Page images
PDF
EPUB

not dissemble that the legislators ought to blush and groan at having suffered so many crimes, which would not have been committed if the press had remained free, and he proposed to declare any person a conspirator who should seek to stop and restrain it. Being accused in the Jacobin club, of having attacked Robespierre only in order to succeed him, he endeavoured to justify himself; but his expulsion was pronounced. On the 23d, having denounced Moses Bayle and Granet, as promoters of the counter-revolution of the South, and accusers of Marat, he was attacked himself by Ruamps, as a dilapidator. Two papers were produced by Escudier and Granet; but Treilhard, on the 4th of October, procured the acquittal of Fréron and Barras of the charge of dilapidation. He was attacked on the 30th at the Jacobin club, for his conduct in the South, and a member asked why he had permitted the army of Carteaux to be paid in assignats, while that of his brother-in-law Lapoype was paid in coin. The next day, Dulaure reproached him in the convention, with wanting to destroy the Jacobins, after having been one of their chiefs, and of making himself a party among the young men whose exemption from service he procured. Being attacked again concerning his journal, the Orator of the People, he pronounced at the convention, on the 1st of March, a long speech, in which he recriminated on those of his colleagues who had denounced him, and expressed his wish to terminate the revolution, but desiring first the punishment of the traitors who were accused (the ancient members of the committee of public safety,) regarded aristocracy as a phantom, pleaded for peace, said that the convention, while it punished crime, ought to pardon error,' and ended with a scheme for a decree to revise the revolutionary laws, liberate the suspected persons, and appoint a committee to prepare the organic laws of the constitution of 1793. Warm applauses were lavished on this speech, for the printing of which the convention gave orders. On the 23d Moses Bayle reminded him that the members of the ancient committee of public safety, accused by him, had opposed his accusation. On the 27th Barére justified the eulogium that he had passed on Robespierre, on the 7th of Thermidor, by different fragments of the opinions of Fréron. On the 1st of April, Fréron designated Choudieu and Leonard Bourdon as the principal members of a committee of insurrection at Paris, and procured a decree for removing the deputies, arrested on that day, to the château of Ham, and for arresting Leonard Bourdon. On the 6th he proposed that death should no longer be inflicted for revolutionary crimes, except for crimes of emigration, promotion of the royal cause, and military treason; and that transportation should be substituted for it. On the 9th of May he declared against the plan of the committee of eleven, relative to the orga

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

nization of the government, and, in consequence of his observation on the 1st of Prairial, the president of the convention gave orders for preventing the deputies named in the various accusations from leaving the hall.-Being commissioned to reduce the insurgents of the Faubourg St. Antoine, he gave an account of this expedition on the 23d of May. On the 29th he supported the proposals of Lesage, for not suffering any but military crimes to be judged by the military tribunal, for sending Romme, Goujon, and the persons accused with them, to the criminal tribunal of the Seine, and for having a report made on the deputies, who, in their missions, had shed innocent blood, and wasted the money of the state. On the 5th of September he brought forward the situation of the South of France, where he represented the emigrants as returned, the purchasers of national domains distressed, and royalism and fanaticism triumphing; and he proposed that the fugitives of Toulon should not be comprehended in the decree relative to the proscribed persons of the 31st of May. Being sent on the 13th of Vendémiaire, (5th of October, 1795), to the Faubourg St. Antoine, to arm the inhabitants in favour of the convention, he announced that they had sworn to exterminate the enemies of liberty. He was accused in the correspondence of Lemaître, and Baudin was astonished that the letters which might compromise him, and the other deputies of the Thermidorian party, were not read at the convention. On the 23d of October he was accused by Thibaudeau, of having organized the royalist re-action, and of wanting, like Tallien, to bring back a new tyranny of another species, to revenge himself for not having had the first of the national confidence in the elections. Fréron was then on a mission to the Bouches du Rhône, where he displayed an absurd pomp in the midst of a terrifying armed force, by whom he was surrounded wherever he appeared, to secure himself from the public vengeance. On his return he was obliged to be attended to Lyon by 200 cavalry. On the 10th of November, Siméon attacked him in the Council of Five Hundred for his proceedings at Marseilles. The minister of justice made a report to the Directory concerning his conduct, which was approved: nevertheless, Jourdan of the Bouches du Rhône accused him again of having brought terrorism into office. Other denunciations determined the council to appoint a committee for their examination : on his return, he replied to these various charges with contempt and arrogance, and published an historical account of the re-action and the massacres of the South. He had been elected by Guyanne, deputy from that colony to the Council of Five Hundred; bnt this election was not admitted. In 1799 he was appointed commissioner from the Directory to St. Domingo; he did not go, but undertook the direction of the houses of reception, and,

at the time of the expedition to St. Domingo in 1802, was appointed prefect of the South, and went with General Leclerc ; after the prefect Benezech's death, he at first succeeded him, but soon shared his fate; he sunk under the influence of the climate, after an illness of six days. Besides his journals and pamphlets published in the course of the revolution, Fréron dispersed some fugitive poems in different collections. His journal, the Orator of the People, was, at the time, ascribed in great part to Dussault, a young writer, of talents very superior to Fréron's.

NAVAL FORCE OF THE UNITED STATES.

