fact cannot be contradicted. For this, and a variety of other reasons, the ignorant multitude are furious, and not to be restrained at the commencement of a revolution, and are rather the followers of the camp than the standard of liberty; and they are to be pitied rather than to be reproached. All the sins resulting from revolutions or rebellions lie at the doors of oppressors, who are the primary cause of them. If we look back on the riots, tumults, and rebellions in the govern. ments of Europe, we will see that despotism was the radical cause of them all. Taxation, however disguised in the means, always appears in the effect. As a great part of the community are reduced thereby to penury and want, they are consequently always on the brink of commotion. Ignorant and depraved as they unhappily are, without any prospect but wretchedness before them, and without any information, or the means to gain any, farther than to know and feel that their oppressors and tyrants are exalted and exalting themselves at their expense, consequently they are easily heated to outrage, and are as easily executed by their enemies when heated. The one-thousandth part of the money expended, to aggrandize and support despotism, is more than sufficient to educate all the poor orphans, and support comfortably all the superannuated poor in a nation, and these who are the most helpless and the greatest sufferers. The one-third of the civil list of the metamorphosed emperor Napoleon, was sufficient to provide comfortably for every poor person in Paris; and the same might be said of other countries. There is no ruler, no matter what his title is, for they are nothing but nicknames at the best, earns more than twenty-five thousand dollars annually, which is the salary of our president, who I conceive to be a more useful, ingenuous, disinterested, and better informed ruler than any other in the world. [This was written in the time of Mr. Jefferson.] While I feel the most implacable indignation and disgust at the despot who robs his country and fellow-men of their dearest rights and natural privileges, I can scarcely avoid almost idolizing the patriot who, regardless of the solicitations of ambition, who, deaf to the calls of interested motives, who, dead to the fascinating love of popularity, and the excitements of power and opportunity to aggrandize himself, walks in the paths of political rectitude and republican consistency, and who, with a philosophical

patience scarcely to be equalled and never exceeded, in ancient or modern times, treats with silent contempt the accumulated calumnies of the votaries of aristocracy and despotism. Indeed, I do not know which to admire most, the political or the philosophical rectitude of Mr. Jefferson. With respect to the first, I would compare him to a Cincinnatus; and to the second, to the lion, looking back with sovereign contempt on the braying of the stupid ass mentioned in the fable. This every one must acknowledge that allows patriotic actions to speak louder than hypocritical pretensions.

It is barbarously wicked for any individual to accept, or any government to appropriate millions for the support of rulers, when thousands would be more than enough. The iniquity of such injustice is greatly enhanced when we reflect that the poor, with all their wants upon them, are compelled to aggrandize despots, who oppress and keep them as ignorant as they are wretched, and thus they are forced to take the bread out of their children's mouths, to help to make up the enormous salaries of their tyrants. Hence, the hearts of the humane are shocked daily, in Christian countries, with the sight of thousands of half starved and naked children, and beggars bending with age, while the poor-houses are crowded with miserable objects, and the jails with the fruits of legal barbarity. Widows, with their weeping infants, are carted away on the death of their husbands, and imprisoned in almshouses to work for the public, while their support is scanty indeed. All these evils might be remedied if a fund was established in each large metropolis; and every right honorable pensioner on government, even the sovereigns themselves, would deposit part of their millions in each fund. Earls, dukes, and lords, by appropriating a part of their enormous salaries and pensions for this honorable and noble purpose, would solace many a virtuous and honest heart, dry up the tears of many a melting eye, and make thousands of widows and millions of half starved and naked orphans dance for joy. The miserable haunts of the poor would then be known, because it would be their advantage to make their case known, whereas now they keep it a secret, lest they be carted to the work-house. Petit larceny, the offspring of poverty, would then be greatly lessened, as well as highway robberies and murders, with their concomitant executions.

Such a plan might easily be put in practice without any embarrassment whatever. The relief and education of mil. lions would be effected merely by devoting a part of the public taxes, funds, and lands to common schools.

We will briefly notice the greatest of all phenomenons, the coronation of Bonaparte, who, though equal to Robespierre in cruelty, is far superior to him in guile and fascinating sophistry, which this unexpected event abundantly proves, and which I consider as the most consummate piece of villainy ever acted on the theatre of the universe. This occurrence proves that religious, as well as political apostacy, has become of late familiar, not only to the demagogues, but many of the citizens of France and potentates of Europe. The people of France, after many invincible struggles, at last burst their manacles asunder, asserted their native rights and unalienable privileges, formed, or endeavored to form, a representative government, and a constitution upon principles of civil liberty; but for the want of stability, precaution, watchfulness, and public virtue, they have, from time to time, become the dupes of restless, ambitious, and enterprising adventurers, who, in conjunction with ruffians delighting in disorder and innovation, endeavored to accelerate contention and produce anarchy, that they might thereby have an opportunity to mount the chariot of commotion, and, seizing the loosened reins, wield the scourge of civil war, to ride upon the storm, and enslave the people. The reasons that mankind are so wretchedly fooled, and robbed of their dearest rights and privileges, are, first, they are not sufficiently jealous of those they entrust with power; and, second, it is difficult for a nation, habituated for centuries to slavery, ignorance, and degradation, to be taught in the school of civil liberty, and to become proficients in practical as well as theoretical republicanism.

