The ruin of trade and manufactures which he laments is not imputed by him to the power of the enemy, but to the want of policy in those who had lately been at the head of affairs, Reftore that vigour to commerce which error and ignorance have fufpended! declare fo lemnly that every citizen who employs his time ufefully in agriculture, fcience, arts or commerce, fhall neither be molested nor treated as a fufpected perfon. Reftore to manufacturers all the commodities that are now under feals; put in circulation all the commodities that have been dispatched to different places, but ftopped and detained in confequence of the decree which orders the confifcation of every thing fent to places in a ftate of rebellion.'

What was the power of the royalists of la Vendée we may collect from the following paffage:

The evils fuffered by the commune of Nantes refound in every ear. What can commerce do amid fuch calamities and perfecutions? This citadel of the weft fuftained a fiege of more than fifteen months; it combated the rebels and the banditti; it preferved to the republic an important place and the navigation of the Loire. Its fidelity and its misfortunes call for a recompence. If the unfortunate inhabitants of Nantes unite, their city will foon become the greatest magazine of Europe, and affure the circulation of the commodities of the interior of France.'

With respect to the exertions made in agriculture, and the plenty produced by them, he fpeaks thus:

The arts of war have employed fo many hands, have taken away fo great a number of citizens from the other arts, that it was apprehended agriculture, commerce, and manufactures must be abandoned. The French found refources in their activity. Perfevering labour preferved us from the evils which there was fo much reafon to fear. Never before was fuch an extent of land cultivated and fown. The foil of France was covered with productions the moft various. No part was neglected. Some fpots, curfed as it were with fterility, defpoiled before the time of harveft, experienced the fevereft proof of the activity of the cultivator, and prefented the fpectacle of man fubduing the obftacles of nature. Thefe labours were crowned with correfponding fuccefs. But you will fend to places where the foil has been ungrateful, or the climate unpropitious, aids, in proportion to their wants. How much have useful profeffions been neglected; how much have the manufactories and workshops been deferted! and yet the labours and efforts of a small number of citizens have been fufficient. We have had lefs reason to obferve the di. minution of articles of confumption, than to admire a whole people in the activity that circumftances required, and a fmall number of industrious and laborious citizens doing what the majority of the nation had been formerly employed to do-fupplying all the articles neceffary to fubfiftence.'

Such exertions must be allowed to be astonishing, if we may credit the account of them given by the reporter: but we are rather fceptical on this head; for we cannot conceive it poffible that agriculture fhould not fuffer, and that proportionably diminished harvests should not ensue, when we find fo immenfe a number as 1,200,000 men taken from the working or laborious claffes of the community, and

converted

converted into foldiers; while another immenfe number of perfons must be employed in providing them with clothes, arms, ammunition, tents, camp equipage, &c. and while the horses necessary to hufbandry are frequently employed in drawing artillery or the baggage and ftores of 15 different armies feveral hundred miles afunder.

Our readers will find, in the following extract, a fplendid picture of the fucceffes, as rapid as they have been general and aftonishing, that have attended the French arms :

"Frenchmen, who have caufe of complaint, read over the immortal pages of our history; examine all the events which have fignalized the courage, and eternized the glory of the nation. Inhabi tants of the North, with what fentiments are you not penetrated, when you fix your eyes upon Lifle; what impreffion is not made upon you by the recollection of that memorable fiege, during which the inhabitants of Lifle difplayed fuch firmness. Conftancy is the true heroifm of Frenchmen. The citizens of Thionville exhibited the fame example, amid the fame dangers. View that army of heroes, rufhing into the fire of batteries, carrying redoubts, and gaining the bloody battle of Jemappe; fee it attack the enemy before Bruffells, and make the first conquest of Belgium! A new fcene opens; the French have to defend their own frontiers; the English are beaten at Dunkirk, the Auftrians before Maubeuge. The army advances into West Flanders; this country, full of fortreffes, is covered by the whole force of the Allied Powers. All the fortreffes fall into the hands of the French, and the capitulations of Oftend and Nieuport deprive the English of every communication with Belgium. Mark with what courage the defenders of their country prepared before Charleroi, the fuccefs which was to crown them next day in the plains of Fleurus. A proud Monarch published by found of trumpet, the capture of Namur. A new mode of tactics, which other nations will never appropriate, and which defpotism will never introduce into its armies, reftores Namur to the French. They pursue the Auftrians, they force them to retreat. They enter Liege, where they make the moft glorious and the moft ufeful of conquefts. They break the fceptre of a prieft, and the chains with which a defpot bound his fellowmen. The induftrious inhabitants of Liege quit the land of bondage, and feek the foil of the Republic, to enjoy liberty, and establish new manufactures of arms, to complete the deftruction of tyrants. Inha. bitants of our Eaftern countries, what tranfports have you not felt, when you were fpectators of those encampments, marches, battles, and victories, which opened to your brothers the gates of Spires, Worms, and Mentz? All the banks of the Rhine refound with the victories of our armies. The armies of the Mofelle and the Rhine unite, put the Auftrains and Pruffians to flight; restore the communication of Landau, and fcour the Palatinate. Inhabitants of the South, you know whether the fruits of victory have been useful to France. The conqueft of Savoy gave to the Republic the Department of Mont Blanc. Mount Cenis now affures the conquest and the liberty of our brethren. Nice and Villefranche fecure to us magazines which we could not do without. The capture of Saorgio guarantees the union of the Maritime Alps. Cravella has feen the

