Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

all the maniac horrors which followed are attributed to and his accomplices. This is possibly an assertion acceptable to the French reader; it is therefore very often repeated; and the horrid effects of the English Guinées is a theme of animated declamation-but we have no desire of detailing this strain of eloquence, though it would more frequently excite a smile than a frown.

Notwithstanding this author's admiration of the revolution, and his sanguine hopes of the good consequences which will result from it, we are glad to find him allowing that a most egregious error has been committed; and that his countrymen, in their demolition, did not distinguish, as they should have done, between what ought to be destroyed and what ought to have been preserved. We have, (sys he,) in proscribing superstition, destroyed all religious sentiment: but this is not the way to re-generate the world.' What pity it is that some of the prominent agents of the revolution had not respected and encouraged this wise principle! It will continue to surprize men of sound and enlightened understandings, that religion should be discarded by legislators pretending to study the renovation and happiness of mankind. By some recent symptoms, the French seem to be coming to their senses in this respect; and though we have no reverence for the superstitions, of their old worship, we wish them the enjoyment of those institutions of christianity which tend to keep up the fear of God and the practice of religion.

In the chapter entitled Abasement of the Monarch, the author tells us that in 1788 there were in fact five or six kings of France; that the queen was king; that monsieur was king; and that they, with others of the court, embarrassed royalty, and, by degrading the monarch, contributed to his subsequent humiliation. I can attest that Louis XVI. was the perpetual theme of their raillery and contempt. Sarcasm, falsehood, and calumny, are weapons which they handled with a dexterity peculiar to themselves; and certainly they might boast that in no reign had the art of epigrammatizing the person of the monarch been carried to a greater degree of perfection.'

It is farther asserted that Monsieur was at the head of a party of the first nobility, who openly despised the king, and had it in contemplation (we deem this very improbable) to revive the antient feudal government; and that Louis XVI. was advised of this, and was thus induced to incline towards the popular party, and to resolve on the convocation of the" States General.

Much

Much of what has lately happened in France is here attributed to the imprudence (to use no harsher term) of the aristocracy; and the author is disposed to think that the most astonishing circumstance in the history of France is, that a revolution so complete should have happened at a moment when the aristocracy seemed to have brought their system of insolence and oppression to perfection. He proceeds, however, to account for the ascendency gained by the people: If the nobility (he says) had not been divided among themselves, if the parliament had not often set fire to their neighbour's house, (i. e. the clergy;) if the superior had not, with a most imprudent policy, triumphed over the inferior nobility; the people would never have been able to have shaken that colossus, which was exempted from taxes and the expences of the state.'

In proof of his position that the revolution grew out of circumstances, the following anecdote is told of the Duke of Orleans: A marriage was in agitation between the house of Orleans and the royal family: but they found out that Orleans was not sufficiently noble for so great an alliance, and gave him a reception not very unlike that which they would have given to a private gentleman. This folly turned to the profit of the nation, which emancipated itself in the midst of the quarrels of the court.'

One of the chapters is entitled Clubs; (a word which the republicans have adopted from the English into their language;) and here the author remarks that these were each a focus of revolution, where inflammatory matter was daily collecting, which could not fail of a speedy explosion. According to M. MERCIER'S own confession, his work L'An 2440 (which we have already mentioned) had some effect in those clubs and popular societies.

The massacres of September are thus mentioned:

Future

ages will hesitate to believe that such execrable crimes should have been perpetrated in the midst of a civilized, nation, in the presence of the legislature, under the very eyes and with the consent (par la volonté) of the depositaries of the laws, and in a city containing 800,000 inhabitants; who stood motionless, struck with a kind of stupor at the sight of an handful of wretches instigated by bribery to the commission of crimes. The number of assassins did not exceed 300; even if we include those who, within the doors of the prisons, constituted themselves judges of the persons arrested.'*

According to M. MERCIER, the massacres were the work of that detestable and rapacious faction which had obtained dosimilar during the riots in London in

Circumstances were very

the year 1780.
APP. REV. VOL, XXX.

[blocks in formation]

minion by robbery and assassination. Vast depôts of very valuable property were formed, under the idea of safety, in the rooms belonging to the office of the committee of Surveillance, during the time of the domiciliary visits; and in their arrests, it was observed, the committee laid hold of property as well as people; as if the diamonds and jewels of the arrested persons were suspected as well as themselves. To prevent the restoration of this property, the massacres of September were concerted in the den of this committee of thieves and murderers; and it was here that sentence of death was passed on 8000 Frenchmen; most of whom were held in confinement without any lawful reason, and without the shadow of crime.

In a chapter entitled, Bailly, and some other portraits, one of our ministers is exhibited, who is termed Renard.—A chapter is also devoted to the British cabinet. Here, while he bitterly complains of the hatred of Britain towards France, the author endeavours to excite the detestation of the French towards us. He calls on them to enlarge their navy; he recommends war, eternal war, against the English; and he wishes that it were possible for his countrymen to metamorphose their forests into a bridge, that could carry them to the very foot of the Tower of London; which, he thinks, is the only place where, for the dignity and interest of France, a peace ought to be signed.' We shall be disappointed if our readers do not smile at this specimen of French extravagance.

We pass from politics to what is said of Philosophisme.

