more clear than that the lines which circumfcribe. the powers, are the bounds of feparation between the prerogative of the Prince, or other magistrate, and the privileges of the people. We hence infer that every step which the prince or magiftrate makes beyond these bounds is an encroachment on liberty, and every attempt towards making such a step is a danger on liberty; but if it is righteous to draw the fword against tyrants who endanger this liberty, it is not lefs fo to unfheath it against traitors who cover the crimes of rebellion and regicide under the mask of patriotism." Notwithstanding which we muft deeply regret the dire neceffity of man thus preying upon man, and fhudder to reflect that there are really thofe amongst us meriting the cenfure which an excellent writer has paffed on them-" Wretches who without virtue, labour, or hazard, while incommodious encampments, and unwholefome stations, where courage is useless, and enterprize is impracticable, are filently difpeopling fleets and flugifhly melting away armies, are growing. rich as their country is impoverished; who re joice when obftinacy or ambition adds another year to flaughter and devaftation; who laugh from their defks at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cypher to cypher, hoping for a new contract, for a new armament, and computing the profits of a fiege or a tempeft." LETTER LETTER LXXI. TO THE SAME. LIBERTY," fays my Lord Bolingbroke, " is a tender plant which will not flourish unless the genius of the foil be proper to it." Notwithstanding it has been watered with human blood, and manured by human bodies, great must be the reform of the present fyftem, ere I can be perfuaded, my friend, that France is that genial foil. The state of, and the late tranfactions in, that miferable country, cannot be thought of, without leffening the * I dignity of the human fpecies; for comparing what once was that kingdom, with what it is, one cannot help affociating with the godlike attributes of man, a capacity of exhibiting and triumphing in qualities fo Satanic that the arch foe of mankind might blush to avow them. Yet a day is to come when the hiftorian muft detail the particulars of the French Revolution. * At the all-devouring moment in which this letter was written. GREAT, it must be confeffed, has the reform been fince the reign of Roberspierre, now abhorred alike by the English and French nations. The The fugitive accounts of the temporary, or di urnal writers, thofe "brief chroniclers of the times,"-must be collected, by fome great and impartial pen for the information of pofterity. What a foul-affrighting mafs of materials! If to his literary endowments, the historiographer of thefe facts fhould poffefs the milder and more compaffionate feelings of the heart, what ago. nizing martyrs muft thofe feelings be to the truth! How muft his page be stained with the blood of innocents! In every leaf the crimes of an age, committed in a day, are to be recorded! Where fhall be found the man whofe foul, whatever be his talents, is firm enough to detail them? And after all, he can scarcely hope Pofterity fhould give him credit. The clofer he advances to the truth, the less is the proba bility of his being believed. We are at the prefent day fo accustomed, fo familiarifed to the hiftory of horrors, to the maffacre of infants in the first, and children in the second, ftate of human beings, then onward to the affaffination of bed-ridden age, and to the violation of all places which used once to be moft holy,-mothers, offspring, and fwaddling babes,-fanc-. tuaries, churches, and facred altars,-that the tales, which, in the beginning of their atrocities, literally Did harrow up the foul," make make now a weaker impreffion even on the breaft where pity has a throne. I heard one of the most tender-hearted of men declare, that the fight of mangled human bodies in the field of battle was difregarded after a month's custom; and we know that the appearance of an open grave, or of a deceased perfon carried to it, are almost imperceptible, at least unheeded, objects in a populous city, where funerals are amongst the ordinary occurrences of the day; whereas, in a small village, a coffin, and a tomb, retain their power of interefting and of affecting the minds, even of the gay and the diffolute. Thus is it in the ftory of France, polluted as it is with abominations: but when more than century of interval from these fhall arrive,-and fuch a period must come,-the most candid reader will impute some part of the narrative to prejudice, to paffion, or to fancy. Indeed, how can the historian himself expect, or with fucceeding generations fhould fuppofe, there had ever entered into the heads, or hearts of their ancestors, thofe innovations in cruelty, as I have before called them,-thofe original fins in the old age of a wicked world, that even now, we could not believe but that we know them to be facts? It will, nevertheless, be the melancholy, though faithful, office of the hiftoriographer of the French Republic, to ftate, that whatever is moft repugnant to reafon and nature, moft offenfive to the laws of man and of God, were the bad means to bring about the best end in the French nation, a nation long celebrated for its manly gentleness and polifhed urbanity, and which was fo univerfally allowed to merit the character given of it by one of its best poets, Where men adore their wives, and woman's power "Draws reverence from a polish'd people's foftness, "Their husbands equals, and their lovers queens." ድ He must reverse this picture, and fhew this very people embruing themselves in the lifeblood of the fex they idolized,-extending their ferocity towards it beyond the practices of the common murderer. He must inftruct children yet unborn, that their parents were capable of violating that religion, the very hem of whofe garment had been facred. For proof of which tremendous affertion, he must enumerate those plundered churches, demolished altars, and fainted images, which for fo many ages were deemed hallowed, even by the moft reprobate of tyrants, and moft abandoned of the people. To which enormities must be added, the pillage of coffins, and turning out of them the very bones of their fore-fathers, to convert the materials, with which filial |