Croats

Croats and Auftrians flying before Republicans, whofe orders were to preferve the free countries of Italy from the yoke of a foreign domination. Collioure and Port Vendre were occupied by the Spaniards for a moment, only to give new eclat to the arms of the Republic, and exhibit the spectacle of the best troops of Spain compelled to renounce the Honours of War, and lay down their arms. The vallies of Baffan and Lerain have fupplied the army for several months. Fontarabia and St. Sebaftian give us ports that fecure the navigation of the Gulf. Spain has loft founderies and manufactories of arms, which would have been an eternal fource of jealoufy if they had been preferved.

"Such is this day the fituation of France. Could it be grander, ftronger, or more formidable ?”

Citizen Lindet, we believe, was one of the 12 clergymen who received episcopal confecration from the hands of the famous Bishop of Autun, when they were nominated to fill the fees vacated by the prelates who refufed to take the oaths to maintain the new constitution of the clergy. To thofe of our countrymen who are willing to make peace, but who nevertheless are for carrying on the war, because, as they fay, the French have no government with which we can treat, we earnestly recommend the following obfervation of the reporter, page 4:

The Nations who have maintained peace, the Governments who have been wife enongh to refift the infinuations of the courts of Vi enna and London, hear and repeat the accounts of your victories. You have done every thing for Liberty, by infpiring fo high an opinion of her defenders. You have conquered the opinion of nations. They no longer ask whether you have a government; they know that to maintain the moft numerous land armies, to cover the Ocean with fhips of war, to fight and vanquish by fea and land, to bring into your ports the commerce of the world, is to govern. This fentiment with which you have infpired the people of the North, of Africa, America, and those bordering on your frontiers, is too evident to be disputed. Your enemies can neither veil nor obfcure your glory. They cannot ravish from you the confidence, and the efteem of other nations.'

In the following paffage, he alludes to the 20,000 committees, the annual expence of which is generally eftimated at fome millions more than the whole royal naval and military establishments of France before the revolution; he labours to prove that the utility of these bodies of men greatly overbalances the expence which attends them, for, in his opinion, they have faved the Republic and fettled it on a folid foundation :

If it fhould be afked why the Convention organized a plan of vigilance, requiring fuch a prodigious number of functionaries that all Europe could not furnish a fufficient number of well informed men to fill all the places, the French will answer, that the plan was wife and neceffary. Our enemies were fo numerous, fo widely fpread, had fo many modes and means of infinuating themselves into the adminiftrations, the popular focieties, and even into our families, that every Citizen was obliged to confider himself as a centinel ftationed at a poff. Our experience and the mischiefs we had fuffered, had inftructed us

to know our enemies. If fome of us have gone too far, that is no 1eafon for blaming a grand Inftitution, which was as neceffary again our internal enemies, as our a armies against the coalefced powers. Sh. Art. 35. Letters which paffed between, General Dumourier and Pache, Minifter at War to the French Republic, during the Campaign in the Netherlands, in 1792. Tranflated from the original French by Robert Heron. 12mo. pp. 230. 25. fewed. Vernor. 1794. These letters, publifhed originally by Dumouriez himself, are va luable documents, enabling the public to judge of the character and ' conduct of that General and other leading men, and of the causes which co-operated to produce the great events of the campaign of 1792. The future hiftorian of the French revolution will collect im. portant materials from thefe letters. The ufe which the enemies of France may at prefent make of them is forcibly stated by the author, in his introductory remarks:

If these Letters fhould happen to fall into the hands of our ene mies; they may learn from them, how to judge of the probable iffue of their projects. Comparing the fuccefs of our armies, with the fcanty means which thofe armies had, to enfure fuccefs: They will fee, that undifciplined Frenchmen, led by inexperienced Generals, in want of clothes, and often in want of bread, have, under all these difadvantages, proved invincible: They will tremble for the fafety of their own lands and houfes, who lately threatened ours. Their eyes will open to difcern that principle of human action, to which we owe our victories. They will fee, that the greatest of miracles are wrought by LIBERTY.'

