To this the British cabinet immediately assented, and a proclamation to that effect was issued on the 25th of the same month, Some days before, his Majesty's proclamation against seditious writings had appeared; and this measure, the author observes, has been held out by some writers as evincing an hostile disposition to France. He discusses the charge, therefore, at length; and he says that it had no relation to France, either in her exterior or interior relations, but that it was a mere act of national policy. It is alleged, he observes, that the period at which it was issued was very critical; and this is perfectly true, but the period was critical for England. Various political publications, not of cool rational inquiry, nor calculated to exercise the judgment of the learned, but to inflame the passions of the illiterate, had been circulated with surprizing assi duity through Great Britain. The general object of them was to make the people elate with the notion of their imaginary rights, and wholly forget their real and most sacred duties; to persuade them that all kings were tyrants and all subjects slaves; that the evils which, while men are men, no human institution can prevent, were merely the effect of the government of the country; and that, this being once destroyed, all men would rise to wealth, to power, and to honor. To disseminate these doctrines, numerous societies were formed and correspondencies established in every part of the kingdom. Lastly,' says Mr. Marsh, one of these societies opened, by its own avowal, a correspondence with the Jacobin club in Paris, whose grand object was the destruction of monarchial government of every description, in which it succeeded in its own country, within ten weeks after the period in question. If these avowed excesses had been any longer treated with indulgence, the revolution which soon after deprived the King of France of his throne, would in all probability have extended itself to Great Britain.' Under these circumstances, the proclamation in question appeared; and the author adds that, whatever misrepresentations of its tendency may have been made in this country, the French government did not consider it as hostile to them; since, on the 18th of June, nearly a month after its appearance, the National Assembly formally thanked his Britannic Majesty for his friendly dispositions, and his sentiments of humanity, justice, and peace; and when Lord Gower, after the king was dethroned, quitted Paris, Le Brun, in the name of the Executive Council, sent him a note; in which, in their name also, he conveyed to him "the hopes of the French nation that the British cabinet would not depart, at that critical moment, from that justice, that moderation, and that impartiality, impartiality, which it had displayed till that time." (Moniteur 26 August 1792.) The author next considers the answer of the British Cabinet to Chauvelin's note on the 18th June, requesting the mediation of Great Britain between France and the two continental powers then at war with her. He asserts that our engaging in the negotiation, by mere words, must have been ineffectual; and that our engaging in it beyond mere words would have been to make ourselves a party to the quarrel. Thus far he argues on the supposition that the government of France really wished for the re-establishment of peace: but this, he assures us, was very far from their thoughts. They had, he says, such a thirst after hostilities, and they so frequently expressed it in their public speeches and writings, that, if any man should take the pains to collect the scattered expressions on the subject from the Moniteur, they would fill a volume. In this wish for war, the author makes all parties agree, except only the sincere royalists. Isnard informed his countrymen that " a war was necessary to complete the revolution;" Louvet told them, that "all genuine republicans wished for war, because peace was death to the republic; that they invited war to them, aspiring to the solid glory, to the immortal honor of destroying royalty and destroying it for ever; first in France, then in every part of the universe; "-and Brissot calls on them " to set fire to the four corners of Europe, for on that depended their salvation." In this part of his work, the author produces several important documents, to shew that, though in 1791 a coalition had been formed against France, yet in April 1792, when France declared war against Austria, the chief instigators of the coalition of 1791 were dead, and the views both of their successors and of the surviving powers were pacific. He quotes a remarkable letter from Delassart to Necker, in which the writer acknowleged that " the French provoked the war, and forced all Europe to rise against them." The re-call of the British ambassador from Paris is next considered. On the deposition and imprisonment of the king, the British Ambassador's credentials, ceased to be valid; and his farther residence at Paris was improper and unsafe.. He left it with solemn declarations that it was not the intention of the British government to interfere with the internal affairs of France; and the government of France was so well satisfied of its being the intention of England not to quarrel, that Le Brun, in his report on the situation of France, in respect to the different powers of Europe, delivered to the Assembly on the 23d August, assured them, " that the British Ambassador had left with them a satisfactory declaration of the determination of the 1 the court to observe a strict neutrality." Mr. Marsh remarks that, by the desire of our court, the secretary of the English legation remained at Paris till the murder of two British subjects, under the pretext of their being aristocrats, and the butcheries of the 2d September, excited apprehensions for his personal safety. The author next calls our attention to the French conquests in Germany, the Netherlands, and Savoy; and to the great increase of their naval forces, and their immense preparations by land. He supposes that their gigantic plans of subjugation and aggrandizement, and their means of carrying them into execution, were unequivocally announced by the famous decree of the 19th Nov. 1792; by which the National Assembly proclaimed, "that France was ready to assist every nation that was willing to recover its liberty." This invitation to rebellion was but too well obeyed. Deputies from British societies were admitted to the bar of the French National Convention, to signify their intention of overturning the actual government of the country, and establishing a republic, by forming a national convention. According to the author's account, they met with the greatest encouragement. Mr. Marsh next comments on the official communications which passed between Great Britain and Holland, in consequence of the progress of the French arms in the Austrian Netherlands. This leads him to the consideration of the four important bills, on