The amalgam of the doctrines of Rousseau, Voltaire, Helveties, Boulanger, and Diderot, has formed a kind of paste (pardon the expression) which ordinary minds cannot digest, and which proves prejudicial to them. When they find that old principles are ridiculed, they soon deny and abandon them. Nor do they stop here. They substitute the system of atheism and licentiousness in the room of philosophical ideas. Philosophism owes its origin to these books, badly read and badly comprehended; for it is difficult to make certain truths to be rightly understood by those who are not disposed to receive them. Some contagious emanations spring from these modern doctrines. Collot-d'Herbois, Billaud-de-Varennes, Lequinio, Bubauf, Antonelle, thought themselves philosophers. Ignorance engenders barbarism: but half knowlege makes things still worse; it gives circulation to a croud of errors through the veins of the body politic; it occasions, in the name of humanity, all sorts of evils to humanity.

We repeat it; if the shades of these great men could arise from their tombs,-on seeing such interpreters they would exclaim, To what end have we written if we have such commentators?

How was I overwhelmed with astonishment at hearing the Parisians justify all these errors of the imagination, by pretended passages horribly disfigured! This new fanaticism, which the

successors

successors of Babauf would re-kindle, dug the bed of the river of blood which has traversed the French revolution; and it is this that has made me look on Voltaire and Helvetius with a different eye from that with which, till now, I had been accustomed to consider them.'

The Clergy, as well as the philosophers, have a chapter devoted to their service; and those who are acquainted with MERCIER'S former writings will not require to be informed in what manner they are treated. He prefers the policy of the antients, in not making the sacerdotal function an isolated one, to the moda generally prevailing among the moderns; and he tells us that their apprehensions from the catholic religion, the remembrance of the evils which it has occasioned, its intolerance, the mad rage of its priests, and their secret masses, in which they caballed against the republican government, determined them on decreeing that all religious worship should be free; or, in other words, that the state would not distinguish any particular form of worship with peculiar countenance and protection.'

In one respect, the author has lived to see what he has depicted in his dream, in the chapter du Temple, viz. the public worship of God on the principles of pure theism: but this is the practice of a small sect, and not the culte adopted by the French nation. However, as may be supposed, the Theophilanthropists are honoured with particular notice, and their principles are displayed. The text of their Gospel,' we are told, firmament of Heaven.' He thus speaks of this sect:

is the

Everlasting thanks be given to philosophy! Reason has triumphed! Superstition, credulity, and all the mummeries of priesthood, are replaced by natural religion.

Its persuasive voice begins to penetrate every heart. This pacific religion, of which we nourish already the seeds within us, will, ere long, become the only predominant one. It is practised and taught by the Theophilanthropists.

· The true friends of men are the true friends of God. Plain in their doctrine, as the apostles of Christ, they are humble like them. Like them, the Theophilanthropists are enemies to all pomp and grandeur; they can only inspire confidence in steady minds, obtain general approbation, and lead on their proselytes.

Their worship is without any ostentation, and founded on the belief of the Supreme. Being, on the dogma of the immortality of the soul, on universal love, on the reverence due to age, on the natural affection towards parents, and on benevolence.

This worship is established without any theological disputes, without boasting, and without effusion of blood; for the Theophilanthropists do not compel any one to believe. They inculcate lessons of wisdom in the heart of children; they persuade women to cherish their husbands; they teach men to love one another, and to do the good which they wish to be done to themselves. They teach them to consider death as the beginning of immortality, and to look with respect and gratitude to the defenders of their country.'

Rr 2

[ocr errors]

1

It does not appear from the chapter entitled C'est le Diable, c. that either the taste or the morals of the French, in the New Paris, are superior to those of the Old. We are happy, however, on finding in a subsequent chapter that an amelioration has taken place in the Hotel-Dieu; and that, now, every patient has a bed to himself: the consequence of which is that not more die than two in six days; whereas, before the revolution, the mortality of this hospital on an average was 13 in a day.

By a national lottery, which the author has re-established, the Foundling Hospital is furnished with milk, the sick are Yupplied with broth, and the wounded with lint.

Respecting the Loi du Divorce, we have in the 6th vol. the following information:

This law was planned in 1790, in the dismal pamphlets of the Duke of Orléans; that prince who was revolutionary only from selfishness, and whose wife was virtuous. This law passed on the 20th September 1792, in the sitting at night, without discussion; the votes being given only by remaining seated or by getting up. It caused general grief through all France; it shocked foreigners, who do not cease to reproach us with it; and every friend of order and decorum perceived that it opened the gates to libertinism and to depraved manners, already too common with us.

It became still worse, after the convention had decreed some additional articles to the law of divorce, on the 8 Nivose and 4 Floréal of the 2d year.

[ocr errors]

By these laws, an absence of only six months sufficed to obtain a divorce; and one of the parties was allowed immediately to contract another marriage. The consequence has been that no women were divorced but the wives of the defenders of the country, and of those whose places under government required their absence from home.— The legislators Oudot and Pons-de-Verdun had even announced a new plan, which would render divorce still more easily obtained: but their love for divorces was soon abated and censured.'

In a work abounding with such a variety of matter, it is difficult to know where to stop: but necessity dictates brevity: we must therefore satisfy ourselves with making one more extract, which relates to the unfortunate Louis XVI. It is in the chapter entitled Bréviaire.

Louis, during his detention in the Temple, did nothing but eat, drink, sleep, and say his bréviaire (prayers). We should have thought him the most stoical of all philosophers, had we not known that he was become very religious; it is true that he had adopted a great many theological ideas, and that he was the only one of his court who had these ideas. Clery, his valet, whom I met in the prison La Force, told me many particulars: he said that the king saw without emotion all his things taken from him, even his knife: but that he was very much hurt at his shovel being removed from the fire side, and manifested considerable vexation at it.

• During

« ForrigeFortsæt »