Art. 36. Relation du Siege de Lyon, &c. i. e. An Account of the Siege of Lyons, containing a Detail of the Tranfactions that took place there under the Eyes and by the exprefs Orders of the Reprefentatives of the French People. 8vo. pp. 68. 1s. 6d. Stace, Haymarket. 1794.

The fiege of Lyons may be juftly termed one of the most memorable events of this century, whether we confider it as a political or a military operation; whether with refpect to the number of forces employed in the attack and defence, and of the lives loft on both fides; or whether with refpect to the confequences that it produced from the extinction of a party, which, if it did not aim at overturning the French revolution, would most certainly, had Lyons been able to beat off the befieging army, have feparated the fouth from the north of France, and have established in it a foederative republic.

What were the real intentions of the Lyonefe, in cafe of fuccefs, cannot easily be afcertained. During the whole course of the events which preceded, attended, and followed the fiege, they never once in their collective capacity fo much as hinted at the refloration of monarchy, nor made even the most diftant approach to a complaint about the treatment which the King and his family had experienced. On the contrary, the grievances which they stated were all of a republican complexion; they protefted, it is true, against all laws or decrees of the Convention, paffed or to be paffed after a certain period, but it was not the period of the king's condemnation, but that of the imprison

E.

ment of the members of the Girondift party. This measure, they loudly complained, was an attack on the fovereignty of the people; whofe reprefentatives, being clothed with the exercife of that fovereignty, were and ought to be confidered as facred in their perfons, and amenable only to thofe from whom they had derived their authority. To imprifon perfons fo circumftanced, they faid, was not only a violation of the respect which the Convention owed to its conflituents, but also a direct attack on their fovereignty: every member of the Convention being in the eye of the law an integral part of the whole; and to proceed to make decrees, during the confinement of a great number of fuch integral parts, was to exclude the departments which they reprefented from all fhare in that fovereignty, which the constitution allowed to be fundamentally inherent in them. The Lyonefe therefore defired that the reprefentatives fhould be restored to their functions; declaring that, until the latter should have full liberty, as ufual, to take their feats and vote and act in the Convention, they would not fubmit to the authority of, nor hold any communication with, that affembly. Nothing in favour of royalty conld be deduced from all this reafoning and conduct; exe cept that the imprifoned members, with all the rest of the Girondit party, had voted against the immediate execution of the King, and for taking the fenfe of the people by departments and diftricts, relative to his fate.

On the other hand, it is certain that fome of the most determined royalists were employed by the Lyonefe in the defence of their city, and that they were every where fupported by fuch of that defcription of men, as had the means of acting up to their inclination and prin ciples. Whether they thus gave their affiftance, and the others received it, under any declared or implied opinion that they were ferving one common caufe, viz. the caufe of monarchy; or whether the Ly. onefe, on the point of being attacked by the whole force of the Con vention, were glad to accept of aid from any quarter, while the royalists, fighting against republicans of any fide, were fure that they were fighting against enemies whom it was their intereft to weaken; are queflions which it is not in our power to answer. If, however, we may venture to hazard a conjecture, we would fay it was likely that the people of Lyons were not at bottom very friendly to the revolution; which had, no matter how, been the means of producing a complete ftagnation of trade in that city, the second in all France in point of fize and population, and the firft in point of manufactures; its thoufands of looms were all ftopped, and the inhabitants were reduced to very great diftrefs;-circumftances which could not be fuppofed to make them, at leaft the principal manufacturers, very heartily attached to the new order of things that had made them fuch fufferers.

Be this as it may, whatever the Lyonefe might have been at the period to which we refer, whether republicans of either fchool, namely federalifts or one-and-indivifiblifts, or whether concealed friends of monarchy, certain it is that the author of the pamphlet now before uś is a royalift; and, therefore, when he inveighs against the cruelties of the befiegers in language glowing with indignation, his teftimony ought to be received with caution, like the evidence of a man who is

known