law for Europe, and the dominion assigned by nature for the republic of regicide. But this empire is to be her ruin, and to take away all alarm and jealousy on the part of England, and to destroy her preponderance over the miserable remains of Europe.

These are choice speculations, with which the author amuses himself, and tries to divert us, in the blackest hours of the dismay, defeat, and calamity of all civilized nations. They have but one fault, that they are directly contrary to the common sense and common feeling of mankind. If I had but one hour to live, I would employ it in decrying this wretched system, and die with my pen in my hand to mark out the dreadful consequences of receiving an arrangement of empire dictated by the despotism of regicide to my own country, and to the lawful sovereigns of the christian world.

I trust I shall hardly be told in palliation of this shameful system of politics, that the author expresses his sentiments only as doubts. In such things it may be truly said, that "once to "doubt is once to be resolved." It would be a strange reason for wasting the treasures and shedding the blood of our country to prevent arrangements on the part of another power, of which we were doubtful, whether they might not be even to our advantage, and render our neighbour less, than before, the object of our jealousy and alarm. In this doubt there is much decision. No nation would consent to carry on a war of scepticism. But the fact is, this expression of doubt is only a mode of putting an opinion, when it is not the drift of the author to overturn the doubt. Otherwise, the doubt is never stated as the author's own, nor left, as here it is, unanswered. Indeed, the mode of

stating the most decided opinions in the form of questions is so little uncommon, particularly since the excellent queries of the excellent Berkely, that it became for a good while a fashionable mode of composition.

Here then the author of the fourth week of October is ready for the worst, and would strike the bargain of peace on these conditions. I must leave it to you and to every considerate man to reflect upon the effect of this on any continental alliances present or future, and whether it would be possible (if this book was thought of the least authority) that its maxims with regard to our political interest must not naturally push them to be beforehand with us in the fraternity with regicide, and thus not only strip us of any steady alliance at present, but leave us without any of that communion of interest, which could produce alliances in future. Indeed, with these maxims we should be well divided from the world.

Notwithstanding this new kind of barrier and security that is found against her ambition in her conquests, yet in the very same paragraph he admits that for the present, at least, it is "subversive of the balance of power." This, I confess, is not a direct contradiction, because the benefits which he promises himself from it, according to his hypothesis, are future and more

remote.

So disposed is this author to peace, that having laid a comfortable foundation of our security in the greatness of her empire, he has another in reserve if that should fail, upon quite a contrary ground;-that is, a speculation of her crumbling to pieces, and being thrown into a number of little separate republics. After paying the tribute of humanity to those who will be ruined by all these changes, on the whole, he is of opinion, that "the change might be compatible with general tranquilli"ty, and with the establishment of a peaceful and prosperous "commerce among nations." Whether France be great or small, firm and entire, or dissipated and divided, all is well; provided we can have peace with her.

But, without entering into speculations about her dismemberment whilst she is adding great nations to her empire, is it then quite so certain, that the dissipation of France into such a cluster of petty Republics would be so very favourable to the true balance of power in Europe, as this author imagines it would be, and to the commerce of nations? I greatly differ from him. I perhaps shall prove in a future letter, with the political map of Europe before my eye, that the general liberty and independence of the great christian commonwealth could not exist with such a dismemberment; unless it were followed (as probably enough it would) by the dismemberment of every other considerable country in Europe: and, what convulsions would arise in the constitution of every state in Europe, it is not easy to conjecture in the mode, impossible not to forsee in the mass. Speculate on, good my Lord! provided you ground no part of your politics on such unsteady speculations. But, as to any practice to ensue, are we not yet cured of the malady of speculating on the circumstances of things totally different from those in which we live and move? Five years has this monster continued whole and entire in all its members. Far from falling into a division within itself, it is augmented by tremendous additions. We cannot bear to look that frightful form in the face as it is, and in its own actual shape. We dare not be wise. We have not the fortitude of rational fear; we will not provide for our future safety; but we endeavour to hush the cries of present timidity by guesses at what may be hereafter, "To-morrow and

"to-morrow and to-morrow"-Is this our style of talk, when "all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death?" Talk not to me of what swarm of republics may come from this carcass! It is no carcass. Now, now, whilst we are talk ing, it is full of life and action. What say you to the regicide empire of to-day? Tell me, my friend, do its terrors appal you into an abject submission, or rouse you to a vigorous defence? But do I no longer prevent it-do go on-look into futurity. Has this empire nothing to alarm you when all struggle against it is over, when mankind shall be silent before it, when all nations shall be disarmed, disheartened and truly divided by a treacherous peace? Its malignity towards humankind will subsist with undiminished heat, whilst the means of giving it effect must proceed, and every means of resisting it must inevitably and rapidly decline.

Against alarm on their politic and military empire these are the writer's sedative remedies. But he leaves us sadly in the dark with regard to the moral consequences which he states have threatened to demolish a system of civilization under which his country enjoys a prosperity unparalleled in the history of man :-We had emerged from our first terrors, but here we sink into them again; however, only to shake them off upon the credit of his being a man of very sanguine hopes.

