adopted in the National Affembly. It comes with fomething folid in aid of the credit of the paper circuculation; and much has been faid of its utility and its elegance. I mean the project for coining into money the bells of the fuppreffed churches. This is their alchymy. There are fome follies which baffle argument; which go beyond ridicule; and which excite no feeling in us but difguft; and therefore I fay no more upon it.

It is as little worth remarking any farther upon all their drawing and re-drawing, on their circulation for putting off the evil day, on the play between the treasury and the Caiffe d'Efcompte, and on all thefe old exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud, now exalted into policy of ftate. The revenue will not be trifled with. The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment for a bifcuit or a pound of gunpowder. Here then the metaphyficians defcend from their airy fpeculations, and faithfully follow examples. What examples? the examples of bankrupts. But, defeated, baffled, disgraced, when their breath, their ftrength, their inventions, their fancies defert them, their confidence still maintains its ground. In the manifeft failure of their abili ties they take credit for their benevolence. When the revenue disappears in their hands, they have the prefumption, in some of their late proceedings, to value themfelves on the relief given to the people. They did not relieve the people. If they entertained fuch intentions, why did they order the obnoxious taxes to be paid? The people relieved themfelves in fpite of the affembly.

But waving all difcuffion on the parties, who may claim the merit of this fallacious relief, has

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there been, in effect, any relief to the people in any form? Mr. Bailly, one of the grand agents of paper circulation, lets you into the nature of this relief. His fpeech to the National Affembly contained an high and laboured panegyric on the inhabitants of Paris for the conftancy and unbroken refolution with which they have bornetheir diftrefs and mifery. A fine picture of public felicity! What! great courage and unconquerable firmness of mind to endure benefits, and fuftain redress! One would think from the fpeech of this learned Lord Mayor, that the Parifians, for this twelvemonth paft, had been fuffering the ftraits of fome dreadful blockade; that Henry the Fourth had been stopping up the avenues to their fupply, and Sully thundering with his ordnance at the gates of Paris; when in reality they are befieged by no other enemies than their own madnefs and folly, their own credulity and preverfenefs. But Mr. Bailly will fooner thaw the eternal ice of his atlantic regions, than reftore the central heat to Paris, whilst it remains "fmitten with the cold, dry, petrifick mace" of a falfe and unfeeling philofophy. Some time after this fpeech, that is, on the thirteenth of last Auguft, the fame magiftrate, giving an account of his government at the bar of the fame affembly, expreffes himself as follows: "In the month "of July 1789," [the period of everlasting commemoration] "the finances of the city of Paris. were yet in good order; the expenditure was "counterbalanced by the recept, and she had at "that time a million [forty thousand pounds fterling] in bank. The expences which she has been "constrained

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"constrained to incur, fubfequent to the revolution, "amount to 2,500,000 livres. From thefe ex

pences, and the great falling-off in the products "of the free gifts, not only a momentary but sa "total want of money has taken place." This is the Paris upon whofe nourishment, in the courfe of thei laft year, fuch immenfe fums, drawn from the vitals of all France, has been expended. As long as Paris ftands in the place of antient Rome, so long the will be maintained by the fubject provinces. It is an evil inevitably attendant on the dominion of fove reign democratic republics. As it happened in Rome, it may furvive that republican domination which gave rife to it. In that cafe defpotifm itself must submit to the vices of popularity. Rome, under heremperors, united the evils of both systems; and this unnatural combination was one great cause of her ruin.

To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of their public eftate, is a cruel and infolent impofition. Statefmen, before they valued themselves on the relief given to the people, by the deftruction of their revenue, ought first to have carefully attended to the folution of this problem:Whether it be more advantageous to the people to pay confiderably, and to gain in proportion; or to gain little or nothing, and to be difburthened of all contribution? My mind is made up to decide in favour of the first propofition. Experience is with me, and, I believe, the best opinions allo. To keep a balance between the power of acquifition on the part of the fubject, and the demands he is to anfwer on the part of the ftate, is a fundamental part of the skill of a true politician.

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The means of acquifition are prior in time and in arrangement. Good order is the foundation of all good things. To be enabled to acquire, the people, without being fervile, must be tractable and obedient. The magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their authority. The body of the people must not find the principles of natural fubordination by art rooted out of their minds. They must refpect that property of which they cannot partake. They mult labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the fuccefs difproportioned to the endeavour, they must be taught their confolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of this confola

tion, whoever deprives them, deadens their induftry, and strikes at the root of all acquifition as of all confervation. He that does this is the cruel oppreffor, the merciless enemy of the poor and wretched; at the fame that by his wicked fpeculations he exposes the fruits of fuccefsful industry, and the accumulations of fortune, to the plunder of the negligent, the disappointed, and the unprofperous.

Too many of the financiers by profeffion are apt to fee nothing in revenue, but banks, and circulations, and, and annuities on lives, and tontines, and perpetual rents, and all the small wares of the shop. In a fettled order of the ftate, these things are not to be flighted, nor is the fkill in them to be held of trivial estimation. They are good, but then only good, when they affume the effects of that fettled order, and are built upon it. But when men think that thefe beggarly contrivances may fupply a refource for the evils which refult from breaking up

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the foundations of public order, and from caufing or fuffering the principles of property to be fubverted, they will, in the ruin of their country, leave a melancholy and lafting monument of the effect of prepofterous politics, and prefumptuous, fhort-fighted, narrow-minded wifdom.

The effects of the incapacity fhewn by the popular leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the "all-atoning name" of liberty. In fome people I fee great liberty indeed; in many, if not in the moft, an oppreffive degrading fervitude. But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all poffible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madnefs, without tuition or reftraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to fee it difgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-founding words in their mouths. Grand, fwelling fentiments of liberty, I am fure I do not defpife. They warm the heart; they enlarge and liberalife our minds; they animate our courage in a time of conflict. Old as I am, i read the fine raptures of Lucan and Corneille with pleasure. Neither do I wholly condemn the little arts and devices of popularity. They facilitate the carrying of many points of moment; they keep the people together; they refresh the mind in its exertions; and they diffufe occafional gaiety over the fevere brow of moral freedom. Every politician ought to facrifice to the graces; and to join com pliance with reason. But in fuch an undertaking as that in France, all these fubfidiary fentiments and artifices are of little avail. To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the fear of power; teach obedience: and the work is done,

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