then inquire a little into the nature of those principles, which have caufed fuch univerfal alarm, and threaten fuch univerfal mifchief. Firft let us afk what they are? "Men being all free, equal, and indepen"dent, no one can be put out of his eftate without his own confent, by agreeing with other men to join and unite in a community. Thus, that which begins, and actually con"cludes any political fociety, is nothing but the confent of a "number of free men, capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into fuch fociety; and this is that, and that only, which did, or could, give beginning to any lawful government. The Supreme power cannot lawfully or rightly take from man, any part of his property without "his own confent.-There remains inherent in the people, "a power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find "the legislative act contrary to the truft repofed in them; for when fuch truft is abufed, it is thereby forfeited, and "devolves to those who gave it."

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Are these the principles of the French revolution? they are; but they ate not extracted from the paltry, blurred, fcraps of the Rights of Man; they are taken

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