Pause thee awhile, thou chaste-eyed maid serene, Till Granta's sons, from all her sacred bow'rs, With grateful hand shall weave Pierian flow'rs, To twine a fragrant chaplet round thy brow, Enchanting ministress of virtuous wo! [North American. ODE TO COLUMBIA. By a Camerian Indian. Though in distant lands we sigh, The price of The Port Folio is Six Dollars per annum, to be paid in advance. CARLOS. Printed and Published, for the Editor, by SMITH & MAXWELL, NO. 28, NORTH SECOND-STREET. (NEW SERIES) BY OLIVER OLDSCHOOL, ESQ. Various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change and pleased with novelty, may be indulged-Cowpe Vol. VI. Philadelphia, Saturday, August 20, 1808. No. 8. ORIGINAL PAPERS. For The Port Folio. TRAVELS. LETTERS FROM GENEVA AND FRANCE. Written during a residence of between two and three years in different parts of those countries, and addressed to a lady in Virginia. (Continued from page 84.) My Dear E. THE life we have led here during the summer has been rather a happy than a gay one; we have had company now and then, we have made several excursions into the neighbouring country. Your uncle surprized us very agreeably with a visit; and have come regularly once a week to pass a day with us. N. has been attended by the same masters as in town, and another sister has added herself to our society: but before I say anything to you of our excursions, I must carry you back to Geneva, and bring you ac quainted with some of the persons whom I saw there last winter. It is, perhaps, the principal advantage arising from a residence in large towns, that we are able to intermix in society with those from whose conversation we derive amusement or instruction, in a sort of momentary acquaintance-it is agreeable to find ourselves in the same circle with a person who has lately navigated the Euxine, or who is just from Moscow, or who has served in Egypt, or who has. distinguished himself in the literary world, or by some useful improvement in the arts, and to return home late in the evening, as from a play, where we have seen a number of interesting characters taken from life, and well represented: it is agreeable also to compare the countenance and appearance of those who have acted a part in the great political theatre of the world, with the opinion we had conceived of them from their actions and general conduct-to see in office had not been able to pres serve in time of peace, and that he could announce to the King, and to the nation, that the ordinary revenues of the state exceeded the ordinary expensesby the sum of 10,002000 livres, which would have paid the interest of a loan of 200,000000: some denied his assertions, others attacked his conduct on the score of vanity and indiscretion, and such numbers assailed him, in different ways, that unmindful of that inestimable consciousness of having done well, which he may be so easily supposed to have possessed, inattentive to the high and important duties of his station, he pertinaciously sisted upon what the King had been previously prevailed upon to believe, could not with propriety be granted, and threw up his place -an event which he must ever after have sincerely regretted, for, he must have since been sensible, the face of one who has ridden in the great whirlwind, and directed, for a time, the storm. I confess to you, that in writing the last sentence, I had principally in my mind, the celebrated Mr. Necker, who had, for two or three years past, resided in Geneva, during the winter, and whose acquaintance I was, in s some measure, able to cultivate. Mr. Necker was the son of respectable parents, who, by giving him a good education, and early habits of industry, gave him what was better than fortune. His established reputation as a man of talents, his great success as a banker, his good name and extensive credit recommended him to the notice of the French government, as likely to assist in restoring some order to their mi serably mismanaged finances, ('76). The effect of his first operations, in simplifying, and consequently rendering less expensive, the collection of the publick revenue, soon evident, and universall was that it contributed, more than any ap other circumstance, to bring about those evils, under which the monarchy was finally overwhelmed. In addition to those enemies, whom every man of merit in place unavoidably creates, at court, the grave and silent demeanour of Mr. Necker, his unattractive civility, his strongly manifested determination of depending upon himself alone, created others, and his very disinterestedness, in not accepting the emoluments of his office, was displeasing. I can very well imagine that he felt himself rich enough to overlook the advantage of three or four thousands a-year, added to his income, and that he gratified an honourable pride in serving the publick without pay: but his appointments, which were but a trifle to the means of the nation, might have been made subservient to some purpose of publick utility, or plauded; but when he had prevailed upon the King to suspend to the end of every year, the distribution of pecuniary gratifications, without binding himself in the interval by any promise, and had destroyed a labyrinth of abuses, all arising, in the first instance, from the good nature of the unfortunate monarch, who knew not how to reject or to refuse his merit, was soon attacked, and his sonduct vilified by a whole host of foes, among whom were some of the most exalted personages of the kingdom: it was in vain that he had found funds for carrying on the e war occasioned by the independence of America, without the imposition of new taxes; that he had found means to establish, at the most difficult of all periods, at eredit which his predecessours SUC adn Ress pe C pr SO for ble private charity, and he ought to have avoided driving those who surrounded him to any mortifying comparisons. After three years of privacy and retirement, he again attracted the attention of the publick, by defending his former exposition of the finances, which had lately been attacked, and having given the government some pretext to affect displeasure, from the nature of his arguments, or the expressions he made use of, he was ordered to quit the kingdom. You may now turn to Johnson's noble