gurian directory obeyed the decree without hesitation; but the reception which the news met with at Paris was ill calculated to give the reformers any satisfactory ideas of the stability of the revolution which they had just effected, so far as their power reposed on the approbation of the French government. CHAP. XVII. Effects of the Revolution of the 18th Brumaire on the different Classes in France. Impolitic and arbitrary decree of the Consuls. Repeal of the Decree. Tyranny of the former Directory against the Priesthood. Propositions in the Council of Five Hundred for extending the Persecution. Petition of the Constitutional Bishops against the Propositions. Debate and Rejection of the Propositions. Decree of the Consuls respecting the intolerant Decrees of the Directory and restoring the Churches. Correspondence of the French Bishops and Greek Patriarchs with the Churches in the Islands of the Mediterranean. Tolerating Spirit of the Catbolic Bishops. Repeal of the Law of the 19th Fructidor, and Recall of Numbers banished at that Period. Change of Ministers. Arrival on the Continent of Negotiators from the United States. Hostile Speech of the President of the United States relative to France on the opening of the Congress. Change of Disposition in the President favourable to a Pacification. Breach between the French Republic and the Senate of Hamburgh. Decree of the French Government against Hamburgh. Correspondence between Bonaparte and the Senate. Decree to send out of the Republic the Emigrants shipwrecked at Calais. Funeral Honours rendered to the late Pope. Decree respecting the Maintenance of French Prisoners in England. Project of Constitution by Sieyes Rejected in Part by Bonaparte. Sketch of the Constitution. Address of the Consuls. Reflections on the Constitution. Struggle for Power between Bonaparte and Sieyes. Fatal Error of the latter. Nominations to the Conservatory Senate, Tribunate, Legislative Body, and Council of State. Installation of the Executive Government. Address of the Consuls to the Insurgents of the Western Departments. Respective Positions of the Austrian and French Army on the Eastern Frontier of Switzerland. Retreat of Su warrow to Augsburg. Respectable State of Defence of the Austrian Army. Advantages of the French in the Grisons. Situation of the little Cantons. Military Policy of the Austrian Government. Reinforcement of the Austrian Army in Italy. Position of the Austrian Army. Manœuvres of the respective Armies previous to the Investment of Coni. Battle of Gonola. De feat of the French. Retreat of the French from Coni and from Novi inte the Ligurian Republic. Surrender of Ancona. Defeat of the Austrian Army near Geneva. Siege and Surrender of Coni. Positions of the French and Austrian Armies in Italy on the Conclusion of the Campaign. Reflec tions on the Campaign and the Military Operations in Italy. HE revolution of the 18th France, except by the extremes of both parties, the terrorist jacobins and the terrorist royalists. In pro portion portion as these two factions felt the effect of the mutual wound given to their hopes, the convulsions of their last agonies increased. The Chouans, under the leaders of this description, grew more desparate in their attempts, and made incursions to within twenty leagues of Paris: the jacobins, in the south more particularly, had it not been for the energetic measures taken by the government, would have broken out into open rebellion: the moderate royalists at Paris, whose hopes are awak ened by every change, and who turn ed every instance, however adverse, in favour of the restoration of the monarchical regimen, were equally loud, though from different motives, with the republican party, in their approbation, which was carried to such a height, especially at the theatres, where the transactions of St. Cloud were brought on the scene, that the government thought it prudent to suppress this anti-jacobinical ardour. But while the executive power were thus anxious to give lessons of political toleration to others, it committed the inconceivable fault which formed one of the leading features of the tyranny of the Fructidorian directory. An arrêté of the consuls, eight days after the revolution, condenined 59 jacobins to banishment, 37 to Gui ́ana, and the rest to the neighbourhood of the Isle of Oleron, without any other motive than the power conferred on the consuls by an article in the law enacted at St. Cloud, which charged them specially with the re establishment of the public tranquillity. The dispositions of this arrêté were nearly the same as those of the 18th Fructidor. Arrests of the leading jacobins also took place. No sooner was the arrêté published than a general cry of indignation rose throughout Paris; not but the individuals consigned in this decree were for the most part monsters covered with crimes, and to whom France might justly attribute a great part of the horrors it had suffered and the dangers it had undergone, but because, where no legal sentence had convicted, the infliction of punishment was a manifest violation of liberty; and arbitrary power in the infancy of a government, let loose against even atrocious men, was no guarantee that political opinions less obnoxious might not find in it at some future day a fatal precedent. Whatever might have been the resentful dispositions of part of the members of government to carry it into rigorous execution, the public voice was too loud not to be instantly obeyed, and the decree of banishment was forthwith changed into an arrêté, placing the same individuals under the inspection of the minister of police, and was shortly after altogether repealed. That arbitrary act of