AT a time, when the public feels so much interest in our little navy, we have thought fit to furnish our readers with a detail of its force.

Frigates in Commission.

Constitution, captain Bainbridge, 44 guns; United States, Decatur, 44; President, Rogers, 44; Chesapeake, Evans, 44; Constellation, Stewart, 36; Congress, Smith, 36; Essex, Porter, 36.

Frigates in Ordinary.

New York, 36 guns; Boston, 32; Adams, 32.

The Corvette John Adams, of 26 guns, formerly a frigate, is made into a prison ship, at New York.

Ships of War.

Wasp, of 16 guns; Hornet, of 16.

Brigs.

Siren, 16 guns; Oneida, 16; Argus, 16; Vixen, 12.
The brig Nautilus, capt. Crane, is captured.

[blocks in formation]

MISCELLANEOUS.

Captain Flinders.-Captain Flinders, the circumnavigator, has discovered, that when the head of a ship is to the westward, there is an increased variation in the ship's compass.

Caterpillars. A gardener at Glasgow, practices a method of destroying caterpillars, which he discovered by accident. A piece of woollen rag had been blown by the wind into a currant bush; and, when taken out, was found covered by the lealf-devouring insects. He immediately placed pieces of woollen cloth in every bush in his garden, and found, next day, that the caterpillars had universally taken to them for shelter. In this way he destroys many thousands every morning.

Mr. Mungo Parke. The doubts which may have existed of the fate of this eminent man are now removed, by the certain accounts lately received from Goree, of his having perished, through the hostility of the natives, on one of the branches of the Niger. The particulars have been transmitted to Sir Joseph Banks, by Governor Maxwell, of Goree, who received them from Isaco, a Moor, sent inland by the Governor, for the purpose of inquiry. In a letter to Mr. Dickson, of Covent Garden, brother-in-law to Mr. Parke, Sir Joseph thus writes:

"I have read Isaco's translated journal: by which it appears that the numerous European retinue of Mungo Parke, quickly and miserably died, leaving, at the last, only himself and a Mr. Martyn. Proceeding on their route, they stopped at a settlement, from which, according to custom, they sent a present to the chief whose territory they were next to pass. This present having been treacherously withheld, the chief considered it, in the travellers, as a designed injury and neglect. On their approaching in a canoe, he assembled his people on a narrow channel of rocks, and assailed them so violently with arrows, that some of the rowers were killed. This caused Mr. Parke and Mr. Martyn to make an effort by swimming to reach the shore :-in which attempt they both were drowned. The canoe shortly afterwards sunk, and only one hired native escaped. Every appurtenance also of the travellers was lost or destroyed, except a sword-belt which had belonged to Mr. Martyn, and which Isaco redeemed, and brought with him to Goree."

Another instance of fatal failure, of an attempt to explore the interior of Africa.-The young German gentleman of the name of Ront

gen, who left England about a twelvemonth since for Africa, in order to prosecute discoveries in the interior of that country, has, it is said, been murdered by the Arabs, before he proceeded any great distance from Mogadore, where he spent some time perfecting himself in the Arabic language. He was a promising young man, and an enthusiast in the cause in which he was lost, and supposed to understand the Arabic language better than any European who ever before entered Africa. At an early age he formed the plan of going to that country, and gave up his connexions and a competency in Germany, to prosecute his intentions.-His father was a character well known in Europe, who raised himself from obscurity to the greatest celebrity by his talent for mechanics; he was at one time worth a million, but was ruined by the French revolution.

M. Galatzin's Congregation.-M. Galatzin, a Russian prince, became a Roman Catholic clergyman about ten years ago, and fixed his residence on the Allegany mountain, the highest in North America. Though his flock was then limited to six Roman Catholic families, it is now the largest congregation, next to that of Philadelphia.

Antiquity.-Paris, April 28. In digging deep into the earth, in order to come at the source of a spring of water, in the grounds of a mansion house in the district of Argovia, a cave was discovered, in which was a sepulchre containing the skeleton of a knight in full armour, from head to foot. He held in one hand a dagger, and in the other the handle of a drawn sword. At his feet were a Turkish sabre and a cross, which leads to the supposition that he was a knight who had distinguished himself in the holy wars.

Superior dexterity of British sailors witnessed by Bonaparte.A short time since, Bonaparte being on a tour in France, arrived at Givet, where he had occasion to cross a river, over which there was a bridge composed of boats, but the violence of the weather having separated the boats, he was prevented from getting over. The French used every possible exertion to unite them again, but in vain, and it was supposed their Emperor would be under the necessity of relinquishing his intention of crossing the river, when it was suggested that some of the English sailors might probably accomplish the important business; a guard was instantly sent to the prison for forty of them, who, on their arrival, immediately set to work, and in a short time made the bridge passable. Bonaparte was so much pleased at their exertions, that he ordered them to be released and sent home in a cartel: eighteen of them are arrived at Spithead, having been put on board the cartel that took over some seamen that capitulated in La Nereide, at Madagascar. Some seamen taken in a packet by the French, who petitioned Bonaparte for their release, have also arrived in the same cartel.

Books, number of, and descriptions.-Leipsic, March 10. The catalogue of books which is usually published before our great fairs of

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »