Weather-beaten ships have been brought safe to port by the spirit and alertness of the crew. But it is here that we shall eminently fail. The day, that, by their consent, the seat of Regicide has its place among the thrones of Europe, there is no longer a motive for zeal in their favour; it will at best be cold, unimpassioned, dejected, melancholy duty. The glory will seem all on the other side. The friends of the Crown will appear not as champions, but as victims; discountenanced, mortified, lowered, defeated, they will fall into listlessness and indifference. They will leave things to take their course; enjoy the present hour, and submit to the common fate. Is it only an oppressive night-mare, with which we have been loaded? Is it then all a frightful dream, and are there no Regicides in the world? Have we not heard of that prodigy of a ruffian, who would not suffer his benignant Sovereign, with his hands tied behind him, and stripped for execution, to say one parting word to his deluded people;-of Santerre, who commanded the drums and trumpets to strike up to stifle his voice, and dragged him backward to the machine of murder? This nefarious villain (for a few days I may call him so) stands high in France, as in a republick of robbers and murderers he ought. What hinders this monster from being sent as ambassador to convey to his Majesty the first compliments of his brethren, VOL. IX. I brethren, the Regicide Directory? They have none that can represent them more properly. I anti cipate the day of his arrival. He will make hi publick entry into London on one of the pale horse of his brewery. As he knows that we are pleased with the Paris taste for the orders of Knighthood he will fling a bloody sash across his shoulders with the order of the Holy Guillotine, surmounting the Crown, appendant to the ribband. Thus adorned, he will proceed from Whitechapel to the further end of Pall-Mall, all the musick of London playing the Marseillois Hymn before him, and escorted by a chosen detachment of the Legion de l'Echaffaud. It were only to be wished, that no ill-fated loyalist for the imprudence of his zeal may stand in the pillory at Charing-Cross, under the statue of King Charles the First, at the time of this grand procession, lest some of the rotten eggs, which the Constitutional Society shall let fly at his indiscreet head, may hit the virtuous murderer of his King. They might soil the state dress, which the Ministers of so many crowned heads have admired, and in which Sir Clement Cotterel is to introduce him at St. James's. 66 "In the Costume assumed by the members of the legislative body, we almost behold the revival of the extinguished insignia "of Knighthood," &c. &c. See A View of the relative State of Great-Britain and France at the commencement of the year 1796. If Santerre cannot be spared from the constituional butcheries at home, Tallien may supply his lace, and, in point of figure, with advantage. He has been habituated to commissions; and he is as vell qualified as Santerre for this. Nero wished the Roman people had but one neck. The wish of he more exalted Tallien, when he sat in judgment, was, that his Sovereign had eighty-three heads, that he might send one to every one of the departments. Tallien will make an excellent figure at Guildhall, at the next Sheriff's feast. He may open the balk with my Lady Mayoress. But this will be after he has retired from the publick table, and gone into the private room for the enjoyment of more social' and unreserved conversation with the Ministers of State and the Judges of the Bench. There these Ministers and Magistrates will hear him entertain the worthy Aldermen with an instructing and pleasing narrative of the manner, in which he made the rich citizens of Bourdeaux squeak, and gently led them by the publick credit of the guillotine to disgorge their anti-revolutionary pelf. All this will be the display, and the town-talk, when our Regicide is on a visit of ceremony. At home nothing will equal the pomp and splendour of the Hotel de la Republique. There another scene of gaudy grandeur will be opened. When his Citizen Excellency keeps the festival, which every citizen is ordered to observe, for the glorious I 2 execution execution of Louis the Sixteenth, and renews his oath of detestation of Kings, a grand ball, of course, will be given on the occasion. Then what a hurly-burly; what a crowding ;--what a glare of a thousand flambeaus in the square;-what a clamour of footmen contending at the door;what a rattling of a thousand coaches of Duchesses, Countesses and Lady Marys, choking the way, and overturning each other, in a struggle, who should be first to pay her court to the Citoyenne, the spouse of the twenty-first husband, he the husband of the thirty-first wife, and to hail her in the rank of honourable matrons before the four days duration of marriage is expired!-Morals, as they were:-decorum, the great outguard of the sex, and the proud sentiment of honour, which makes virtue more respectable, where it is, and conceals human frailty, where virtue may not be, will be banished from this land of propriety, modesty, and reserve. We had before an Ambassador from the most Christian King. We shall have then one, perhaps two, as lately, from the most antichristian Republick. His chapel will be great and splendid; formed on the model of the Temple of Reason at Paris, while the famous ode of the infamous Chenier, will be sung, and a prostitute of the street adored as a goddess. We shall then have a French Ambassador without a suspicion of Popery. One 16 good good it will have: it will go some way in quieting The protestants the minds of that Synod of zealous Protestant Lay of land had Elders, who govern Ireland on the pacifick princi- some cause For alarm. ples of polemick theology, and who now, from dread Mtr Bunker but of the Pope, cannot take a cool bottle of claret, or enjoy an innocent parliamentary job, with any tolerable quiet. So far as to the French communication here: zeal for poperyll not permit him to any defect secary in that most abominable what will be the effect of our communication there? |
