Perjured in respect to the oath of fidelity which they fwore to the king, as well as in refpect to that which they fwore to their conftituents; and fubftituting the individual will of their criminal majority to the imperative letter of their inftructions, the national will, expreffed in all the bailiwicks, they rendered all their fubfequent operations absolutely null, by making themfelves fuperior to their powers, by rendering themfelves independent of them, and by affuming authorities to which they had no title: they treated France as a country not subject to a monarchical form of government, without monarch, and without laws, and leagued together to plunge it into all the errors of nations almoft yet favage, and to form a government after the rude fketches of infant ftates, making their first advances towards civilization, and which at prefent would mark the laft ftage of their decline. Like all ufurpers, they flattered the people in order that they might fubject them to obedience; affigned to them a fovereignty, with a view of converting it to their own purpose; ipoke to them of the rights of man, while they were fi. lent refpecting their duty, and employing, according to the dictates of their turbulent and deftructive ambition, the poignards of affaffins, and the flames of revolt; and taking advantage of the prejudices and paffions of the multitude, they fucceffively called to their affiftance famine and abundance to incenfe the populace, that they might af terwards feduce and govern them; and to add to the horror of their proceed ings, they caufed the virtuous monarch, who had convoked them, to be accused of those very crimes which they themfelves had committed. Alarmed at the dangers which furrounded him, and foreseeing the afflicting evils which were preparing for his people, his moft chriftian majefty in vain endeavoured to avert them. Conceffions, rendered prudent by neceffity*, and the urgency of circumftances, which were fully approved by the inftructions of all the bailiwicks, and confequently N 0 T E. * Declaration of the king, June 23, 1789. by all Frenchmen, increased that thirst for reigning with which the ufurping affembly was inflamed All France, deceived and mifled by the most infamous impoftures, was the fame day inftantly in arms. The people imagined that they were taking them up to oppofe robbers, and thofe robbers armed them againft the king. From that moment the fovereign authority was annihilated; and the incontef table rights of the two firft orders of the 4th of Auguft, and 22d of Nov. 1789, were facrificed to nourish the deftructive ardour of the confpirators. The orders were profcribed†, the king himself, and his brothers, deprived of that private patrimony, which their anceftors had brought to the crown on their acceffion to the throne. The parliaments, the fovereign courts, the ftates of the provinces, and all the political bodies, almoft as ancient as the monarchy, which in turns fupported and moderated its power, which were fecurities to the people for the juftice of the monarch, and fecurities to the monarch for the fidelity of his fubjects, were buried under the ruins of the throne, Religion alfo was involved in the fame general wreck. Its property was feized; its altars were overturned; and its temples profaned, fold, or demolished; and its minifters, perfecuted, and continually placed in fuch a fituation, that they must either violate the dictates of their confciences, or fubmit to death, commit perjury, or fuffer punishment, often refigned themselves as victims, in order that they might avoid the commiffion of a crime. Thus attacking heaven itself, an impious fect vilified all religions, under a pretence of toleration, and permitted all modes of worfhip in fuffering them all to be oppreffed, and offering equal violation to them all. In their room they fubftituted political irreligion, without comfort for the unfortunate, without morality for the vicious, and without any check for crimes. Nay, crimes N O T E S. * Declaration of the king, July 26, themfelves were every where tolerated, encouraged, rewarded. Infurrection was confecrated as the moft facred duties. Solemn and public feftivals were decreed in honour of the bafeft and greateft criminals. Every fpecies of villainy was permitted under the name of patriotifm. France was inundated with bloodflames covered it with ruins--and firangers beheld with horror and confiernation that country, whofe laws, manners, politenels, profcrity, and above all, its fidelity to its kings, were fo much boatte of; and which by a frightful revolution, was fuddenly converted into a land of difcord, profcription, ex le, confiagration, and carnage, and where eve y violence was permitted with impunity. Inflamed with an infatiable ardour of exercifing this pretended fovereignty of the people, each wifhed to govern, and to divide the bloody remnants of the fupreme authority. Hence arofe innumerable affemblies of electors, municipalities, cantons, diftricts, and departments. Hence thofe fatal urns from