needs a government, watchful at home, and truly frank and honorable in external transactions. This alone can secure prosperity within, and peace abroad. To attain these objects, and to recover the confidence and love of the world, the French have only to become what they were formerly. Their old character is completely lost : let them endeavour a thorough reform. It is not too late; whatever the dismay attending its progress, the evil is not incurable. The revolution has almost transfigured the French nation into soldiers: it has corrupted the hearts of these warriors, and has changed them into ferocious freebooters, instinct with the spirit of rapine, unknown to their ancestors; with the thirst of plunder, and the contempt of all social law. This it is, which has banished from a wretched generation every sentiment of justice and humanity. Neediness, the influence of example, the impunity of horrible profligacy, created by the revolution, and completed by Napoleon, have spread their infection among every class of this once amiable and esteemed people; a depravity of mind and of heart entirely unparalleled,' have superseded the virtues of worthy, generous, and loyal ancestors, who were capable of the noblest virtues. In vain should we search, amid modern France, for taste, for urbanity, and the love of real glory. The wretched inhabitants, for a quarter of a century, have lived in a degrading phrenzy. Who could venture to depict those scenes, combining atrocity, disgustfulness, and absurdity, which pollute every page of their history since 1789? Where is the folly that the whole nation have not admired, the extravagance that they have not applauded, the crime that they have not authorised, if not prompted? Has any miscreant 'All these under-scored phrases proceed from the pen of a Frenchman, M. de Pradt, first almoner of Napoleon, and his ambassador in Poland. See the history of his Embassy, p. 138, et seq. arisen, who could not boast of thousands of partisans, friends, and confederates; who has not deserved well of his country, and who has not been honored with statues and canonization? Survey, if you can, those immortal archives of folly and barbarism, those acts of the representatives of the people, at every period, those decrees of the successive conventional, directorial, consular, and imperial, governments, which were respectfully accredited by all the national authorities, and were constantly followed by the earnest panegyrics of that army of functionaries, ignobly steady in their supple servility. Behold those slaves, in shameless addresses, that vary the tributes of sycophancy even to exhaustion, behold them thanking their masters for each new enormity, fawning at the feet of those monsters, with ready plaudits for every atrocity of caprice, which they constantly celebrate as a sublime conception. Their baseness pandered in advance to every prevarication, or outrage, or insult. They clearly intimated, that France was but too fortunate in her subjection to madmen, and that no degree of her misery or degradation, could possibly cloy their wishes. But we, if we can but one day witness the revival of the better days of France, will no longer take account of these deplorable records. Foreign nations will excuse the faults by which they were so much injured; they will attribute this protracted paroxysm of the French, to that cruel fatality, which is the awful forerunner of the fall of a people doomed by Providence to expiating calamities, and which sheds the baneful spirit of illusion throughout their country. They will joyfully receive, to the great family circle of Europe, those erring brethren, who are again worthy of the august confederacy that proposes happiness and peace for its objects. Your country, since the Revolution, has not felt these blessings. I ardently hope that she will at length enjoy them, and that her felicity will be uninterrupted. Accept, my friend, of my cordial good wishes. SECOND REPORT OF THE Association FOR THE RELIEF OF THE MANUFACTURING AND LABORING POOR, RELATIVE CHIEFLY TO THE GENERAL SUPPLY OF FISH IN THE METROPOLIS AND THE INTERIOR. Established in May, 1812. REPORT, &c. &c. FREEMASONS' TAVERN, At a Meeting of the Committee of the Association, HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF RUTLAND, K. G. In the Chair; The following Report was adopted, and ordered to be printed and circulated :— THE HE Committee of the ASSOCIATION FOR THE Relief of the MANUFACTURING AND LABORING POOR, proceed to lay before the Subscribers and the Public, a statement of the measures which have engaged their attention since the last appeal to their liberality. The Committee having renewed their inquiries, and further circulated the intelligence of the relief they were enabled to afford, proceeded to a due examination of the numerous cases of distress still calling for assistance in the manufacturing districts. Continuing to act on the principles which had regulated their former gifts, they afforded help to local charities for the relief of the places, and to the extent subjoined |