To the merit of refuting several popular but erroneous notions intimately connected with his subject, Dr. L. adds that of collecting the most important facts within a narrow compass, and of stating them in a clear unaffected manner. A few engravings, illustrative of the first part of the essay, would have saved the trouble of having recourse to more cumbersome and expensive publications.

ART. V. Essais Historiques, &c. &c.; i. e. Historical Essays on the Causes and Effects of the French Revolution; with Observations on certain Events and certain Institutions. By C. F. BEAULIEU. Vols. III-VI. 8vo. Paris. 1803 Imported by De Boffe, London. Price 78. each Volume, sewed.

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N the former volumes of this work, we bestowed considerable commendation *; and in the prosecution of his task, we still find the author intitled to praise on several accounts, though it must now be subject to some abatements. We can continue to applaud the fairness of his representations: since we observe with pleasure that he is less carried away by party spirit, than most of his cotemporaries who have treated the same subject; and he seems to have been situated favourably for gaining the information which his undertaking required. Of the horrible sufferings, indeed, endured by the French people under the reign of terror, a period which embraces a considerable part of his history, he was a witness and a partaker: for he had the misfortune to be confined eleven months in the prisons of the Conciergerie and the Luxembourg. We learn from himself that he was an active member of the club de Feuillans, immediately before its dissolution, and he appears never to have deserted its principles. This, perhaps, as being the middle, is the best party out of which to select an historian; and the temper of the present writer is certainly in favour of such a conclusion. The unbending partisan of the ancien regime, and the frantic Jacobin, meet with equal justice from this candid narrator; and he is not at all desirous of dissembling the faults of those whose system he professes to have espoused. After having said thus much, however, we are constrained to remark that his information is frequently imperfect, while his manner of stating it is seldom luminous. We think, also, that the pompous harangues of the orators of the day fill up too great a proportion of the volumes; we do not mean to say that they are not important historical documents: but they should have been more sparingly introduced into a work so concise as the present.

See M. R. Vol. 36. N. S. p. 508.

Nevertheless, though far from being a finished, M. DE B. is an instructive and valuable writer; he appreciates men and measures with much ability; if he is occasionally obscure, he never misleads; his omissions are the effects of hurry, and do not arise from any improper motive; and his reflections are always sensible, and often striking.

While we regret that an author, possessed of so many qualifications, did not bestow on his publication the pains and labour which the nature of its discussions merited, it must be conceded to him, that the topics of the present volumes yield in dignity to those to which his former labours were directed. The revolution, in its early stages, though it fills the mind with painful and distressing ideas, is still a subject calculated to inspire the historian, and to call forth his utmost exertions. The actors in the awful drama are illustrious, distinguished by abilities, by services, and by rank; the intentions which actuate most of them are pure; the object which they propose is sublime; the boldness, the size, and the rapidity of their measures astonish and confound; enthusiasm the most frantic seizes the whole population; the infection extends itself to neighbouring states; the civilized world is convulsed; and the whole exhibits a scene which the most capacious mind with difficulty comprehends, and which it requires the utmost efforts of the highest talents adequately to describe. Such were the materials for the author's preceding volumes: but, at the period on which he now enters, new actors appear on the stage, meaner and more obscure personages, whose fatal and disastrous career is not to be equalled in the history of mankind. The sottishness of ignoble demagogues, the destructive rage of an infuriated people, deeds of pillage, and the violation of all morality and decency, form a narrative which must disgust the writer as much as the reader; and this circumstance may explain, though it will not justify, the inequality which we discover in the several parts of M. DE BEAULIEU's work.

We are here informed that the principal sovereigns of Europe were consulted on the question whether Louis XVI. should, or should not, accept the new constitution; and that they advised the affirmative. The king of England alone,' says the author, if I have been rightly instructed, was for the negative. Louis preferred the advice of the American minister, to that of the English monarch.'

The assembly denominated Constituent, having subverted the antient edifice and erected a new one, committed the protection and defence of this latter to their successors in the assembly termed Legislative. The mission of the members of this body was of a conservative nature; they were intended to invigorate authority, to recall order, and to inculcate habits

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of due subordination and obedience on the part of the subjects. but never, perhaps, was there assembled a set of men less inclined to fulfil their trust, and who had less the means and ability requisite to execute it, even had they been so disposed. They were much more ready to follow the example, than to listen to the injunctions, of the Constituents: they coveted the distinction. and the power to which their predecessors had reached; they found that dilapidation, and not conservation, was the road to authority; they therefore resolved to disregard the latter, and to make the former the object of their proceedings. If the Constituents, subverted the old fabric, and assailed and overcame its defenders; the members of the second assembly made war on the new structure and its archite.ts, endeavouring to render the latter the obiects of public hatred, and to overturn their work; in both of which attempts, they succeeded. The narrative of these proceedings is not very inviting, but, as it abounds with instruction, its details claim the attention of the statesman and the philosopher. The events of this nature, which occurred during the troubles in England, are very properly stated in a particularly minute and circumstantial manner by Lord Clarendon; and we much regret that M. DE B. neglected to imitate so good a model.