Notwithstanding this difficulty, were it not for interested demagogues and ambitious despots, nations, who once anticipated the sweets of liberty, would not easily forego its paramount blessings. To say, as do many of the advocates of despotism, that mankind are not capable of enjoying the superexcellent blessing of rational freedom, is an infamous calumny, an impudent falsehood, an insult to the human family; it is, in short, degrading them far below the brute creation, for that

many brutes do enjoy their liberty, and yet are not injurious to civil society, is a stubborn fact. By saying that men are not fit for freedom, is to make chains, stripes, insults, starvation, and degradation their choice, the domineering frowns and imperious commands of tyrants their delight, and peace, plenty, domestic happiness, and national freedom at home, and respect abroad, the objects of their detestation; but, as facts are superior to reasoning, the instance of America presents itself to give the lie to these infamous calumnies.

The executive conduct of the French usurper exhibited his political hypocrisy with a witness, and his systematic villainy without disguise. Not content with becoming a first consul, under the pretence of acting for the benefit of the citizens of France; still professing to be a friend to the people and a firm votary of republicanism, he affected change after change,

BUT FIRST ORGANIZED A STANDING ARMY, WITHOUT WHICH HE NEVER COULD HAVE ENSLAVED THE PEOPLE OF FRANCE, but would, long ere now, have met the premature fate of Robespierre. From a first consul, he has, with long and hasty strides, attained emperorship, with all the hypocritic solemnity and magnificence of royalty. Thus, the people who spilt rivers of human blood to establish a representative government, and to transmit this blessing to their children, for the want of prudent jealousy and watchfulness, have been forced to aggrandize the monster that has robbed them of millions of lives and billions of treasure; nay, to spend thirty millions of dollars, exacted from the mouth of labor, to mount him on the throne of the decapitated Louis XVI, whose crown is placed on the head of this wandering adventurer. This is the effect of entrusting any man, or set of men, with power: then let America behold, take warning, and shun the snare, the fatal rock on which the republicanism of France has been shipwrecked. See the country's freedom destroyed, thousands reduced to beggary, even in Paris, to exalt a legion of honor, or rather a legion of despots, rolling in luxury at the expense of the public; while weeping liberty is totally ban. ished, to make place for the most dreadfully formidable military, ecclesiastical, and hereditary despotism that ever terrified, degraded, and tormented the human family. This is Bonaparte, that was so affected at his coronation with tender emotions, (or, rather, pretended to be so,) that he could

scarcely refrain from shedding tears of keen sensibility when taking the imperial oath to defend the liberties of the people, and could only express it in broken monosyllables. This brings to mind the impolitic and imprudent conduct of the sovereign pontiff, who attended his coronation. In particu. larizing a few spontaneous thoughts on this unparalleled event and unprecedented crisis, I do not by any means wish, much less intend, to give umbrage to a certain sect of people whom I respect, as well as all other denominations, as all their titles and appellations are synonymous with me. Virtue I admire and revere, wherever or in whomsoever I can see it flourish. But I will prove, from the principles and tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, which I ought to know, being educated and brought up in that persuasion, the prefixed animadversion. I will first allow, as candor obliges me so to do, that his holiness was instigated more by fear than love, more by constraint than desire, to leave the papal territories and take a long and tedious journey, at an advanced stage of life, to crown a man that he could not avoid knowing was a hypocrite, a mur-derer, a robber, and a Mahometan; but I must at the same time affirm, that it was his bounden duty, as heaven's representative on earth, to sacrifice his life sooner than his virtue. Thus he would have honored, whereas he has eternally degraded, the religion he professed to be the defender of; and its author, whose viceroy he professes to be. Can it be sup. posed that the meek and lowly Redeemer, who who loses his life for my sake shall find it, and he who keeps my commandments is my friend," can look with complacency on the meanest of his children who would willingly support, assist, and encourage an individual robber, or a gang of them? How must he, therefore, look upon the man who is exhibited as infallible-supreme in holiness and in power, the teacher of virtue, the father of devotion; and who, by profession, is the friend of God. With what disapprobation must he behold him prostituting the sacredness of his holy character, exalted station, and sovereign title, in sacrilegiously depositing an imperial crown on the head of a conqueror, whose hands are yet reeking, red with the innocent blood of thousands, murdered in cool blood, and millions slaughtered in his anger: who waded through seas of human blood to imperial honor, regardless of the widow's and the orphan's cries, whose rela

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