which intrigue fcandalouíly procured the moft fhameful elections; that general lottery of all places, all public funétions, of the epifcopacy itfelf, and other church dignities, in which violence, deception, and deifim, obtained almoft the whole prizes. Hence focieties of confpirators and enthufiafts, flifling and fuppreffing, by perfecution and popular punishment, the voice and opinion of honeft men. Hence the galleries domineering over the ufurping affembly, and the delirium of the affembly itfelf, which thought it enjoyed authority, when it only fervilely obeyed the impulfe of fanatics and mad men without doors, and was fubjected to the fickle paflions of the people. In this general and fyftematic anarchy, created by the moft exccrable and profound art, thousands of victims were facrificed in all quarters, and provinces and whole towns were given up without mercy to the moft fhocking barbarities. Every one who was fulpected was configned to deftruction. The moderate were confidered as criminal. All thofe who had property to make them objects plunder, were denounced as enemies public good-and, in a word, amidst accufations commanded, folicited, and paid for; in the midft of committees of refearch, clubs, affemblies of all kinds, and national prifons, into which tyranny arbitrarily crowded faithful fubjects, whom judges, even chofen by the factious, could not condemn and dared not acquit; amidst the agitation of all paflions, excited at the fame time, virtue alone was a crime, established right was ufurpation, and every one was a fovereign, except the fovereign himself, The organ of the factious, the mayor of Paris, had the impudence infolently to tell his king and mafter, that the people. had conquertd him. The people, indeed, detained their monarch a captive in their kingdom, and his days perhaps would not have been prolonged but by the forced and falutary efcape of one of his brothers. The monarch and monarchy, how-, ever, ftill, in appearance, fubfifted, odious and intolerable decrees having given place to the fimple obfervations of his moft chriftian majefty. The revolters were irritated at this refource of juftice and reafon. The most criminal attempts were projected. A number of feditious perfons hurried to Verfailles; the caftle was forced, the king exposed, as well as the queen and royal family, to every outrage, every crime, and unheard of attack, thought only of fparing the blood of his people, and the tears which he would not have fhed for himfelf, moiftened the bodies of the gencrous and faithful guards who had been inhumanly butchered on the fteps of the throne. Providence, which watches over the defliny of kings and nations, faved at length his majefty, with the queen and auguft family from this horrible confpiracy; and if the criminals who were the authors of the execrable atrocities committed on the night between the 5th and 6th of October 1789, have hitherto enjoyed an odious impunity, the divine juftice has doubtless deferred their punih ment, in order to referve to all fovereigns, offended againft in the perfons of their noft chriftian majestics, the inflicting of the moft ftriking and exemplary vengeance on the guilty. Efcaped from the noft imminent dangers, his moft chriftian majefly at length length thought of freeing himfelf from that captivity in which he was detained, and of placing his facred perfon in a place of fafety, by retiring to the frontiers of France. He hoped that he fhould then be able to exert himself with more effect in bringing back his fubjects to a fenfe of his duty, and in faving the monarchy; and by yielding to the most imperious of all laws, felf prefervation, his moft chriftian majefty meant folemnly to have protefted againit all thofe acts to which he had conicated during his captivity. But providence, which in its wifdom often deranges, for the inftruction of mankind, the beit concerted plans, did not permit a refolutioa fo juft, fo lawful, and fo neceffary to the happiness of France, to be fuccefsfully executed. An infamous tour, the name of which polterity will never pronounce but with horror, the juft and ter. rible punishment of which will terve as an example to all rebellious and facrilegious towns that may ever have the criminal madnefs to with to imitate it, and to attempt the liberty of their fovereign-this town had the audacity to arreft their king. By a fignal he might have overcome this obftacle, but in that cafe it would have been neceffary to fhed blood; and his most chriftian majelly has proved, upon all occafions, that he would rather fuffer death himself than expofe the life of his fubjects. The return made to this generofity, goodness, and fignal magnanimity, was, that he was conducted amidst a thoufand dangers and a thoufand outrages continually renewed, back to his capital, to be there imprifoned in his palace, in virtue of a decree paffed by the ufurping affembly; to be there fufpended from his authority, as if any power upon earth had a right of paffing fo infamous and odious a fentence, and at length