French have made their way through the destruction of their country, to a bad constitution, when they were abfolutely in poffeffion of a good one. They were in poffeffion of it the day the ftates met in separate orders. Their business, had they been either virtuous, or wife, or had been left to their own judgment, was to fecure the ftability and independence of the ftates, according to thofe orders, under the monarch on the throne. It was then their duty to redress grievances.

Inftead of redreffing grievances, and improving the fabrick of their state, to which they were called by their monarch, and fent by their country, they were made to take a very different course. They first destroyed all the balances and counterpoifes which serve to fix the state, and to give it a steady direction; and which furnish fure correctives to any violent spirit which may prevail in any of the orders. These balances existed in their oldest conftitution; and in the constitution of this country; and in the conftitution of all the countries in Europe. These they rafhly destroyed, and then they melted down the whole into one incongruous, illconnected mafs.

When they had done this, they inftantly, and with the most atrocious perfidy and breach of all faith among men, laid the axe to the root of all property, and consequently of all national prosperity, by the principles they established, and the

example

example they fet, in confifcating all the poffeffions of the church. They made and recorded a fort of inftitute and digeft of anarchy, called the rights of man, in fuch a pedantick abuse of elementary principles as would have difgraced boys at fchool; but this declaration of rights was worse than trifling and pedantick in them; as by their name and authority they systematically deftroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration they fubverted the ftate; and brought on fuch calamities as no country, without a long war, has ever been known to fuffer, and which may in the end produce fuch a war, and perhaps, many fuch.

With them the question was not between defpotism and liberty. The facrifice they made of the peace and power of their country was not made on the altar of freedom. Freedom, and a better fecurity for freedom than that they have taken, they might have had without any facrifice at all. They brought themselves into all the calamities they suffer, not that through them they might obtain a British constitution; they plunged themselves headlong into thofe calamities, to prevent themselves from fettling into that conftitution, or into any thing resembling it.

That if they should perfectly fucceed in what they propose, as they are likely enough to do, and establish a democracy, or a mob of democracies,

in a country circumftanced like France, they will establish a very bad government-a very bad species of tyranny.

That, the worst effect of all their proceeding I was on their military, which was rendered an army for every purpose but that of defence. That, if the question was, whether foldiers were to forget they were citizens, as an abstract propofition, he could have no difference about it; though as it is usual, when abstract principles are to be applied, much was to be thought on the manner of uniting the character of citizen and foldier. But as applied to the events which had happened in France, where the abstract principle was cloathed with its circumstances, he thought that his friend would agree with him, that what was done there furnished no matter of exultation, either in the act or the example. These foldiers were not citizens; but base hireling mutineers, and mercenary fordid deferters, wholly deftitute of any honourable principle. Their conduct was one of the fruits of that anarchick spirit, from the evils of which a democracy itself was to be reforted to, by those who were the leaft disposed to that form, as a fort of refuge. It was not an army in corps and with discipline, and embodied under the refpectable patriot citizens of the ftate in refifting tyranny. Nothing like it. It was the cafe of common soldiers deserting from their officers,

to

1

to join a furious, licentious populace. It was a defertion to a caufe, the real object of which was to level all those inftitutions, and to break all those connections, natural and civil, that regulate and hold together the community by a chain of subordination; to raise soldiers against their officers; fervants against their mafters; tradesmen against their customers; artificers against their employers; tenants against their landlords; curates against their bishops; and children against their parents. That this caufe of theirs was not an enemy to fervitude, but to fociety.

He wished the house to confider, how the mem-bers would like to have their manfions pulled down and pillaged, their perfons abused, infulted, and deftroyed; their title deeds brought out and burned before their faces, and themselves and their families driven to seek refuge in every nation throughout Europe, for no other reason than this; that without any fault of theirs, they were born gentlemen, and men of property, and were fufpected of a defire to preserve their confideration and their eftates. The desertion in France was to aid an abominable fedition, the very profeffed principle of which was an implacable hoftility to nobility and gentry, and whose favage war-hoop was “à l'Aristocrate," by which fenfeless, bloody cry, they animated one another to rapine and murder; whilft abetted by ambitious men of another clafs,

they

they were crushing every thing refpectable and virtuous in their nation, and to their power difgracing almost every name, by which we formerly knew there was fuch a country in the world as France.

He knew too well, and he felt as much as any man, how difficult it was to accommodate a standing army to a free conftitution, or to any conftitution, An armed, difciplined body is, in its effence, dangerous to liberty; undisciplined it is ruinous to fociety. Its component parts are, in the latter cafe, neither good citizens nor good foldiers. What have they thought of in France, under such a difficulty as almoft puts the human faculties to a ftand? They have put their army under fuch a variety of principles of duty, that it is more likely to breed litigants, pettifoggers, and mutineers, than foldiers. They have fet up, to balance their crown army, another army, deriving under another authority, called a municipal army-a balance of armies, not of orders. These latter they have deftroyed with every mark of infult and oppreffion. States may, and they will beft, exist with a partition of civil powers. Armies cannot exist under a divided command. This ftate of things he thought, in effect, a ftate of war, or, at beft, but a truce inftead of peace, in the country.

They are fworn to obey the king, the nation, and the law.

VOL. V.

C

What