the government was the more extraordinary, as one of the principal occupations of the legislative commissions was the repeal of those decrees of tyranny, of which the late directory had been so lavish. None had been the victims of those atrocious measures more than the priesthood; not only had the turbulent and refractory part of this order been the objects of direc torial inquisition, but also numbers of peaceable and even constitutional religious functionaries, who had the misfortune to fall under the displeasure of intolerant civil administrators in Paris and the departments. This tyranny had been more particularly exercised from the epocha of the infamous 18th of Fructidor, when the legislature pushed its complai sance so far as to extend the penal clauses enacted against certain de scriptions of priests, and generalise the the law into banishment of whoever of that order became public distur bers. The laws respecting priests were incoherent, and often contradictory, arising from the spirit of the successive parties which gained the ascendency at various epochas of the revolution. The violent exercise in the Low Countries of the power granted by the 28th article of the law of the 19th Fructidor to the directory, had formed specious and, in some cases, just causes for the insurrection which had taken place in those departments; but after this event, the council of five hundred deeming it expedient to settle the legislation on this point, named a commission, who gave in its report at the close of the same year, and proposed additional articles, compared with which the laws already enacted were charters of indulgence and mercy. Such, for instance, was the proposal for assimilating to the fate of emigrants, and consequently to the pain of death, priests liable to banishment; the perpetual imprisonment of such as were above sixty years of age; and the confiscation of the house where a priest liable to banishment should be concealed. Although these propositions no way concerned such ecclesiastics as had taken the requisite oaths, yet it was not without indignation that the priests of this class beheld the prevailing spirit of persecution which actuated the government, which, unless some interference took place, might go on, and at length comprehend such whose principles and conduct had been hitherto opposed to those who were now to become objects of legislative extermination. The bishops residing in Paris presented therefore a petition to the legislature, in which they represented that the law of the 19th Fructidor, enacted against nonjuring and refractory priests, had, by a false interpretation, been applied to dou bers who had fulfilled the conditions of every law, and given undoubted: proofs of attachment to the republic. After recapitulating the various sacrifices which they had made for lîberty and their country, and that they had been faithful to their engagement whilst the government had been in the habit of continually violating theirs, they inquired whether it was not sufficient that they had been left exposed to the insulis and outrages of the royalist party, without a possibility of escaping from those scourges, but they must behold themselves, under a republican regimen, exposed to the sword. of persecution, and find no other consolation at the close of each day than that of having made one step: further towards their tomb? They observed, that by the law of the 19th Fructidor they were virtually in a state of outlawry, since the name of public disturber might be applied to the most peaceable and innocent; that assassins and robbers were in a state of greater protection, since they had a right to be heard, but that a priest, however blameless his life, or patriotic his conduct, might be sent to banishment without knowing his ac cuser, and, according to the new pro positions, undergo the punishment of death, on the calumnious denuncias tion of an enemy, possibly a sworn enemy to the republic. They repre=" sented, that had this power been concentrated in the hands of the di. rectory alone, there might be some repose for innocence: but that this power was to be committed to central administrations:-already had this power been unlawfully exercised by the department of Yonne, where every priest, without distinction, was either banished, denounced, or oblig ed to seek safety in flight; adding, that there were few countries in the republic repablic where the same violence had not taken place, and where men, after having justly exclaimed against intolerance, were become the most fiery of persecutors. The language of this petition is a concise statement of the situation, till the 30th of Praireal, and the 18th of Brumaire, of the catholic church in France. The propositions of the ja cobinical commission, the reporter of which was Briot, were rejected some few weeks after by the council; but the directory did not the less continue to exercise, with unremitting severity, that power against the priests which was put in their hands. An arrêté of the consals not only put an end to this abominable proscription, but broke every decree of the directory that condemned such to punishment as had fulfilled the obligations imposed upon them by the laws, setting at liberty such as were imprisoned, and recalling from exile those who had undergone that terrible sentence. Such administrations as had been active in this persecution of the priests were inmediately broken; and the churches, which had been turned into places of municipal festivals, restored to their primitive uses. The state of persecution, under which the catholic church of France had laboured for two years past, had circumscribed its activity, and limited