his Majesty would condescend to grace the triumph of the day, unless upon the express retraction on the part of the existing chambers of the conditions which they had been insolent enough, originally, to exact from their lawful monarch. You have read the letters on this subject in the Moniteur of the 15th of this month, and must there see how early the conspiracy was begun against the people. Louis did enter boldly, declaring that he reserved the right of nominating or rejecting certain articles of the constitution, which, when in England, he had swallowed whole. It is a most absurd pretext of panegyric of this monarch, that he bestowed upon France the constitutional charter: as if the chambers and provisional government had not previously demanded such a guarantee for national liberty, and as if, after acceding to, he had not shamefully disregarded, this guarantee. Mr. Carnot is right; the commerce and intercourse between princes and people consist in a perpetual struggle for the increase and retrenchment of power: kings have never willingly encroached upon their own sovereignty, nor made their people more free at the expense of their own prerogatives. Liberty has always been wrung from their hard hands-no thanks to them-and all the benefits of this kind ever conferred by a sovereign should be called by their true name, the extor

tion of a right rather than the grant of a favour. When King John was forced to make some few provisions for the happiness of his subjects, he complained to his brother potentates that he had been robbed. Louis, like all other monarchs, seems to have looked upon his people as if they had surrendered at discretion to him; and as if, therefore, even his inactivity was a generous forbearance, whilst his dispositions for what they might think something like their independence should be regarded as an instance of bounty and benevolence unexampled and undeserved. Follow me through another letter, and you shall see this bounty and benevolence, and "to what they mount."

LETTER V.

Paris, April -.

THE people in all countries are liable and apt to betray themselves by their generous feelings; and even if in any multitude there be only a small proportion in whom these feelings predominate, that minority will generally become preponderate, by the mere force of shame, which forbids opposition to actions that have for their pretext and origin motives universally approved and admired by the moral sense of mankind. This, in the struggle between kings and subjects, gives an infinite advantage to the former party, who can make use of, and appeal to, every passion of the human breast; can take advantage of all good as well as all bad dispositions in others, whilst they themselves, acting from one only feeling and character of mind, are the better enabled steadily to pursue a single, unvarying, scheme of action. The abhorrence of anarchy, and the facilities afforded by the modern prejudices in favour of a monarchical government, are considerations so powerful in the state of civiliza

VOL. I,

F

tion to which the European world has long arrived, that the dethronement of one king is generally followed by the election of another, whose successor, if set aside, may be replaced by the heir of the former unfortunate monarch. It is impossible but that a favourable feeling should exist towards a sovereign ascending the throne under these circumstances; and on that account I consider the reign of a revolutionary or a restored king as likely to prove very dangerous to liberty, although he may have owed his crown to the most noble exertion of the rights of man. The person in this predicament is regarded either with gratitude for what he has done to second the people, or with fondness, if he has done nothing, as being their own choice; and, if he be adroit, can easily turn either of these affections to his own account: still more easy is his task, if he assume his authority upon the implied consent and apparent necessities of a nation, as the only close and cure of anarchy. Excepting the English, I know of no nation that have been wise enough to guard against their gratitude, and to depose one king without investing another with all or more of that authority which they found intolerable in his predecessor. The patriots of 1688 were able to control their sense of obligation, and were too sensible and just to lose by the encourage

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ment of one virtuous propensity those advantages which their other good and great qualities had set within their reach. They regarded King William as sufficiently recompensed by the crown of three kingdoms, restricted according to their wishes, for all his great services; and the discontent and disgust which their conditions excited, even in this great and liberal prince, are a sufficient proof that there is in all those who have tasted of sovereign sway a strange notion of a certain right of dominion, either inherent in their persons or acquired by their exploits, which neither good sense, great virtue, nor long experience, productive otherwise of the most generous principles and rational maxims, are able completely to eradicate and wholly to destroy-strange persuasion! as if any possible benefit conferred upon me should tempt me to resign the smallest portion of that freedom of action which is necessary for individual dignity, and which is found, by the fact of its existence, not incompatible with the social interests of the nation to which I belong!! In this case I lose by the deposition of my tyrant; I exchange my just hatred and honourable opposition to despotism for an acquiescence in it, nay, even for a love for it, in the person of another, whom my own necessities and his good qualities have induced me to call to my aid! The English, in bargaining with William, had