Various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change and pleased with novelty, may be indulged-Cowp. Vol. VI. Philadelphia, Saturday, July 9, 1808. For The Port Folio. TRAVELS. ORIGINAL PAPERS. THE long wished-for revolution was now established, a new order was to commence, and those days of virtue and happiness, which have never perhaps existed but in the fancy of poets, were to roll on in never-ceasing succession. The popular party however, or what shall I call them, the jacobin, mountaineer, or if you please, the diabolical faction, were afflicted at the return of anything which resembled government. They had proceeded to every sort of outrage and even to murder during the year of the temporary administration, and felt oppressed at the idea No. 2. of submitting even to those laws which had been made to suit their wishes, and which were administered by men after their own hearts. There arrived about this period from Paris, a Genevan, who though born of reputable parents, and well educated, and marked as yet by no disgraceful conduct, had catched from Robespierre the flame of democratick fury against everything that is respectable in society. It was no difficult matter for such a person to work upon the passions and prejudices of a set of wretches, already prepared for evil, to procure their concurrence in asserting, that there was a conspiracy of aristocrats ready to declare itself, and that the liberty of the people required prompt, vigorous and severe measures; unfortunately too they felt strong in the concurrence of opinion and in the promised support of the French minister, and knew that a body of troops would be marched to their C assistance at the first word: it was on the night of the eighteenth of July, seventeen hundred and ninety-four, that the attack was made; almost all the most respectable or opulent persons of the city, to the number of five or six hundred were torn from their families and confined in gaol; the next morning there appeared a proclamation, declaring the nation in insurrection, and investing with full powers a committee of seven persons-the first act of whose administration, was to erect a revolutionary tribunal for the trial of traitors; it was now no difficult matter for every one who had an offence to avenge, or a benefactor whom he was tired of seeing to get rid of, or a debt to pay, or who had felt humbled at the ease and opulence, and even the domestick happiness of a neighbour, to swell the list of the proscribed with such names as he thought proper to propose, and that time might be given for the exercise of all this petty vengeance, the citizens in insurrection were declared to be in the pay of the state, and a provision for their families was to be made from the funds of the proscribed: the members of the constitutional government meanwhile either timidly withdrew from the scene, or complained of violence, whilst they secretly encouraged these outrageous proceedings, and the minister of France who had been waited upon by a formal deputation, congratulated his brethren on the glorious effort by which they had re-assum ed their natural rights, and while he regretted that the hand of justice had been so long delayed, he assured them of the approbation of France, and promised them as far as it might be necessary, the assistance and concurrence of the great nation. Figure to yourself now, my dear a band of wretches seated on the bench of justice, in all the studied squalidness of jacobinism, amid bottles and glasses and pipes and pistols and drawn sabres, passing sentence upon their unhappy countrymen, beneath the shelter of that very roof, where the magistrates of the nation had frequently presided at those feasts, which for a time gave all Geneva the air of a numerous, a united and joyous family. Conceive how bitter the change must have been to the victims, and to the spectator, who was not lost to all human sensibility: Conceive what must have been the feelings of the wives and children of those in danger! As no shadow of proof could be found in confirmation of the general charge of conspiracy against the state, new allegations were made against the prisoners; some had been always known to be aristocrats, their very charity had proceeded from a desire of improper influence; others were known to have invoked the mediation in eighty-two, or to have prevented the friendly entry of the French in ninety-two: one promising young man fell a victim to what it was supposed he would be if suffered to live, and every subterfuge was made use of to evade the well-known wish of a great majority of the people in favour of particular individuals, whom this tribunal of blood had determined to destroy. It does not appear that Robespierre had been ever desirous of annexing Geneva to the French republick; he thought France too extensive or at least too populous already, and provided the people tormented and destroyed each other, he was satisfied, while his worthy representative Soulavie, kept himself employed in a way that he best