its exertions in propagating a more rational system of faith its correspondence contains little else than accounts of individual suffering, exhortations to constancy and patience, recommendations of mutual charity and forbearance, and proofs of adherence to the principles of free government. A public evidence of this attachment appeared in an address or pastoral letter written to the fan hful in the Venetian islands, which had been incorporated with the French republic. The Armenian patriarch, and those of Constantinople and Jerusalem, had sent circular letters to the Christians inhabiting those islands, filled with abject adulation of despotism; and one among them, enumerating, with more satisfaction than became a Christian teacher, the establishment of Mahometanism among the bene fits of Heaven, the counter address of the French bishops contained a short historical account of the church from the beginning of the revolu tion, of the necessity of reform, the correction of abuses, the calamities and persecutions to which it had been subject, and the steadfastness of the faithful. The bishops spoke of the national council which had been held at Paris, and of the regulations which had taken place; expressed their hopes that a new council would be assembled in the secu lar year 1800, and concluded with this summary belief; Submitting in every thing to the faith of the Apostolic, Catholic, and Roman Church, united to Pius VI., legîtimate successor of St. Peter, as to the centre of unity, and submitting to the laws of the French republic, with the grace of God, we shall continue to fulfil our duties as pastors and citizens; and such are, we trust, the dispositions which animate the clergy of your islands, after the example of those who are the chiefs." The intolerance of the government, as has been observed, prevented any considerable propagation of the tenets of this half-reforming church; a periodical work, partly historical, partly doctrinal, continued nevertheless to appear, and a few publications, among which, (a proof of the tolerant spirit of the church), was a translation of "The Bishop of Landaff's Apology, in Answer to Paine's Age of Reason." This last book, translated into French, was not not known in France, as much on account of the worn-out state of the matter, as the general contempt entertained for the the talents of the writer. The cause of Christianity was considered a cominon cause, and the zeal of these catholic bishops, in or dering a protestant answer to be translated to a work never read, though useless as to the object, was a proof of the progress of the spirit of toleration, and also of their own disinterestedness in the propagation of the common faith; as their hopes of earthly rewards were now for ever extinguished, fallen back, if not to the simple doctrines of their divine master, reduced at least for the greater part to his state of temporal poverty and suffering. The recall of such as had been banished in pursuance of the laws of the 19th Fructidor next engaged the attention of the government. Of those individuals, some, who were considered as deserving of the punishment decreed against them, had escaped that punishment by flight; others had been the dupes of the former; but several had left behind them examples of devotedness to liberty, which had rendered them the objects of the deepest sympathy and regret, and those who had pursued them of general execration. The legislative commissions, feeling the force of those sentiments, and wishing to distinguish between the needy adventurer, who had plied in every government where interest had led him, and the real friend of his country, enacted that every individual, condemned withont previous judg`ment by a legislative act, should be considered as an emigrant if he entered on the French territory, un-. less he were authorised by an express permission of government, who might subject him to such inspection as should be thought convenient. In pursuance of this law a consular decree was passed, which recalled the greater number of those individuals; among whom were Barthelemy, Carnot, Pastoret, Portalis, those who remained still at Guiana, those consigned still in the isle of Oleron, and such also as had not surrendered. Reflections of the most opposite nature arise on perusing this list; Liberty beholds with delight the return to their country of those who had adorned it by their genius, and honoured it with their courage; Eloquence and Rectitude will long weep over the urns of Tronçon, Du Coudray, and Murinais; and Political Toleration will make an invocation to Patience, in seeing by what strange fatality names of revered worth and honour associated with those of the polluted and execrable assassins of their country, Collot and Vadier. The journalists who had been victims of the law at the 19th Fructidor were likewise restored to their country. A further change took place in the ministry. That of foreign affairs, from the time of the resignation of Talleyrand, had been filled, and not unworthily, by Rheinart; but as the resignation of Talleyrand had been rather a compliance with the spirit of the times than an act of his will, he now re-assumed those functions, for which he seemed fitted, if not from his moral qualities, et least from his habits of simulation, and the subtleties of his diplomatic knowledge. During his retreat he had meditated with Sieyes the plan of reform, and had been an active promoter of the execution Rheinart was sent ensbassador to the Helvetic republic. The minister of marine, Bourdon, a man of ordinary talents, and unfitted in many re spects to hold a place of that import ance, was sent commissary to the port |