"for the office of supreme regulators; and an equal number of Jacobin societies."

In these wild and chaotic distributions of the sovereign authority among so many politic bodies, they saw the path to individual tyranny obstructed by as many insurmountable impediments; and therefore, under their third constitution, they fixed the sovereign power in five dictators, or, as they modestly styled them, five directors. But of the mischiefs of even this their third code, the same author seems fully apprized, where he says, "I still see in it the "same great and terrible problem of the first

magistracy of the state rendered defective " and temporary, and divided among the will "of five directors. Have your legislators made " a new discovery, or have they pursued a chi"mera? will the inconveniences of your new "system be more or less serious, than those

they pretended to have avoided?" The experience of the wretched people of France must answer the question in the negative: for the same terrible despotism, the same atheistical polity, the same undistinguishing rapine, the same aversion to all thrones, governments, and social order; the same insecurity of property, of person, and of life; the same arbitrary and impudent design of fraternizing the whole world by force, and of throwing it into anarchy, have equally manifested themselves under the present, as under the former, monstrous constitution of the republic.

After what I have been saying, at some

length, in exposition and application of the text, lest any man should still be so blind as to doubt, whether the revolutionary power of France be the true and only prototype of the "beast ascending out of the bottomless pit,' I shall take a summary review of the operations and exploits of that colossal monster. It shall be summary, for I fear I have already trespassed upon the reader's patience in this argument. He will, however, so far anticipate the facts, as to conclude they must be the same, as necessarily flow from such a complicated, heterogeneous, wicked system. Indeed the tree has produced its natural fruit, in the highest perfection, and with abundant variety. It was planted in pride, avarice, ambition, impiety, and atheism; and has been followed by a successive train of blasphemy, treason, injustice, public rapine, proscriptions, attainders, insurrections, assissinations, and the most numerous and fearless murders; and all these enormities under the pretended sanction of law and justice. Moreover, to clear the way for, and render stable and permanent, this ultimatum of human depravity, the conspirators overturned the ancient monarchy of France, rebelled against, and murdered, their sovereign, his royal consort, and innocent son; and having established what they called a republic, it vomitted forth innumerable decrees more impious, unjust, and sanguinary, than ever stained the throne of the most despotic tyrant..

By those decrees all religion has been pro

scribed; and those great objects of the social union, property, liberty, and life, have utterly been confounded and sacrificed: and, alas! whole classes of men, the nobles, the regular clergy, and sects of religion, have been proscribed, or banished, or put to death. Nay, shocking to relate! ingenuity was even tortured in devising those means of death, which would destroy the greatest number of human beings in the shortest time. But these I need not dwell upon; they are too well known, and humanity shudders at the recollection of them.

Nor have the baleful influence and power immense, of the "beast of the bottomless pit," been confined to France. Let us contemplate the map of the world, and observe how great a part of it has already been affected by the poisonous principles issuing from this Pandemonium of error and of sin. If we take a view of America, we perceive the United States, the British government, and even Spain itself, the faithful ally of this terrific monster, obliged to arm for the purpose of suppressing the combinations of conspirators, sent to fraternise the new world. Turning to Europe, we see the greater part of Italy infested with the same principles, conquered, plundered, devastated; and a number of inferior political monsters besides, all receiving the law from it, and obedient to its terrific nod. We have seen that brave and hitherto unconquerable people the Swiss invaded, their cantons laid waste, and flowing with flood, under the iron

rod of French perfidy and incursions. The Netherlands have likewise been infected with its impious errors; subjected, starved, pillaged, and languishing under the galling yoke of its merciless oppression. With what undescribable violations of female chastity, rapine, havoc, and murder, has it not overwhelmed a great part of Germany? With what secrecy and fraud has it not stirred up that dangerous rebel Paswan Oglou in Turkey, against his rightful sovereign; and if from Asia we turn our view to Africa, that remote country, have we not seen an immense fleet and army secretly and perfidiously sent, contrary to the faith of treaties, and the most solemn recent assurance given to the Porte, in order to subjugate the inhabitants of the banks of the Nile, to more than Egyptian darkness, to atheistial despotism.

Nor is this "mystery of iniquity" bounded within any limits. It is, at the moment of writing this, working its revolutionary changes in Persia, and in the Indies, with avowed and manifest design to corrupt and desolate, if possible, the whole inhabited globe.

But let us not, while surveying the calamities of the world without, forget our own late critical state as a people*; a state in which we have been involved by the unprovoked and insidious machinations of France. Let us meditate upon it with that seriousness, that awful

*This was written soon after the mutiny of the grand fleet.

Ι

reverence, that unbounded gratitude to the great and omnipotent Ruler of the universe, who suffered us, as a just chastisement for our sins, to be driven to the precipice of national ruin; and afterwards most mercifully and critically delivered us, and mocked the attempts of the enemy.

BRITONS! if there be one man among ye who doubts these awful truths, contemplate the late unhappy situation of your fellow-subjects in Ireland, hundreds of thousands of whom, deluded and intoxicated by French doctrines and promises, were in open rebellion against the best of sovereigns and the mildest of governments; disdainful of subordination, and resolved upon all mischief. See them, from a peaceable people, perverted into clubs of associated banditti, laying waste their own fertile country by conflagrations, and every other cruel and criminal engine of self-destruction. See them incited, supported, and assisted, by the fleets and armies of the French republic; 'always remembering, that Ireland was the meditated passage for the enemy into our

own country.

BRITONS! I mean you who cherish the least love for your country, and its most excellent constitution, ask yourselves this awakening and important question: Have not too many amongst us been deeply tainted by French. atheism, and French fraternization? If we have not been so over-reached and corrupted, what mean those Jacobin papers, which daily