imitation of Juvenal's tenth Satire, and will agree with me, that it would have been better, perhaps, for Mr. Necker himself, for his family, for his fame and fortune, for France, and for all Europe, had he never returned to court. I say perhaps, meaning, in the full force of the word, to acknowledge my incompetency to judge, and mindful of that sort of predestination, according to which the great and important affairs of the world move along, as the heavenly bodies do in their orbits. M. de Calonne, who was a man of genius, is to be distinguished from the general censure passed upon those ministers, who rapidly succeeded Mr. Necker, but their administration of the finances exhibited, but too generally, a succession of weak measures and rashexpedients: the exile of the parliament of Paris, at the same time, the imprisonment of several respectable and popular individuals, the establishment of the Cour PleThe nière, by which the last appear ance of anything like independence, in any branch of the government, was destroyed, were all so to many steps towards that general confusion which all men looked forward to, some with dread, some with indifference, but the greater ed act the ng as ne to to ed P number with exultation: the finances of the kingdom, meanwhile, were extremely embarrassed, pub lick credit was at an end, the laws were without effect, the police without energy, and the army in a state of dangerously relaxed discipline; the wrath of heaven indeed seemed poured forth upon this wretched country; for, in addition to all the evils I have mentioned, the harvests, to a great extent about Paris, had been destroyed; they were much less favourable than usual, over the whole kingdom, and bread had risen to an enormous price: rumours too, of political changes, to be effected by the promised assembling of the States General, had gone abroad, ideas of liberty, derived from England and America, were every day becoming more and more familiar to the publick mind, people of all ranks and degrees of information were dissatisfied, and symptoms, which may be compared to those hollow sounds, and to that lowering sky, which precede an earthquake in the W. Indies were every-whereapparent: no expedient now offered itself to the King and those about him but the recall of Mr. Necker, whose presence did indeed operate wonders-this must have been a proud moment of his life: the courts of justice soon reassumed their customary authority, the police its vigilance, and the army its former habits of discipline and good order, whilst provisions flowed in from all parts of the world. What was as singular too as any other circumstance, and upon which indeed all depended, was, that the treasury seemed replenished, as if by miracle, and the obligations of the government were fulfilled with honour and punctuality. But still the King had given his word, the nation was not to be tri as it could be by our being too remote from a particular object. fled with: the assembling of the States General seemed inevitable, and it was necessary they should be preceded by an assembly of the notables. You will see an account of all that followed in any history of the revolution, and how the noblesse and the parliaments seemed to provoke their fate. It is to be presumed that Mr. Necker could not have prevented the meeting of the States General; but he might have prevented their being convened at Paris; from that circumstance, and from the still more fatal oversight of permitting galleries to be erected for the accommodation of the publick, who were allowed to be present, at the debates, and to express their opinion by marks of applause or disapprobation, flowed the greater part of those evils, which afterwards ensued. Of the double representation of the tiers état, he was, undoubtedly, not the authour, but he too readily consented, that the individuals of the three orders should vote, as members of one General Assembly, and he was, unquestionably wrong, in not appearing at the Royal Sessions, because the King had differed from him, and, I believe, very properly in opinion. Neck res Either Mr. Necker drew down ruin upon France, by giving into dangerous experiments in matters of government, and drawing the attention of the nation to subjects which they were every way unfit to reason about and decide upon, or he was hurried along, as he expresses it, toward a precipice, which was not to be avoided, by a force, which was not to be resisted. It was a misfortune, perhaps, that his mind had been confirmed in its tendency to literary pursuits, by the success of a first attempt; he thought too much, it seems by the event, of his powers of persuasion, and supposed that he could regulate the tumultuous passions of a whole people, by a pathetick, eloquent address, and tim splendid arguments: he mistook m the applauses of the mob, the mad enthusiasm of a wrongheaded d frivolous nation, worked upon by th designing men, for the effusions th of honest patriotism, for the proofs of a virtuous affection to his per- ha son, a high sense of s past servi ces, and of his means to save them un from the brink of ruin. He had o forgotten, no doubt, what he himself relates of their conduct at the tre funeral of Colbert. Perhaps, how- fu ever, no man, no philosopher of dich ancient or modern times, could have resisted the pressing invitations which he received from all parties, to reassume the conduct of publick affairs; from the King, & from the National Assembly, and se from the people at large: and yet, how short-lived were his influence and popularity! It was to no purpose that he interposed in behalf of the Clergy, now about to be stript of their property, or in favour of those just prerogatives of the crown, which are essentially Fortune now once more afforded him an honourable opportunity of retiring from the arduous station he had filled, but he again refused to avail himself of it, and accepted the first invitation to return, after having been banished. the kingdom. I must not convert a letter into what would be, at best, but a very imperfect and inaccurate history of the Revolution, and posterity, after all, can alone decide on the nature of certain events: vision is at times as much obstructed by our being too near, deg rese Teas MOV ead erec Berc |