this part of the scheme, it is impossible to form a direct judgment upon it. However, if great care is not taken to form it in a spirit very different from that which has guided them in their proceedings relative to state offences, this tribunal, subservient to their inquisition, the committee of research, will extinguish the last sparks of liberty in France, and settle the most dreadful and arbitrary tyranny ever known in any nation. If they wish to give to this tribunal any appearance of liberty and justice, they must evoke them, or send to it, the causes relative to their own members, at their pleasure. They must also remove the seat of that tribunal out of the republick of Paris*.

Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution of your army than what is discoverable in your plan of judicature? The able arrangement of this part is the more difficult, and requires the greater skill and attention, not only as a great concern in itself, but as it is the third cementing principle in the new body of republicks, which you call the French nation. Truly it is not easy to divine what that army may become at last. You have voted a very large one, and on good appointments, at least fully equal to your apparent means of payment. But what is the principle of its dis

* For further elucidations upon the subject of all these judicatures, and of the committee of research, see M. de Calonne's work.

cipline?

cipline? or whom is it to obey? You have got the wolf by the ears, and I wish you joy of the happy position in which you have chosen to place yourselves, and in which you are well circumstanced for a free deliberation, relatively to that army, or to any thing else.

The minister and secretary of state for the war department is M. de la Tour du Pin. This gentleman, like his colleagues in administration, is a most zealous assertor of the revolution, and a sanguine admirer of the new constitution, which originated in that event. His statement of facts, relative to the military of France, is important, not only from his official and personal authority, but because it displays very clearly the actual condition of the army in France, and because it throws light on the principles upon which the assembly proceeds, in the administration of this critical object. It may enable us to form some judgment, how far it may be expedient in this country to imitate the martial policy of France.

M. de la Tour du Pin, on the fourth of last June, comes to give an account of the state of his department, as it exists under the auspices of the national assembly. No man knows it so well; no man can express it better. Addressing himself to the national assembly, he says, "His majesty has "this day sent me to apprise you of the multiplied "disorders of which every day he receives the

"most

"most distressing intelligence. The army (le corps militaire) threatens to fall into the most turbu"lent anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to "violate at once the respect due to the laws, to "the king, to the order established by your de crees, and to the oaths which they have taken "with the most awful solemnity. Compelled by

66

my duty to give you information of these excesses, my heart bleeds when I consider who they are that have committed them. Those, "against whom it is not in my power to with"hold the most grievous complaints, are a part of "that very soldiery which to this day have been. "so full of honour and loyalty, and with whom, "for fifty years, I have lived the comrade and the "friend.

"What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and "delusion has all at once led them astray? Whilst

you are indefatigable in establishing uniformity "in the empire, and moulding the whole into

one coherent and consistent body; whilst the "French are taught by you, at once the respect "which the laws owe to the rights of man, and "that which the citizens owe to the laws, the ad "ministration of the army presents nothing but "disturbance and confusion. I see in more than "one corps the bonds of discipline relaxed or "broken; the most unheard-of pretensions avow. "ed directly and without any disguise; the or"dinances

"dinances without force; the chiefs without au

«

thority; the military chest and the colours car"ried off; the authority of the king himself [ri

sum teneatis] proudly defied; the officers despised, degraded, threatened, driven away, and "some of them prisoners in the midst of their " corps, dragging on a precarious life in the bosom "of disgust and humiliation. To fill up the mea

sure of all these horrours, the commandants of "places have had their throats cut, under the eyes, "and almost in the arms of their own soldiers.

"These evils are great; but they are not the "worst consequences which may be produced by such military insurrections. Sooner or later they may menace the nation itself. The nature of things requires that the army should never act "but as an instrument. The moment, that erect"ing itself into a deliberate body, it shall act ac

cording to its own resolutions, the government "be it what it may, will immediately degenerate "into a military democracy; a species of political monster, which has always ended by devouring "those who have produced it.

"After all this, who must not be alarmed at "the irregular consultations, and turbulent com"mittees, formed in some regiments by the com"mon soldiers and non-commissioned officers, "without the knowledge, or even in contempt "of the authority of their superiours; although

"the

"the presence and concurrence of those superiours, could give no authority to such monstrous demo"cratick assemblies [comices]."

It is not necessary to add much to this finished picture: finished as far as its canvass admits; but, as I apprehend, not taking in the whole of the nature and complexity of the disorders of this military democracy, which, the minister at war truly and wisely observes, wherever it exists, must be the true constitution of the state, by whatever formal appellation it may pass. For, though he informs the assembly that the more considerable part of the army have not cast off their obedience, but are still attached to their duty, yet those travellers who have seen the corps whose conduct is the best, rather observe in them the absence of mutiny than the existence of discipline.

I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to reflect upon the expressions of surprise which this minister has let fall, relative to the excesses he relates. To him the departure of the troops from their ancient principles of loyalty and honour seems quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the causes of it but too well. They know the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees which they have passed, the practices which they have countenanced. The soldiers remember the 6th of October. They recollect the French guards. They have not forgot

the