often changed their tyrants, but never their tyranny, not even in the mode and instruments of its operation. An armed force has been the only mode from the first, which free governments may render harmless, because they may keep it subordinate to the civil power: this despotic states cannot do.

The mock "republican" leaders, as they affect to call themselves, but the jacobin chiefs in this country, as they are known and called, are the close imitators of these French examples. They use the same popular cant, and address themselves to the same classes of violent and vicious rabble. Our Condorcets and Rolands are already in credit and in favour. It would not be difficult to show, that their notions of liberty are not much better than those of the French. If we adopt them, and attempt to administer our orderly and rightful government by the agency of the popular passions, we shall lose our liberty at first, and in the very act of making the attempt; next we shall see our tyrants invade every possession that could tempt their cupidity, and violate every right that could obstruct their rage.

Every democrat more or less firmly believes, that a revolution is the sure path to liberty; and, therefore, he believes government of little importance to the people, and very often the greatest impediment to their rights. Merely because the French had begun a revolution, and thrown every thing that was government, flat to the ground, they began to rejoice, because that nation had, thus, become the freest nation in the world. It is very probable many of the ignorant in France really thought so; it is lamentable, that many of the well-informed in this country fell into a like error.

H

It is essential, therefore, to review the history of that revolution, at least with so much attention as to deduce a few plain conclusions. Popular discontents naturally lead to a forcible resistance of government. The very moment the physical power of the people is thus employed to resist, the people themselves become nothing. They can only destroy; they cannot rule. They cannot act without chiefs; nor have chiefs, and keep rights. They are blind instruments in the hands of ambitious men; and, of necessity, act merely as they are acted upon. Each individual is nothing; but the chief, having the power of a great many to aid him, can overpower, and will destroy, any mutinous citizen, who presumes to find fault with his general's conduct. Thus a revolution produces a mob. A mob is at first an irregular, then a regular army, but in every stage of its progress, the mere blind instrument of its leaders. The power of an army, of necessity, falls into the hands of one man, the general-inchief, who is the sole despot and master of the state.

Every thing in France has gone on directly contrary to all the silly expectations of the democrats, though most exactly in conformity with the laws of man's nature, and the evidence of history. If this kind of contemplation could cure our countrymen of their strange, and, perhaps it will prove, fatal, propensity to revolutionary principles, and induce them, in future, to prefer characters fitter to preserve order than to overthrow it, then we should grow wise by the direful experience of others. We might stop with our Rolands, without proceeding to our Dantons and Robespierres.

Another remark is, that these changes have no

tendency to establish liberty. A new struggle, like the old one, must be by violence, which can only give the sceptre to the most violent. The leaders will aim only at the power to reign, and it will not be their wish to lessen that power, which they hope to gain as a prize. The supreme power would not tempt them to such efforts, if it was to be made cheap and vile in their eyes, by bestowing it on the despised rabble of the cities and the common soldiery. These men are unfit for liberty; and, if they had it gained for them, would give it away to a demagogue, who would have, in six weeks, another army, and a new despotism, as hard to bear and to overturn as that which they had subverted. Nor could the leaders establish liberty, if they tried the supreme power being military, the contest can only determine what general shall hold it. A military government, in fact, though often changing its chief, is capable of very long duration. Rome, Turkey, and Algiers, are examples: France may prove another.

Thus the progress of mob equality is invariably to despotism, and to a military despotism, which, by often changing its head, imbitters every one of the million of its curses, but which cannot change its nature. It renders liberty hopeless, and almost undesirable to its victims.

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CHAPTER III.

A VIGOROUS EXERTION OF LAWFUL AUTHORITY, NOT PALLIATIVES, REQUIRED TO SUPPRESS

TREASON.

THE plans of an enlightened and permanent national policy may be defeated by, and, in fact, must depend upon the desperate ambition of the worst men in the commonwealth; upon the convenience of bankrupts and sots, who have gambled or slept away their estates; upon the sophisms of wrong-headed men of some understanding; and upon the prejudices, caprice, and ignorant enthusiasm of a multitude of tavern-haunting politicians, who have none at all. The supreme power of the state will be found to reside with such men; and in making laws, the object will not be the general good, but the will and interest of the vile legislators. This will be a government, not by laws, but by men, and the worst of men; and such men, actuated by the strongest passions of the heart, having nothing to lose, and hoping, from the general confusion, to reap a copious harvest, will acquire, in every society, a larger share of influence than property and abilities will give to better citizens. The motives to refuse obedience to government are many and strong; impunity will multiply and enforce them. Many men would rebel, rather than be ruined; but they would rather not rebel, than be hanged.

Many of the mob have been deluded with the pretence of grievances; but they well know, that the method of

redress, which they have sought, is treasonable; they dare to commit the offence, because they believe that government have not the power and spirit to punish them.

This seems, therefore, to be the time, and perhaps the only time, to revive just ideas of the criminality and danger of treason; for our government to govern; for our rulers to vindicate the violated majesty of a free commonwealth; to convince the advocates of democracy, that the constitution may yet be defended, and that it is worth defending ; that the supreme power is really held by the legal representatives of the people; that the county conventions, and riotous assemblies of armed men, shall no longer be allowed to legislate, and to form an imperium in imperio; and that the protection of government shall yet be effectually extended to every citizen of the commonwealth*.

In a free government, the reality of grievances is no kind of justification of rebellion. It is hoped that our rulers will act with dignity and wisdom; that they will yield every thing to reason, and refuse every thing to force; that they will not consider any burden as a grievance, which it is the duty of the people to bear; but if the burden is too weighty for them to endure, that they will lighten it; and that they will not descend to the injustice and meanness of purchasing leave to hold their authority, by sacrificing a part of the community to the villany and ignorance of the disaffected.

* The italics are the Author's, not the Editor's; it is strange that the emphasis should now fall so justly, where Fisher Ames laid it when he wrote.