384 The King of the French. [OCT. 



" cousins" abroad. The Saxon King, who began by attempting to 

 dragoon Protestants into Papists, has felt the benefits of a change in his 

 own person, and has abdicated, and is going or gone somewhere or any- 

 where, from the love of his faithful subjects. Our fighting friend, the 

 Duke of Brunswick, who challenged all the kings of the round world, 

 has been pelted out of his opera box, burned out of his palace, hunted 

 out of his country, and has now come, with a coachful of pistols, to 

 honour England by his residence, and shew off his heroism. 



We shall not be long without tidings of locomotion from that brilliant 

 prince in whose hands are the rights of Portugal, and the keys of its 

 five hundred state prisoners. Ferdinand too will be locomotive in good 

 time, and we should recommend the extension of the Railway System, 

 in a direct line between the capital of every court on the continent, and 

 the nearest harbour in the direction of England ; for, in England we 

 shall have them all, until kings are as cheap in our streets as common- 

 councilmen. 



Can we be suspected of saying a syllable of this in a love for revolu- 

 tion ? Not one syllable. We say it in the most perfect hatred and fear 

 of Revolution. But who are the true makers of the mischiefs that are 

 now threatening to go the round of Europe ? They are not the people. 

 They are not the men who must labour for their bread, who know well 

 that labour is the portion of man, and who know, just as well, that the 

 best happiness, virtue, honour, aye, and luxury of life, are to be found 

 in manly industry. But the true Revolution-makers are the dissolute de- 

 pendants on Courts, the men who do nothing, can do nothing, and are good 

 for nothing ; the military coxcombs that throng the foreign courts, the 

 profligate nobles, male and female ; the whiskered, simpering, slavish 

 race, who spend their ridiculous and wasteful lives between a court-ball, 

 a gaming-house, and the side scenes of a theatre, with all its abomi- 

 nations. The Kings of the Continent are about to be told, in language 

 such as they must feel, that they have been placed at the head of 

 nations, not for their own luxury, not for lives of alternate indolence 

 and tyranny, vulgar ignorance, and gross licentiousness. We disdain 

 to open the private history of any one of those degraded and corrupt 

 courts. But no man can travel without hearing and seeing circumstances 

 in foreign life, of the highest rank, that can only make him wonder at 

 their being suffered by any people. The whole condition of the Conti- 

 tinent would justify the most thorough change. There is no liberty on 

 the Continent, except we are to call by that name the present democratic 

 wildness of France. There is not a government under which the subject 

 can feel himself safe in doing any one public act, except by the sufferance 

 or neglect of the government. There is not a people which is not 

 ground to the dust with the expenses of the Court, the enormity of the 

 exactions of the great monastic institutions, and the Popish hierarchy, 

 and, above all, by the maintenance of immense standing armies, totally 

 beyond the necessities or the means of the people, and only objects of 

 mutual jealousy to all the powers ; but they supply commissions for the 

 young nobles, commands for the creatures of the court, and amuse the 

 military fondness of the monarch for exhibiting in his own person the 

 successive uniforms of his hulans, yagers, grenadiers, and dragoons. Is 

 it possible that such a system should last ? We shall see the taste for 

 abdication turned into an epidemic before long. 



