were generally opposed by the Girondist party, their eloquence and influence were found insufficient to restrain that implacable and sanguinary disposition, which had taken possession of the breasts of their rivals, and communicated itself to a great part of the population of the metropolis. About this period a discovery was made, which heightened the popular resentment against the unfortunate sovereign, and led to the most important consequences. A workman, who had been employed to form an iron chest or closet in the wall of the Thuilleries, revealed the fact to Roland, the minister of the home department, and conducted him to the place which contained the sacred deposit. This chest was found to contain a great number of correspondences; and a committee consisting of 24 members of the Convention was therefore chosen to inspect the papers, and prepare the act of accusation. On the 6th of November, Valaze read the report; the discussion upon which was immediately followed by the introduction of a question, the most embarrassing to his accusers, and to the Convention: viz. whether the King was not by the constitution invested with perfect and legal inviolability; and whether, consistently with justice, he, whom the law had solemnly pronounced to be above the reach of any legal process, could be brought to trial. This objection was strangely overruled by the Convention, who in this instance esta blished the precedent, always so fatal to liberty, of an ex post facto law, and evinced to the eyes of Europe their inattention to those rights of man which the nation had so solemnly proclaimed. Immediately on the act of accusation being passed, the King was forcibly separated from his family; and, contrary to the practice in all criminal cases, in almost every ci

vilized country, it was decreed that Louis should be brought before the Convention without previous notice or preparation. On the 11th of December, the unfortunate monarch was ordered to the bar of the Convention, and the act of accusation having been read, he was required by the president, Barrere, to answer to each separate charge. After a trial in which the forms of justice, and the principles of law, were violated without scruple, and without reserve, the unfortunate Louis, whose benevolence of heart and mildness of character merited a better fate, was doomed to the scaffold. His execution took place on the 21st of January, and in his last moments he displayed that Christian patience, resignation, and fortitude, which a consciousness of innocence, and a firm confidence in the promises of God, are alone competent to inspire.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE melancholy fate of Louis the Sixteenth greatly increased the feeling of detestation, with which the principles and practices of the French revolutionists were very generally viewed in this country, and the approach to open hostility became too apparent, on both sides, to leave any doubt of the event. In England it was expected that a general confederacy of the principal powers of Europe must, in the end, prove successful against a new government, full of frenzy and faction; and in France, in addition to the confidence already inspired by victory, an opinion prevailed, that so much disaffection to the established government existed in Great Britain, as could not fail to overturn it in case of a rup

ture; but so far was this from being the fact, that the war which succeeded was undoubtedly popular in its commencement, the advocates of revolutionary principles being comparatively few in number and influence. Prior to the 10th of August, 1792, when the royal power was suspended in France, the new doctrines promulgated there were viewed by a very considerable portion of the British nation as the laudable exertions of liberty against despotism, but the atrocities which succeeded were so appalling, that almost every one shrunk from avowing the principles, lest he should be thought favourable to the acts by which they were accompanied. Before that period, also, the British court manifested a friendly disposition towards the new constitution in that country, but when the deposition of the monarch was no longer disguised by the party which had acquired the ascendency, a change in the conduct of the British Cabinet began to display itself, which became more visible as the desire of propagating republican doctrines, and of exciting the people of the neighbouring states against their governments, became more apparent.

On the 27th of December, a memorial was presented by M. Chauvelin to Lord Grenville, stating that the executive council of the French republic had authorized him to demand, with openness, whether France ought to consider England as a neutral or hostile power; at the same time expressing a strong desire to remain in peace. In allusion to the decree of the 19th of November, he denied that the French republic would favour insurrections or excite disturbance in any neutral or friendly country whatever, and declared that France would not attack Holland, so long as she adhered to the principles of her neutrality. On the 31st, Lord Grenville in reply ac

quainted M. Chauvelin that, as all official communication with France had been suspended since the unhappy events of the 10th of August, he could only be treated with under a form neither regular nor official; his lordship, however, said, that if France was really desirous of maintaining peace with England, she must renounce her views of aggression and aggrandizement, and confine herself within her own territory. In answer to this letter, M. le Brun, minister of foreign affairs, transmitted a memorial in the name of the executive council, on the 4th of January, 1793, repeating the assurances of their sincere desire to maintain peace and harmony, and stating that they had sent credential letters to M. Chauvelin, to enable him to treat according to the severity of diplomatic forms. France, they repeated, renounced all conquests, and her occupation of the Netherlands would continue no longer than the war. The explanations contained in this paper were deemed unsatisfactory by Lord Grenville; M. Chauvelin's letters of credence were rejected; and on the 24th of January he was ordered to quit the kingdom within eight days. On the 25th, the English ambassador at the Hague, Lord Auckland, addressed a memorial to the States General, in which were the following remarkable expressions: "Not four years ago some wretches, assuming the title of philosophers, had the presumption to think themselves capable of establishing a new system of civil society. In order to realize that dream of their vanity, they found it necessary to overthrow and destroy all received notions of subordination, manners, and religion, which have hitherto formed all the security, happiness, and consolation of the human race. Their destructive projects have but too well succeeded. But the effects

of the new system which they endeavoured to introduce, served only to show the imbecility and villany of its authors. The events which so rapidly followed each other, since that epoch, surpass in atrocity all which have ever polluted the pages of history. Property, liberty, security, even life itself, have been deemed playthings in the hands of infamous men, who are slaves to the most licentious passions-of rapine, enmity, and ambition." The state of the whole European world at this crisis could not be contemplated without the deepest anxiety. War, at all times to be deplored, was more to be avoided when the absolute necessity for our interference was not sufficiently apparent. We had formed treaties with monarchs who had ascended thrones stained with blood; we had behield with indifference the shameful partition of Poland; and although the excesses which had attended the French revolution could not be viewed without horror, there was nothing directly affecting England which might not possibly have been removed by negociation; indeed, if it could have been foreseen that the wars of the French revolution would have been so long and desolating-attended with such a cost of blood and treasure-it cannot be doubted, that both ministers and people would have been more earnest in their endeavours to avert such a calamity. The soundest politicians that have directed the public affairs of this country, Burleigh, Clarendon, Walpole, and Chatham, have all declared against continental wars and continental alliances, which, even in their time, were represented as draining Britain of its wealth. Could either of these great men have imagined the possibility of that accumulation of national debt which the events that VOL. II.

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