which had disengaged the majority from its violence and tyranny: thus disembarrassed, he observed, they might reflect with calmness on the means of saving the expiring republic; that they had obstacles to conquer, but, in order to conquer, it was necessary to become acquainted with them. That before the establishment of constitutional government, peace was not made, he observed, might be easily conceived; a government which bore the name of Revolutionary then existed, which government being the domination of a few men, overthrown in their turn by others, presented no fixity of principles and views, no assured guarantee either for the state or for individuals. It would have seemed, continued he, that this guarantee and stability ought to have existed from the time of the establishment of the contitutional regimen; this estab. lishment, however, has not given more security, nay, perhaps even less than before. Previous to the 18th Fructidor of the fifth year the French government laboured under a precarious existence after this great event, the whole power having been concentred in the hands of the directory, the legislative body was almost a non-entity; the partial treaties of peace, which had been signed some time before, were soon broken, and war was carried into every quarter, without the consent or participation of the legislature. The same directory, after having affrighted the whole of Europe, and destroyed governments wantonly and capriciously, ignorant how to make either peace or war, ignorant. of the means of supporting its own power, was overthrown by a puff on the 30th Praireal, and gave place to other men, who might have different views, or be under the guidance of similar or opposite influence.

Judging, therefore, by known and evident facts, the French government must be considered as possessing nothing stable, either in its agents or its means.

After having laid down these first principles relative to the instability of the government, and the little consistence which it had both with respect to itself and to foreign powers, the reporter passed on to the inadequate guarantee which this government presented for individual happiness. He represented personal security violated every instant, property uncertain, private transactions, commerce, the useful arts, in a state of alarming stagnation, confidence annihilated, the people tormented in every mode, and their misery carried to such excess, that they dared scarcely complain, and that those who saw the causes of those evils feared either to make them known or point out the remedies. He next traced the imperfection and vices of the present social organisation.-The exercise of the sovereignty of the people, according to the mode in which it bad been administered, he represented, not only as without guarantee, but injurious to their rights. From the continued violations of this exercise either by the undue influence of government, or of factions anxious to convert its power to their own use, he passed on to the little harmony which had existed among the public functionaries, whose respective authorities were without any line of demarkation, without any legal and coercive means of hindering their mutual invasions on public liberty, or on the respective attributions which were particularly delegated to them by the constitutional charter. According to the reporter, though the line of demarkation should have been clearly traced out between the 2 G 4 legisla

legislative and executive powers, there was no visible restraint to hinder the legislative body from overpassing those limits, if such were its intentious. This body, possessing singly the right of interpreting the constitution, became the only competent judge between it self and the other powers, and had alone the right of arraigning them; the independence of the respective powers, therefore, was not reciprocal, or, at least, not strongly enough guaranteed. With respect to the government, there were no precise and fixed ideas of what constituted it if taken in the most extensive sense of the word as embracing both the legislative and executive powers, these two authorities, so far from marching together, were al most always in constant opposition, presenting the spectacle of two furious enemies, continually in action and seeking to crush each other. If a review were taken of tre immediate action of the executive power on the people, or an examination to be made of the administrative system, nothing appeared either fixed or regular. The administrators were continually in a state of mutation, according to the will or caprice of the alternately dominating party, and continually occupied, not about the good of the administered, but how to consolidate their triumph over that which had been overthrown. In short, added the reporter, on examining the public service, is there a single part which is organised, or which is carried on in a regular and invariable mode? On the contrary, every thing is in chaos, and all our efforts to extricate ourselves have ended in nothing, and never can end in any thing, except to plunge us deeper. It is astonishing, therefore, that neither public nor private li

berty has yet existed in France, that. all command and none obey, that nothing, in short, exists but the phantom of a government f such, then, be the essential causes of all our evils, what must we do in order to extricate ourselves? We must build a new political edifice, which shall be solid and regular.→→ The basis of the constitution, or the general principles, are good; they are the principles of every repub lican government, the sovereignty of the people, the unity of the republic, equality of rights, liberty, and the representative system; but the constitutional organisation, arranged on this basis, is essentially vicious, as experience has demonstra. ted. We must then attach ourselves to these fundamental principles, view the constitution only in them, and our obligations in their genuine preservation. But a wish to adhere to the technical part of the constitation would be favouring the dissolution of the political.

We must not shrink from holding forth this salutary truth, it is the national interest, and avowed by all enlightened and honest men; it is also in the conviction of the demagogues, who have so long tormented us. They feel, as well as ourselves, that the actual order of things can no longer exist; and the whole question between us and them is, to know whether the change shall be effected by thein, or by enlightened and virtuous men. They would willingly take advantage of the movement, and govern France as in 1793; whilst we are anxious for the establishment of a suitable liberty, of a plan of liberty allied with order and productive of happiness. We wish liberty for all, they only for themselves; we wish to nationalise the republic, they to place only their own party. They were anxious to

introduce

ing each of 25 members; the oath of inviolable fidelity to the sovereignty of the people, to the French republic one and indivisible, to equality, liberty, and the representative system, was taken by the consuls, after a speech from the president, in which, speaking in the name of posterity, he observ. ed, that if liberty was created in the Tennis-court of Versailles, it was consolidated in the Orangery of St. Cloud; the constituents of 1789 were the fathers of the revolution, but the legislators of the year 8 were the fathers and pacificators of the country."