to be reduced to the alternative of forfeiting the throne or fubmitting to the moit pitiable conceffions, that is to fay, the alternative of a civil war, which would have converted France into an immenfe grave, or the acceptance of a conflitution dictated by the mean populace to perjured wretches without legal power, and deprived, themfelves, of their liberty, when furrounded by poignards, conflagrations, and all thofe convulfions which are the natural confequences of anarchy and revolt. The king of France, had he enjoyed perfect freedom, would doubtlets have confulted only the honour of his crown, the intereft of his people, his proteftation of the 20th of June, 1791, and his religion, which they endeavoured to make him renounce. Had he enjoyed freedom, by making a generous facrifice, he would certainly have refigned life, had it been neceffary, to relcue his people from that pretended conftitution, with which they were loaded: but all Europe knows that his refufing to accept it would have caufed the three faithful guards who were arrefted with him at Varennes to be maffacred before his eyes; that a famine created on purpote already preiaged the moft horrid attempts; that the murder of all the royal family was refolved on by the confpirators; that fuch of the nobility and clergy as in France remained faithful to their God, and to their king, would have been inftantly butchered, and that foreign powers would have had to punish thousands of criminals and regi→ cide moniters. A ray of hope, which fill ftemed to beam forth in the heart of his moft chriftian majefty, made him doubtless entertain an idea that the factious would foon repent, and he probably flattered himfelf, that by this left act of condefcenfion, he fhould be able to difarm their fury, and diffipate that fatal cloud of error by which they were blinded. He withed, as he himself declared,* that the conftitution might be judged by experience. In a word, he was obliged either to accept it, or condemn France to commit execrable crimes, to abandon it to all the horrors of civil war, and to bury it entirely under its own ruins. The king figned it, but his hand at the time was in chains. The act which he performed was invalid. The proteitation of 20th June had previoully annulled it. A prifoner can enter into no engagement, can fanclion nothing, nor accept of any thing; and a monarch, who is reduced to the neceffity of writing N 0 T E. * Letter of the king to the affembly, Sept. 18, 1791. couraged more than ever the effervefcence of those popular focieties which domineered over him, multiplied the dangers around his throne, were incenfed at the hofpitable reception granted by foreign princes to the French emigrants, and infulted, with intolerable licentioufnefs, all the fovereigns of Europe. In violation of their own laws, and contrary to their pretended renunciation of making conquefts, they invaded the Compte of Avignon, the bifhopric of Bale, pretended to fet an arbitrary pecuniary valuation on the facred property which they had, in Lorrain, and Alface, forcibly taken from feveral princes and states of the empire, and were offended because the police in all the neighbouring countries fuppreffed thofe inflammatory writings which they induftrioufly circulated, and punished thofe miffionaries of revolt whom they every where difperfed to corrupt the people, and to incite them to attack private property, to dethrone kings, and abolish all religions. Their audacity encreafing by remaining hitherto unpu nifhed, and rendered more violent by the moderation of neighbouring princes, this affembly, in their delirium, conceived the project of extending their ufurpation, and the licentious principles of the French to the Germanic empire, and without doubt, to the whole world. A miniftry, whom they obliged his moft chriftian majefty to accept, became the organ of their fecret views, and of views well known to all popular focictics. (To be continued.) Sept: that he is free, is not fo in reality. All exceffes of the preceding, dared to treat powers, with indignation at this horrid the royal majefty with ftill greater inIpectacle, had already concerted meafures fults, added weight to his chains, enfor avenging the honours of the Diadem. His late imperial majefty, by his circular letter, written from Padua, invited all the powers of Europe to form a confederation for this purpofe The convention of Pilnitz determined thofe circumftances, which made their imperial and Pruffian majefties to have recourfe to arms, but the acceptation of his most chriftian majefty, though forced, and confequently null, feemed to promife a new order of things. It rendered the danger lefs threatening, and the latter events feemed to afford hopes refpecting the future. It appeared that the greater part of the French nation, ftruck with the evils which they had prepared for themfelves, were returning to more moderate principles; began to acknowledge the neceffity of maintaining that form of government which was alone proper for a great ftate; and to teftify