Feb. 13th, At this meeting the affembly fuppreffed all 1790. monastic establishments for ever, and confifcated all their lands; allowing, however, the prefent friars and nuns to continue in the obfervance of their monaftic vows; granting them fome moderate ftipends for maintenance; and to the nuns, the fpecial favour and privilege, (which was indeed an act of great humanity, independent of its juftice) that they fhould not be removed from the convents in which they then refided, without their own confent and free choice.

As the business of the clergy was now brought nearly to a conclufion, at leaft with refpect to fact, though not entirely as to time, we shall purfue it to the end, leaving those intermediate matters which occurred in its course subject to further observation. In the fucceeding month of April, the affembly completed their plan. They voted away, in purfuance of their prior refolution of November, all the territorial poffeffions of the church, deftining them in general, but not specific terms, to the payment of the public debt. They affigned to the churchmen, in return, certain fixed penfions, which though much fmaller than their former revenues, were, perhaps, barely fufficient for their existence; although not in any degree fuitable to their paft habits, condition, or modes of living; many of them being neceffarily of the first families in the kingdom,and long ufed to fplendour, refpect, and opulence. The affembly likewife, at this time, began to iffue to the creditors of the ftate a new kind of paper money

under the name of affignations, that is affignats, on the church lands thus confifcated, which were to be the general fecurity for all the paper thus iffued. From hence originated that inundation of affignats which have fince deluged France and the neighbouring countries; and which have excited the aftonishment of Europe, through the extraordinary exertions which they have enabled her to make.

It was a curious circumftance that Mirabeau, who had fo lately publifhed a fevere Philippic against the emperor Jofeph for the injuftice of his claim on the Scheldt, and in which he particularly reprobated his conduct with respect to the plunder of the monafteries and convents in the Low Countries, fhould now, in fo fhort a period of time, have fo totally departed from the fentiments which he then avowed, that through the whole progrefs of the prefent bufine, he was, on every occafion, the itrongest and most determined leader in, or fupporter of all the violent proceedings carried on against the French clergy. The following fentence, addreffed to the emperor, in the treatise we have mentioned, will ferve to illuftrate this conduct as well as to justify the observation:

mutual rights, yet they confidered their own diftinct interefts as being of too great a magnitude, and too immediate an importance, to be facrificed to the weakness, the caprice, or to the perfonal terrors, of their wretched, imprifoned fovereign.

In this ftate they naturally turned their eyes in the firft inftance to their own refugee princes at the court of Turin, with whom they held a clofe correfpondence, particularly from the fouthern provinces; but these ruined princes, who were beholden to ftrangers for fhelter and fubfiftence, could afford no other means of fupport or affiftance than the little which might poffibly be derived merely from their names and rank; while this fource, weak and confined as it would have been at beft, was ftill farther narrowed, and reduced almoft to nothing, by the peculiar unpopularity in which the rafhnefs and imprudence of the count d'Artois, had very unfortunately involved that prince. The alarmed and diftreffed nobility did not, however, reft here; they are faid to have been inceffant in their applications to all the neighbouring continental powers for their interference in delivering their king, and in affifting to eftablifh in their wretched country fome juft and equitable form of government, which, under the fanction of a limited and well-regulated monarchy, might put an end to the prefent horrid fcene of confufion and anarchy, while it afforded liberty of perfon and fecurity of property to every order and clafs of the people.

But it happened unfortunately with refpect to the caufe of the diftreffed, that Europe feldom has

been, through a long courfe of years, in a itate lefs capable of affording the fuccour now demanded, or in which the minds of the people, or the difpofition of the fovereigns, were lefs calculated for undertaking any enterprize, than at the prefent. The mad ambition of the emperor Jofeph, under the influence of the overwhelming power and vaft defigns of Ruffia, to which he became fo miferable a dupe, befides the ruin and the fpirit of revolt which it fpread through his own vaft dominions, had in no fmall degree deranged the general policy of Europe; for while feveral ftates were watching with apprehenfion and difmay, the dreaded evils which the farther progrefs and fuccefs of the dangerous combination between thefe two mighty empires were capable of producing, others, who being more powerful were lefs apprehenfive of danger, were, however, no lefs occupied in attending to the fame objects, in the hope of deriving fome benefit to themselves in the iffue, from the poffibly difaftrous events, and from the unfore feen circumftances of difurion, which the courfe of fo doubtful purfuit, and of fo impolitic and unnatural an alliance, might be capable of producing. While all fpirit of adventure was thus effectually reftrained in the centre and north of Europe, the court of Spain, fo clofely united in blood and alliance with the king and government of France, was, at this critical feafon, when the existence of the great and parent ftock of the Bourbon line was more than at flake, moft induftriously involving herself in a ridiculous fquabble with England, the object of difpute fcarcely bearing or deferving a name; and was

wantonly

wantonly and blindly rufhing into a conteft which he was totally incapable of fuftaining. On the other fide of the Mediterranean, the king of Sardinia, befides his being by nature a peaceable prince totally indifpofed to war, was not, from the ftate of his finances, of his army, of his fortreffes, or of any of the lead. ing requifites effential to fuch a decifion, in any condition to hazard the experiment, even fuppofing that his own difpofition had prompted him ever fo ftrongly to the meafure.

