the princes, the nobility, the priesthood, and the great judicial ariftocracy. He adjures one body by its dignity degraded, another by its inheritance plundered, and a third by its authority destroyed, to repair to the holy banner of his philanthropic crufade. Confident in the protection of all the monarchs of Europe, whom he alarms for the fecurity of their thrones, and having infured the moderation of a fanatical rabble, by giving out among them the favage war-whoop of atheism, he already fancies himself in full march to Paris, not to re-inftate the depofed defpotifm (for he dif claims the purpose, and who would not trust fuch virtuous difavowals!!) but at the head of this army of priests, mercenaries and fanatics, to dictate, as the tutelar genius of France, the establishment of a just and temperate freedom, obtained without commotion and without carnage, and equally hoftile to the interested ambition of demagogues and the lawlefs authority of kings.

Crufades

Crufades were an effervescence of chivalry, and the modern St. Francis has a knight for the conduct of these crufaders, who will convince Mr. Burke, that the age of chivalry is not paft, nor the glory of Europe gone for ever. The Comte d'Artois*, that scyon worthy of Henry the Great, the rival of the Bayards and Sidneys, the new model of French Knighthood, is to iffue from Turin with ten thousand cavaliers, to deliver the peerlefs and immaculate Antonietta of Austria from the durance vile in which she has fo long been immured in the Thuilleries, from the fwords of the discourteous knights of Paris, and the fpells of the fable wizards of democracy.

* Ce digne rejeton du grand Henri-Calonne, p. 413. Un nouveau modèle de la Chevalerie Françoife. Ibid. p. 114.

VINDICIA GALLICE.

&c. &c.

SECTION I.

The General Expediency and Neceffity of a Revolution in France.

T is afferted in many paffages * of Mr.

IT

Burke's work, though no where with that precision which the importance of the afsertion demanded, that the French Revolution was not only in its parts reprehenfible, but in the whole was abfurd, inexpedient, and unjuft; yet he has no where exactly informed us what he understands by the term. The French Revolution, in its most popular fenfe, perhaps would be understood in England to

*Page 187, 200, 243, and many other paffages.

confift

confift of thofe fplendid events that formed the prominent portion of its exterior, the Parifian revolt, the capture of the Bastile, and the fubmiffion of the King. But these memorable events, though they strengthened and accelerated, could not constitute a Political Revolution. It must have been a change of Government, but even limited to that meaning, it is equivocal and wide.

It is capable of three fenfes. The King's recognition of the rights of the States General to a share in the legiflation, was a change. in the actual government of France, where the whole legiflative and executive power had, without the fhadow of interruption, for nearly two centuries been enjoyed by the Crown; in that sense the meeting of the States-General was the Revolution, and the 5th of May was its æra. The union of the three Orders in one affembly was a most important change in the forms and fpirit of the legiflature. This

too