a defire of reitoring to the throne that dignity and influence which belong to monarchical governments. His imperial majefty was not completely fatisfied with thefe appearances, but he wifhed, as well as the other powers, united with him, to try the effects of a little longer delay, to avoid, if poffible, that difagreeable extremity, to which all powers feel themfelves now obliged to have recourse. A prodigious number, however, of faithful Frenchmen, banished from their country by crimes which they had feen, and of which they were the objects, imploring in vain at home timid or corrupt judges, and laws, which, in order to opprefs them, were made to speak or be filent, as might be moft favourable to the revolution-ranged themselves under the banner of honour, duty, and fidelity, with Monfieur the count d'Artois, and other prin-' ces of the blood, who, like them, had been forced to exile themselves from their country. A new ufurping affembly, which feemed to pride itself in furpaffing the N O TE *Month of July, 1791. S. Difpatch of the prince de Kaunitz veral minifters at foreign courts, 1791. Antiquities of Ireland. By Edward Ledwich, LL. B. M. R. I. A. and (Continued from Page 150.) THE originality of the Irish alphahaving been examined and re N. 0 TE S. *Decree of Monday, Feb. 6, 1792, which determines, that in writing to the king, the prefident fhall follow the formula adopted by the king in writing to the affembly. Difpatches of prince de Kaunitz to. M. de Funiendorff, Feb. 17, 1792. jected, jected, and Dr. Campbell having very A view and account of the Auguftinian monaftery at Devenish concludes this fection. Malachy, his fucceffor, erected at Bangor a ftone oratory, at which the natives greatly wondered. But on the arrival of Hen. II. he ordered caftles to be built. The colonization of this ifle by English fettlers was a scheme fteadily purfued for many centuries, and particularly by the minifters of Elizabeth, who obliged every grantee to conftruct a caftle, fort, or bawn, for the protection of his family and tenants. All the caftles, till the time of James I. were built by English mafons, and on English plans. Many of them, as in 1599, may be feen in Stafford's Pacata Hibernica, and moft of them remain in ruins. The battlemented houfes and bawns have been le veled by increafing civilization. The common fmall fquare caftles, by far the moft numerous, were the refidence of English undertakers. "All thefe are exiiting monuments of the infelicity of former ages, when cruel and domeftic wars convulfed and defolated the island, leaving little more than one million of wretched miferable beings to occupy this beautiful and fertile country. The final fettlement. of the kingdom at the Revolution, and the cherishing care of the Houle of Brunfwick, gave us a regular government, and juft and equal laws, emancipated us from commercial refraints, and promoted a fpirit of industry. Four millions of fouls now gratefully acknowledge fuch fignal bleflings, and devoutly. pray for a continuance of them." (p. The next fection concerns the ancient forts and caftles in Ireland, with the antiquities of Dunamafe and Ley caftle in Queen's county. Mr. L. refers the earthworks on the tops of hills to the hoftilities between the Firbolgs and the ancient inhabitants. Turgefius and his Oftmen formed that infinite number of earthen forts and caftles made of lime and ftone, which formed the keeps of, 197).-Fire-arms were first introduced the firft. Thefe were the Raths, which ferved both as places of fecurity and of judicature. The name, as well as that of Mote,, is of Teutonic or Gothic origin. Mota is the Icelandic Mot, a place of meeting. Dun, or as the Welsh call it, Dinas, is doubtful whether Celtic or Teutonic but Daingean is Celtic, and the primitive fortification of that people. The Rath, Dun, and Daingean were the only forts among the Irish before the Norman invafion, 1169: the Cathain, Cahirs, or Caers, were a fence or inclo fure; and when cities came to be built, the name of Caer was applied to them. Bringhean and Brug is a corruption from the Teutonic Borg and Borghen, a fortified eminence. Stone fabrics feem to have been uncommon; for Gelafius, archbishop of Armagh, made a limekiln feven yards in diameter, 1145, and into Ireland in 1489, 3. years before hand-guns or mufquets were known in England. In 1495, io Henry VII. an act paffed to refrain them to long bows, arrows, and bells. The conformity in the modes of fortifications of all nations is manifeft; but we must not thence infer that all had a Celtic origin. (p.199). A fpecimen of the natural history of Ireland, and of the manners of the Irish in the 12th century, p. 207-230. Giraldus Cambrenfis was the firft who gave a regular topographical defcription of Ireland. He firt treats of the natural hiftory, then of the wonders, and laftly of the colonization of the ife, and manners of the natives. He read his work, for three days, before the univerfity of Oxford, which Mr. L. confiders as a trong evidence of his fincerity. Coal |