which those, who accuse Great Britain of being the aggressors in the war, found a considerable part of their argument; - the alien bill, the assignat bill, and the bilis prohibiting the exportation of arms and corn from Great Britain to France. All these, he tells us, were matters of national police, which every nation is intitled to regulate. At all events, the French could not with justice complain of the alien bill, because, on the 18th of May, they passed a stronger decree of the same nature, and were very rigorous in their execution of it: they could not complain of the bill prohibiting the exportation of arms, because, 13 months before, they had issued a similar prohibition; nor of the bill prohibiting the exportation of corn, because they had already adopted a similar measure; having, during the whole of the year 1792, suffered no wheat of French growth to be exported from France. The bill passed in England against the exportation of corn was the more necessary, in our author's opinion, since (according to him) the French had, for some time previously to it, bought up the corn in England, even at a higher price than it fetched in France; in order to occasion a scarcity of it, to excite in consequence a general discontent, and thus to give rise to the desired desired insurrection. He asserts that no one can doubt that the assignat-bill was a necessary measure, since the French assignats were considered by them as fit instruments for ruining the Bank of England, according to Chaussard's own confession. They were also applied to the purpose of draining Great Britain of bullion, as well as coin; and so rapidly did they effect this object, that, in the year 1792, not less than the enormous quantity of 2,909,000 ounces of silver were purchased with assignats and sent into France. He then produces passages from their best writers; in which they confess explicitly that, long after those bills had passed, a war between Great Britain and France might have been avoided, had it been the will of either the Convention or the Executive Council. He cites several passages to this effect, from Dumouriez, Brissot, and Carras; and he particularly observes that Kersaint, a leading man in the National Convention, and an avowed promoter of the war with England, made a long speech on the 1st January 1793, in which he entered into a very minute examination of the views and interests both of the ministerial and the opposition party in England, and thence deduced the following conclusion, "Pitt ne veut donc pas la guerre: Pitt therefore does not wish for war:"-but, (incredible as it may appear,) the inference which he draws from that conclusion, is, "C'est sur la ruine de la Tour de Londres que vous devez signer avec le peuple Anglais detrompé, le traité qui reglera les destins des nations: It is on the ruins of the Tower of London that, with the undeceived people of England, you should sign the treaty which is to regulate the destiny of nations." Thus, says Mr. Marsh, ⚫ the pacific views of the British cabinet, and the hostile views of the French government, were acknowleged without reserve at one and the same time.' We now come to the last and perhaps the most important chapter of the first volume. It begins with the decree of the 15th December 1792, prefaced by the following introduction: "The National Convention, faithful to the principles of the sovereignty of the people, which does not permit them to acknowlege any institution that militates against it, decrees as follows."-Mr. Marsh mentions and comments on the principal articles. The 11th of them he thus translates : "The French nation declares that it will treat as an enemy that people, which, refusing or renouncing liberty and equality, should chuse to preserve, or recall, or treat with its princes and privileged orders." This Mr. M. calls a formal declaration of war against every nation which did not chuse to change its political constitution; and he says that it was fully explained by the commentary which the Executive Council annexed to it, in 14 order : a order to give to it a greater degree of energy. "It is evident," says the commentary, "that a people so enamoured of its chains, and so obstinately attached to its state of brutishness, as to refuse the restoration of its rights, is the accomplice, not only of its own despots, but even of all the crowned usurpers who divide the domain of the earth and of men; that such a servile people is the declared enemy, not only of the French republic, but even of all other nations; and therefore that the distinction, which we have so justly established between government and people, ought not to be observed in favor of people of this description: in short, that the right of natural defence, the duty of insuring the preservation of our liberty, and the success of our arms, the general interest of restoring peace to Europe, which it cannot obtain but by the annihilation of the despots and their satellites, all conspire in inducing us to treat such a people according to the rigour of war and of conquest." Is not this,' says Mr. Marsh, a manifest declaration, that the rulers of France were resolved not to lay down their arms till all the governments of Europe were gradually overturned? And have they not acted to the present hour conformably to their resolution?" That, in all these measures, the National Convention had its eye particularly fixed on Great Britain and Holland, is too obvious, says our author, to need a proof: 'but,' he continues, should any one be really disposed to entertain a doubt on this subject, the following passage in the opinion delivered and published by Chaussard on the decree in question will probably remove it. "Without doubt it was the interest of France to conquer the commerce of the Belgic provinces, swayed and neutralized by that of HolIand: thence to alarm and menace the United Provinces, to plant our assignats in their very counting houses, there to ruin the Bank of England, and in short to complete the revolution of the money system. It was of consequence to France, to engross as it were the vast workhouses of trade, these manufactures tures of national prosperity." : The author concludes this chapter by the following note: • The important and decisive facts recorded in this chapter, which place the sentiments and conduct of the French government in the clearest point of view, are wholly omitted by a celebrated opposition writer, whose pamphlet in the year 1797 met with a very unusual sale. The same pamphlet contains likewise not a syllable of what has been related in the latter part of the seventh chapter, where the hostile views of the republican rulers of France have been proved from their own declarations: nor does it take notice of the conduct of the National Convention on the 28th of November, with many other acts recorded in the 10th chapter, which shew a decided resolution to overturn the British government and constitution. In like manner the facts |