Under these circumftances it fo happened, that fcarcely in any age ancient or modern, whether among refined or half civilized nations, any fimilar body of men, fo fuddenly involved in the most pitiable ftate of degradation and ruin, ever excited to little fympathy, or ever met with fo cold and forbidding a reception, as the French nobility experienced upon this occafion in all the neighbouring countries. They were, almoft without exception, every where beheld with a prejudiced and malignant, rather than a kind or benevolent eye; and even while they yet poffeffed money, found it difficult to procure fhelter. It would be in vain to attribute this general public diflike (for it was much fronger than mere indifference) to political caufes or motives, any more than to the particular difpofition of fovereigns. For, although the human mind willingly makes many great facrifices to laws, to government, and to power, it is by no means difpofed to refign its fympathies or antipathies to the will or opinion of others; and perhaps lefs fo to its rulers than to any. In whatever interests the heart it is extremely tenacious; nature feeming

to have implanted that principle in order to afford fome fhelter or refuge, even in defpite of power, to the forlorn victims of oppreffion and diftrefs. There feems much room then for prefuming, unless fome more cogent caufe can be produced, than the infufferable vanity and arrogance, which had ever marked the character of that people, whether collectively or individually, through all the days of their profperity, was now, in the hard feafon of their adverfity, too well remembered by thofe neighbours, whom they had heretofore treated with the moit fupreme and mortifying contempt.

But the overweening confidence, the rafk and imperious language, with the precipitate determinations of the national affembly, were fully competent to the creation of enemies abroad as well as at home, who might otherwife have been friends, or at least indifferent fpectators. In their rage for the total overthrow and abolition of the feudal fyftem, they had paid as little regard to the rights and interests of foreigners, as they had done in all cafes with refpect to thofe of their own nobility and clergy. The duke of Wirtemberg, the prince of Deuxponts, with many other German princes both fecular and ecclefiaftical, held great poffeffions in Alface, and other provinces, which France had heretofore wrenched from the empire in the days of its troubles and distress, and which these princes held by the fame original tenure that they dil their other eftates more immediately at home. Thefe feveral districts, with all the ancient rights appertaining to them, were, in the year 1648, after the forcible transfer of paramount dominion by arms hal [13]

already

already taken place, farther fecured, confirmed, and guaranteed to the poffeffors, in the ftrongeft manner, by the celebrated treaty of Weftphalia, to which France herfelf was a contracting party, and from which alone the can derive any legal title or claim to the provinces in queftion, of which thefe leffer fiefs compofe a confiderable part. Yet these rights, fo authentically confirmed and guaranteed, had been, without the smallest explanation or ceremony, totally fet afide and fubverted, by the fimple decree of a new and unheard-of body of men, who fuddenly called themfelves a French affembly, while a captive king, in violation of treaties by which he was perfonally, and his country through him directly bound, and in direct contradiction to his own opinion and advice publicly communicated to that affembly, was compelled, moft unwillingly, to give his fanction to this violation and wrong.

We have already feen the indignation excited in the affembly, juft before the king's removal from Verfailles, upon receiving his letter, in which he had ventured to expoftulate, in the gentleft terms, upon the impolicy and danger, as well as the flagrant injuftice, of this, and of fome others of their acts, which had been then haftily decreed; we have likewife feen, that at ten o'clock at night, in the midft of that dreadful tumult, in which his life apparently hung by a fingle hair, he was obliged, without comment, explanation, or referve, to give his fanction to this decree, as well as to that which established and confirmed the revolution, and to all others which were then in readi

9.

nefs. Upon this, as well as upon every other occafion in which the fubject was at all mentioned, the national affembly affected to treat the rights and claims, as well as the perfons and condition of the foreign princes with the most infufferable contempt; nor did their great bond of right and fecurity, the treaty of Weitphalia, which is confidered as the Magna Charta of the Germanic empire, and held by that people as little lefs than facred, meet with any greater respect.

The

This occafioned a general outcry against the French, and particularly against the conduct of their aflembly, in Germany; while the injured princes, no lefs irritated perhaps by the injurious treatment which they received, than by their immediate loffes, were inceflant in their applications, both individually and colledlively, to the diet of the empire for protection and redrefs. diet took up the business with great fpirit; and though the untoward ftate of public affairs did not yet afford leifure to the great powers of the empire to take fuch an active share in the bufinefs as might give immediate efficacy to its proceedings and intentions, it was by no means the lefs fenfible of the injury and wrong, and of the infult thereby offered to the whole Germanic body. It is not indeed improbable, that the vexatious inability of enforcing its refolutions which the diet now experienced, ferved much to increafe its indignation and refentment. We accordingly find, that the diet became and continued exceedingly adverfe, and avowedly difpofed to be hoftile to the new French government, which they confidered as commencing its career by a flagrant

violation