398 
tho Iast century, that he saw no reason 
why an error or abuse of government 
might not, as soon as discovered, be 
removed for the convenience and be- 
nefit of the body-pelitic, as freely and 
as easily as you would throw off a part 
of, or add to, the clothing of the body- 
natural in weather too hot or too cold. 
But the truth is, and it is highly pain- 
ful to contemplate the fact, that when 
men with prescribed or limited powers 
have transgressed the bounds set to 
their authority, they are at once un- 
willing, and even afraid, to recede a 
single step within the original confines 
marked out for them, under the appre- 
hension that their conduct may be 
arraigned as well as complained of. 
They place themselves in the condi- 
tion and situation of usurpers, and 
yet whosoever accuses them as such 
is regarded as a deadly enemy, whose 
existence is thought incompatible 
with their own safety, All this was 
openly manifested in the laws and ac- 
tions of the National Convention: of 
France. That assembly was called 
together expressly to dispose of 
royalty, and to declare by what spe- 
cies of government France should in 
future be ruled. They declared for a 
republic; and in so doing they com- 
pleted the work assigned to them, and 
here their authority should have end- 
ed: but, under the colour of the good 
of the country from the exigency of 
the times, they (like the Parlia- 
ment of England elected for three 
years, but constituting itself septen- 
nial,) eéontinued to legislate as a 
self-constituted body ; and hence, from 
this derogation and assumption, the 
members became every day more con- 
scious of their deviation from national 
rectitude, and grew apprehensive of 
tecling the weight of national punish- 
ment. Their laws therefore, though 
rigidly enforced, had less of national 
approbation, because they wanted the 
sanetion of constitutional or national 
delegation; and hence the dreadful 
confusion among the legislators, the 
constituted authorities, and the peo- 
ple; and the direful civil war between 
the republican armies and those gene- 
rally denominated royal, but made up 
of the dissatisfied of every elass, who, 
denying the lawfulness of the Conven- 
tion, refused to submit te its authority, 
With the termination of those tragic 
acts let the curtain fall; and may the 
sad eatastrophe never attend upon a 
revolution again. It was a revolution 
On the Universal Extension of Liberal Principles. 
[Dec. 1, 
sui generis. Its like had never been 
witnessed. Thatin England, a cen- 
tury and a half before, was walike to 
it in almost every respect. The more 
recent one in North America had 
scarcely any thing in common with it; 
though complete in its effect, it had 
nothing of that turbulence in its pro- 
gress which harrows up the feelings 
of the historian who treats of it, It is 
true that independence was not ob- 
tained in this last instance without 
much loss of bleod ; but the individual 
acts of cruelty on either side, in its 
pursuit, were but few. Its cause and 
course were admitted by the impartial 
philosopher to be great injustice on 
the one hand, and tawful resistanee on 
the other; and in its eflect it appears 
to have left scarcely a vestige of re- 
venge or regret in the minds of the 
survivors on either side of the ques+ 
tions May it be so with the parties 
concerned in the other portion of that 
interesting quarter of the world. 
Noman, fifty years ago, could have 
dreamt that at so short a distance of 
time, in countries’so remote, so man 
millions of men would be witnessed 
in arduous and determined contention 
for the recovery of those rights, which 
it might appear wonderful how, as ra- 
tional animals, they were ever bereft 
of. thas d 
If geologists have thought it proper 
in their histories to lay circumstances 
and forms before their readers, to prove 
the antiquity of the world beyond the 
ordinary chronology, what might not 
the philosophic historian say upon the 
subject in question towards the same 
end! What ages upon ages must it 
not have taken to dispossess thinking, 
feeling man, of those rights of nature 
which are still the boast of certain of 
our fellow-creatures in distant «parts 
of the earth; to. bind him up, as it 
were, unconditionally, in social masses 
of personal property, which we behold 
now under the sway of, and at the 
absolute control of, «Cham of 'Tartary, 
a Czar of Muscovy, a Sophi of Persia, 
or an Emperor of Turkey ! 
How humiliating to man in his en- 
lightened eondition, to behold here- 
ditary folly and descendant cruelty 
lord it ever the lives and property of 
his fellow men; and even to sce those 
whose ancestors, at no very distant 
periods back, were regarded as the 
wisest and best of mankind, treated 
with brutality, as containing within 
their bosoms the seeds of that Heroism 
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