understood: he was always caballing with and encouraging the insurgents, and for his amusement he burnt upon one occasion the prayer books and bibles of the Ambassadour's Chappel, in the court yard of his hotel, and threw the crucifix out of the window; of the persons arrested a certain number were heavily fined and imprisoned; several were banished, and eleven were executed-of these last, two were of my acquaintance when I lived formerly in Geneva, the first of them, Prevost, had filled more than one important office with credit, had been always attached to the popular side in the civil dissensions of his country, until the dangerous tendency of their measures became apparent, and had particularly distinguished himself in the treaty with general Montesquieu. His conduct was calm and dignified before the tribunal and in prison; he was prepared to meet his fate, and on his way to the place of execution, he found means to throw a paper into the crowd, with an invocation, that the person into whose hands it fell, would deliver it to his widow; a copy of this interesting paper is now before and I will endeavour to give you a translation of it, which shall be as literal as the idiom of the two languages will permit of; it will remind you a little of Anne Bolyn's last letter to Henry VIII, inasmuch as there is expressed in both, a natural attachment to life, a submission to the decrees of Providence, and all the conscious pride of injured innocence. LETTER XXX. me, Prevost's Letter." It is but too probable, that I shall never again see my wife, my mother, or my children! Heaven knows what I suffer at the cruel separation! Ne one had ever more reason to be. attached to life than I had. These dear objects of my affection will remain impressed on my heart to the last moment of my existence. To my wife, my most tender, my best of friends, I return thanks for the happiness she has blest me with. I leave her miserable, but not without means of consolation, for she will reflect that her husband died honourably; and that his conduct has been such, as will secure to his memory the esteem of all men, when the present unhappy delusion shall have passed away. He has defended himself with firmness, and is not conscious of having deviated from propriety in the course of his defence. Dearest mother, if I have been at any time a source of satisfaction to you, how many sorrows am I not unfortunately the cause of? You will weep for me, and some dear friends will join their grief to yours, but, let there be a term to sorrow, and let it be your pride, my mother, that my road through life has been a course of honourable pursuits; judge of the efforts I am obliged to make to buoy myself up above those feelings, which would deprive me of the resolution I have occasion for, of the resolution which my honour requires, and which I hope to preserve to the last moment: what I have said is but a small part of what is labouring at my heart. My dear son, let not the example of my fate deter you from that frank and candid manner which has led to my destruction, but beware of all connexion with publick affairs. You have an important trust to fill; upon you devolves a sacred duty towards your mother: let every attention, let your whole conduct contribute to sooth her afflictions, and those of your grand- demn him, and passed a more fearmother. And you, my dear little ful sentence upon his judges than Louise, do you, whom infancy ex- the one he was compelled to lisempts from a great deal of what ten to, "You will die," said he, you would have suffered, think fre- "without daring to cast one look quently of your father's fate, and towards Heaven." Confiscation, let it urge you to be attentive to plundering, and fines, went hand your mother; let her want no con- in hand with murder; for the prosolation which it may be in your mcters of these shocking scenes power to bestow. I am far, my had felt from the first the necessidearest, best of friends, from for-ty of keeping up the delusion of getting your relations on this so- the people by idleness and dissilemn occasion, and dread the con- pation, they had themselves shared sequences, for the health of your the profits of the moment, and enfather, embrace him for my sake, couraged by their example a geas also your dear mother and sis- neral departure from all decency ter. My dear sister, to your care and morality: money obtained by I recommend my wife, animate such unjust and barbarous means her to bear her woes with patience was not likely to be well husbandand resignation; her children claim ed, and the fact is, that at least. a right to her attention, and now three hundred pounds a day were dear wife, dear tenderest friend, I for a short time expended in pay to the citizens in insurrection, in press you to my heart, adieu!" national festivals, and in supplying the wretches who acted as judges, with the materials of that almost continued intoxication, which kept them insensible to the dictates of justice, and deaf to the groans of their fellow-citizens: when I reflect