Against the moral terrors of this successful empire of barba→ rism, though he has given us no consolation here, in another place he has formed other securities; securities, indeed, which will make even the enormity of the crimes and atrocities of France a benefit to the world. We are to be cured by her diseases. We are to grow proud of our constitution upon the distempers of theirs. Governments throughout all Europe are to become much stronger by this event. This too comes in the favourite mode of doubt, and perhaps. "To those," he says, "who medi"tate on the workings of the human mind, a doubt may, perhaps, "arise, whether the effects, which I have described [namely, the change he supposes to be wrought on the public mind with regard to the French doctrines] "though at present a salutary "check to the dangerous spirit of innovation, may not prove "favourable to abuses of power, by creating a timidity in the "just cause of liberty." Here the current of our apprehensions takes a contrary course. Instead of trembling for the existence of our government from the spirit of licentiousness and anarchy, the author would make us believe we are to tremble for our liberties from the great accession of power, which is to accrue to government.

I believe I have read in some author who criticised the pro[4]

VOL. V.

ductions of the famous Jurieu, that it is not very wise in people, who dash away in prophecy, to fix the time of accomplishment at too short a period. Mr. Brothers may meditate upon this at his leisure. He was a melancholy prognosticator, and has had the fate of melancholy men. But they, who prophecy pleasant things, get great present applause; and in days of calamity people have something else to think of: they lose in their feeling of their distress, all memory of those, who flattered them in their prosperity. But, merely for the credit of the prediction, nothing could have happened more unluckily for the noble lord's sanguine expectations of the amendment of the public mind, and the consequent greater security to government from the examples in France, than what happened in the week after the publication of his hebdomadal system. I am not sure it was not in the very week, one of the most violent and dangerous seditions broke out, that we have seen in several years. This sedition, menacing to the public security, endangering the sacred person of the king, and violating in the most audacious manner the authority of parliament, surrounded our sovereign with a murderous yell and war-whoop for that peace which the noble lord considers as a cure for all domestic disturbances and dissatisfactions.

So far as to this general cure for popular disorders. As for government, the two houses of parliament, instead of being guided by the speculations of the fourth week in October, and throwing up new barriers against the dangerous power of the crown, which the noble lord considered as no unplausible subject of apprehension, the two houses of parliament thought fit to pass two acts for the further strengthening of that very government against a most dangerous and wide-spread faction.

Unluckily too for this kind of sanguine speculation, on the very first day of the ever-famed "last week of October," a large, daring and seditious meeting was publicly held, from which meeting this atrocious attempt against the sovereign publicly originated.

No wonder, that the author should tell us that the whole consideration might be varied whilst he was writing those pages. In one, and that the most material, instance, his speculations not only might be, but were at that very time, entirely overset. Their war cry for peace with France was the same with that of this gentle author, but in a different note. His is the gemitus Columbæ, cooing and wooing fraternity: theirs the funereal screams of birds of night calling for their ill-omened paramours. But they are both songs of courtship. These regicides considered a regicide peace as a cure for all their evils; and, so

far as I can find, they showed nothing at all of the timidity which the noble lord apprehends in what they call the just cause of liberty.

However, it seems, that notwithstanding these awkward appearances with regard to the strength of government, he has still his fears and doubts about our liberties. To a free people this would be a matter of alarm, but this physician of October has in his shop all sorts of salves for all sorts of sores. It is curious, that they all come from the inexhaustible drug shop of the regicide dispensary. It costs him nothing to excite terror, because he lays it at his pleasure. He finds a security for this danger to liberty from the wonderful wisdom to be taught to kings, to nobility, and even to the lowest of the people, by the late transactions.

I confess, I was always blind enough to regard the French revolution, in the act and much more in the example, as one of the greatest calamities that had ever fallen upon mankind. I now find that in its effects it is to be the greatest of all blessings. If so, we owe amende honorable to the jacobins. They, it seems, were right-and if they were right a little earlier than we are, it only shows that they exceeded us in sagacity. If they brought out their right ideas somewhat in a disorderly manner, it must be remembered that great zeal produces some irregularity; but, when greatly in the right, it must be pardoned by those, who are very regularly and temperately in the wrong. The master jacobins had told me this a thousand times. I never believed the masters; nor do I now find myself disposed to give credit to the disciple. I will not much dispute with our author, which party has the best of this revolution;-that, which is from thence to learn wisdom, or that, which from the same event has obtained power. The dispute on the preference of strength to wisdom may perhaps be decided as Horace has decided the controversy between art and nature. I do not like to leave all the power to my adversary, and to secure nothing to myself but the untimely wisdom, that is taught by the consequences of folly. I do not like my share in the partition, because to his strength my adversary may possibly add a good deal of cunning, whereas my wisdom may totally fail in producing to me the same degree of strength. But to descend from the author's generalities a little nearer to meaning, the security given to liberty is this, "that governments will have "learned not to precipitate themselves into embarrassments by "speculative wars. Sovereigns and princes will not forget that "steadiness, moderation and economy are the best supports of the eminence on which they stand." There seems to me a