Thus finished that memorable day of revolution, which, whatever be the opinions respecting the means by which it was effected, was yet received with general enthusiasm by all ranks, except that of the jacobin party. The rumours propagated at St. Cloud of a movement organised in the Fauxbourgs had been purely imaginary; the most profound tranquillity reigned throughout the capital, mingled with much anxiety, lest the measures, of which nothing was known but the intention of overthrowing the jacobins, might fail in the execution. Independent of the military dispositions which had been taken, civil means for the, preservation of the peace of the city were not neglected. The preceding evening the members of the twelve municipalities of Paris, composed for the most part of adherents to the violent party, had been suspended, and the central commissaries were put under the direction of the departmental administration, which, having been long before epurated, was in the secret of the revolution, and had issued during the day proclamations to tranquillise the minds of the citizens respecting the events that were about to take place. The

minister of police, who had been also sternly bent against his former jacobinical brethren and friends, and who was therefore best acquainted with their machinations, issued also notices, recommending the same confidence, and menacing the public disturbers. The dread of jacobinism had gained such firm possession of the public mind, that the contrary extreme was scarcely appre hended; no government indeed would have been found unwelcome, provided that of the jacobins was excluded. The friends of Bonaparte had however taken care to assure the public respecting the intentions of that general; and papers in the form of dialogues and essays were industriously spread, the tendency of which was to expose the folly and impracticability of any personal attempts on the part of the general against the rights and liberty of the people.

The three consuls entered upon their public functions the following day, at the palace of the Luxembourg. Among their first operations was that of a partial change in the ministry. The ministry of the interior, which since the revolution of the 30th Brumaire had been entrusted to Quinette, an honest ja cobin, but an ignorant administra tor, was imposed on Laplace, an eminent astronomer and atheist, and as unfitted for place as his predecessor; the war deparment, unworthyly filled by Dubois de Crance, was entrusted to general Berthier; and Lindet, the minister of finance, more an object of dislike from the nefariousness of his revolutionary principles than his revolutionary acts, though a member of the terrorist committee of public safety, was succeeded by Gaudin, an administrator in that line under the monarchical regimen; the secretarship to the consulate was re

moved from Lagarde, who had contrived to fill the post through each sacceeding directorial faction, to Maret, who had been employed in diplomatic commissions, and who was one of the commissaries for the negotiation at Lisle. The legislative commissions opened also their sittings at the same time. The first object which engaged their attention was the repeal of the law of the forced loan, and that known under the name of the law of hostages; the former of which had annihilated the little that remained of public credit, and the other kindled civil war, and excited all the discordant passions through the whole of France. Amongst the means of raising the former was that of putting a specdy stop to the latter. Nothing was more favourable to this end than the repeal of that law, which was Do sooner promulgated in the insurgent departments than those who had taken arms in their own defence against it immediately proposed a suspension, which was acceded to by general Hedonville; while those who were guided by motives more hostile to the republic continued their depredations, avowing, by proclamations, that their view was the establishment of the throne and the altar, and that directors and consuls were alike traitors and usurpers.

A revolution so important in the great planet of the French nation could not fail of having a consider able influence on its satellites, the surrounding republics. The Batavian, just delivered from Russian and English protection, was on the point of falling into the hands of the jacobin faction, which, at a former period, under the diplomatic sanction of Lacroix, had for a short time usurped the government. Presuming on the revolutionary disposi

tions of the French general Brane, and on the misunderstanding which had taken place between him and the Batavian directory, after the evacuation of the English and Russians, the jacobin party had taken measures for the overthrow of the present government, of the success, of which they seemed perfectly as sured. The measures pursued by the jacobins in France, previous to their political suspension by the directory, were re-acted at the Hague. The executive, legislative, and other constituted authorities, had gone through the same course of calumny and insult. The day for the explosion seems to have been fixed for the 15th of November, and emissaries had been sent to Paris, to prove to the French government the necessity and excellence of the projected revolution. The events of the 18th Brumaire, which routed the jacobin party in France, prognosticated nothing favourable to those of Holland, who little thought the catastrophe so near which discomfited all their present projects, and left them but little hopes for the future.

In the Ligurian republic the revolution of the 18th and 19th Bromaire was imitated very successfully (December 7). A corps of French troops it seems had co-operated in this measure. The council of sixty met at the usual hour, and formed themselves into a secret committee. The deputy Montebruno presented a project, similar to that of the 19th Brumaire, for the reform of the French government. This project differed however from that of the French, insomuch as the whole of the legislative, as well as the executive power, was entrusted to ten citizens, who were enjoined to present a plan of constitution as near as possible to that which should be adopted by the French. The Li