upon the fatal change which took place as if by inchantment in Geneva, and placed an amiable, an industrious, and enlightened people at the mercy of a sanguinary banditti; when I recollect that this was brought about by the adoption of French principles, and by the cooperation of a French resident and carried on in imitation of the conduct pursued by the French government, I cannot but be grateful that Providence listened not to the prayers and wishes of perhaps two thirds of America, and of nearly all Virginia, which would have given victory to the fleet of Robespierre over that of England, and placed us at his mercy; for with the instruments he' Another of my acquaintance was Naville, a man distinguished for a warm heart, a brilliant imagination, indefatigable study, and the gift of eloquence: his days had been divided between the publick service and the blessings of domestick life; but disapproving altogether of the change of government which had taken place in February, ninety-four, he lived retired in the country and amused himself in the education of his children, and by experiments of agriculture. He was not a person to be overlooked upon the present occasion, and when dragged before the tribunal, where murder and robbery had assumed the sacred name of justice, he still retained that ascendancy, which nature and education had given him, he vindicated the measures of the administration which he had been a member of, he pointed out the future horrours of a guilty conscience to those who should con * might have set in motion, how could we in the south have resisted his displeasure? Judge by the fate of St. Domingo, of the scenes we should have been exposed to and of the fate that awaited us. For The Port Folio. POLITICAL. With some disgraceful exceptions, at the commencement and during the hottest of the French Revolution, the Political and Literary Journals of the Continent, as well as in the Island of Great Britain, have been conducted with great ability. Mere me_chanicks, beerhouse politicians, or infants, prattling about the rights of man, have never presumed, in Europe, to conduct THE PUBLICK VEHICLE OF INFORMATION, a machine, which demands all the dexterity, all the versatility, and all the power of genius. For this arduous, laborious, ungrateful, and highly responsible service, talents of a superiour order have been always considered indispensable, by the Judices Selecti. Among the excellent papers from which even the literary pride of Edmund Burke did not disdain to borrow aid, when he was employed as the annalist of Europe, was the Leyden Gazette, which, for many years, was published under the very able direction of Mr. Luzac, a scholar, a philosopher, and a politician. The literary world has recently had occasion to deplore his loss, but his successour, of whose name and country we are ignorant, seems to follow him by no means with the step of the tottering Iulus. The new editor neither disgraces the well-earned repu tation of the paper, nor the respectable name of Luzac. A few recent numbers of the Journal Politique are now before us, and, as the the modern French say, we has ten to publish a translation of certain state papers, which have been bandied about between the Burgomasters of Amsterdam, a fief of regicide, and one of the brothers of Bonaparte, who, in the grand masquerade at the last political carnival in the Low Countries, personates the part of a King. We will venture to affirm, that the eager curiosity of inquisitive Boyhood was never more delighted by a delicious peep into the show-box of a Savoyard than our old-fashioned and well-principled readers will be at this curious picture of Dutch degradation and Corsican insolence. This monstrous exhibition, the ill-favoured offspring of newfangled conceptions of politicks will be view ed with the strongest emotions by every philosophical as well as political reader. UTRECHT, 15th April. The arrival of His Majesty at Amsterdam, retarded almost two years, by numerous circumstances, and fixed for the second of this month, not having taken place, the city of Amsterdam asked permission to forward on its part, by deputies, an Address to the King, to entreat His Majesty not any longer to defer his arrival, and to accept the City Hotel of Amsterdam and declare it the Palais Royal, in order to secure to the Capital the advantage of being always the residence of the sovereign; an advantage to which it has an indisputable right. His Majesty having graciously acceeded to this request, a solemn* deputation, composed of the Burgomaster, &c. had the honour on Sunday last, to be presented to the king by his excellency, the minister of the interiour, and to address to his majesty the following dis * Solemn enough! to be under the necessity of yielding their rights and liberties in this servile manner. It is the funeral of their liberty. This is as respectful as any democrat could wish, and emanating from one of the hot-beds of liberty and equality, may be supposed to approximate the acme of perfectability. |