The third volume embraces the history of France, from the meeting of the Legislative Assembly to the tenth of August 1792, the period of the dethronement of the king. As this subject is familiar to most of our readers, we shall select from it only those traits which appear to have claims to novelty.

A very important document occurs in this volume; viz. a letter from Louis XVI. to the King of Prussia, bearing date the 3d of December 1791, in which that unhappy Monarch says that he had written to the Emperor, to the Empress of Russia, to the Kings of Spain and Sweden, and suggested to them the plan of a congress of the principal powers of Europe, to be seconded by an armed force, as the best measure for quelling the factions which distracted France; for establishing a better order of things; and for preventing the evil from ex'tending to the other states of Europe." We pass no judgment on this measure, in itself considered, but we ask how it is to be reconciled with the frequent professions subsequently made by the royal writer? We agree in opinion with the author, that this letter affects the unfortunate Monarch more than any of the frivolous charges brought against him at his trial.

M. DE B. describes the Cordeliers as a set of hypocrites, having no principles, but adopting those which they thought would lead most speedily to affluence; and the fact was that numbers of them did realize fortunes: while the followers of Robespierre were a set of fanatics, most of whom, at present,

live in extreme misery, not having improved their condition by their political intrigues.

In descanting on the wavering and ambitious conduct of the party called Brissotin, M. DF BEAULIEU observes that, on the king's dethronement, which was a measure rather forced on them than concerted by them, they had still the ascendancy in the Assembly, but that their superiority was confined to its precincts. The Revolution of the 10th of August was the work of the two Jacobin divisions, which respectively acknowleged as their heads, Robespierre and Danton; and they were not persons who would abandon the fruits of it to the followers of Brissot. The first, masters of the field of battle, left it to the Girondist rhetoricians to frame the decrees, and to shape the forms, under and according to which they were to exercise the dominion which they were careful to keep in their hands; they created also that monstrous power (the Commune of Paris), which tyrannized over France, from that period to the 9th of Thermidor (27th of July 1794): for the National Con vention was never more than the slave of that Commune.

The fourth volume carries the history from the 10th of August to the execution of Louis XVI., and very curious details are here collected, with regard to the origin and progress of the system of terror. We have just quoted the author as asserting that the real seat of power, during the reign of this system, was the Commune of Paris; and the facts which he now produces fully prove this assertion. The importance of this body may induce us to go back to its first formation, and to state how it came to be created. In the third volume, we were told that, on the morning of the 10th of August, commissaries appointed by the sections of Paris summoned the mem bers of the old Commune to withdraw; that, terrified by the populace which surrounded them, they obeyed; and that the commissaries, intitling themselves the Assembly of the Commissaries of the Majority of the Sections, invested with full powers to save the commonwealth, voted the provisional suspension of the late Commune, and occupied its place, but exercised functions far more extensive. Thus it appears that this assembly was in its origin self-constituted, and usurping.Let us farther see what is advanced by the author in regard to the individuals of which it consisted, as well as the measures which it adopted. The members of the new Commune, he says, were persons unknown even in their own sections, with the exception of about a dozen, who were of little consideration in the body; the rest are nowhere to be traced, and they have perished without leaving any memorials of their existence, except the impressions of the calamities of which they

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were the authors.' Such were the depositaries of a power not only terrible to France, but which inspired all Europe with dread; a power which, while it lasted, might defy all parallel in the annals of the world.

On perusing the register of the deliberations of this too famous Commune, M. DE B. found in them a summary of all the measures and decrees which were afterward adopted by the Convention. It was this body that brought into use the term revolutionary, which we have seen applied to sanction every species of tyranny and usurpation. The Revolutionary Tribunal originated from the same source. It organized revolutionary armies to keep in awe the environs of Paris, it stopped letters at the post-office, sent commissaries to the departments, suspended tribunals, declared that one minister had lost its confidence, and that another possessed its good will; and it dictated to the Convention those laws which filled France with prisons, and tenanted them with four hundred thousand persons,--which number they contained at the time of the fall of Robespierre. In fact, there was not one violent decree or measure adopted by the Convention, the elements of which are not to be collected from the deliberations of the Commune. The expiring legislative body, and the Convention, each yields obedience to its dictates; and the formation of the republic itself is a measure which emanated from it.

It is here clearly shewn that the Girondists did not intend to erect a republic, but that it was their plan to appoint a regency; and they had fixed on a governor for the prince royal. This step was less conformable to their principles, than it was convenient for their ambition: but it occurred to them as the only scheme by which they could retain the power which they saw ready to slip through their hands. The very same consideration urged the Jacobins and Cordeliers to decide in favour of a republic, since it was only amid general subversions that these factions could hope to preserve their authority.

The anarchists, having succeeded in all their enterprizes, and finding themselves at the very pinnacle of power, had recourse to the system of terror as the only method which could give any duration to their influence. This plan served the demagogues in two ways; for it established their domination, while it drove many peaceable men to seek a shelter from persecution in the armies, which were in want of recruits.

The Commune declared that it desired a republic; the Legislature uttered not a single murmur; and the Girondists instantly adjourned the measure of appointing a governor for the Prince. Brissot hastened to express a wish in his journal, that all nations might recover their rights, and that kings might