force which will necessarily attach itself to them, that they will break down and destroy all opposition, and the tragedy of France will become the tragedy of Europe; the plot the same, the actors the same, the incidents the same, and the catastrophe precisely the same. The stone which smote the image on the feet, will then be a great mountain and fill the whole earth.

The principal agents in this tremendous catastrophe, in this awful revolution which will grind them and their thrones to powder, are the monarchs of Europe themselves. They might have prevented this catastrophe, and they have accelerated it, and are accelerating it. Their present measures hasten, and will augment the calamity. Had they reformed their governments, in proportion as every thing was reforming around them; had they accommodated the machinery of civil rule, to the age on which it was to operate; had they admitted their subjects to every right, which they were capable of rightly and profitably using; had they assigned to talents and capacity, the functions which they confided to the insignificance of rank and title, and the assiduity of courtly flattery; had they husbanded their resources, instead of squandering them; had they linked themselves to one another, by the bonds of commerce and friendly intercourse, instead of forming double and triple alliances for mutual destruction; and had they left religion free to enlighten the public mind, to regulate the public conscience and manners, and to exercise its divine censorship equally over these who command and those who obey; the present state of things could never have existed, nor the approaching state of things been so much as conjectured. But they have done nothing of all this.

At present they are most absurdly studying to govern this age, by the maxims of ages long past and flown. The divine right of kings, so long laughed at as unworthy of refutation, is reviving under the modern name of legitimacy. They think that the pomp of a coronation will so dazzle the imagination of their subjects, that the unemployed artificers will think themselves in good business, and the hungry suppose themselves fed. They have revived the old war upon learning. When scholastic bodies, of the first rank, present to their sovereign respectful and dutiful addresses, they are answered that his majesty does not want learned men, but good subjects. And when ingenious and philanthropic men devise modes of instruction, which would carry the benefits of education into the huts and hovels of poverty, the schools are shut by a royal edict, lest knowledge should corrupt the poor, and taint their loyalty. Ignorance was once the mother of devotion; and now that one would have thought her past the time of life, she has become the mother of loyalty. As is the mother so is the daughter. Our consolation is, that like causes, when they operate, produce like effects.

What was once the CATHOLIC LEAGUE, to put down reformation in religion, is now become the HOLY LEAGUE, to put down political reformation. Nations are told, unceremoniously, that if their monarchs please to reform their government, it will be permitted; but if the nations themselves should presume to take any part in such measures, neighbouring monarchs will pour in their armies, and water the soil with the blood of its cultivators. These are the events which are passing before our eyes.

I have said, that the reformation was arrested, and forced into other channels, by the monarchs of Europe, who threw across its majestic current a dam, which obstructed its natural course. Change but the name of religion, for that of politics, and the same thing is a doing at this day, by the same class of men. The Holy League, as it is called, and the late meeting of sovereigns at Labach, have, for their express and avowed object, the resistance of political improvement in Europe. The confederated monarchs proclaim to the world, that they have bound themselves by the solemnest ties, to resist political improvements, not only in their own dominions, but in the dominions of all the surrounding nations. They, indeed, promise to effect wonderful improvements themselves, in the arts of civil government; as the popes of Rome repeatedly promised effectually to reform the Church, provided private reformers were silenced, and the body of the people continued in the due subordination of passive obedience. These two promises had the same origin, and will have the same issue. In both instances the object is the same; it is to check the general improvement of man, to prevent the illumination of the multitude, to promote the reign of ignorance, to perpetuate brutal servitude, to withhold the rights of mankind, and yet to exact all their services. It is the war of light with darkness, of ignorance with knowledge, of tyranny with the rights of man.

But this conspiracy of monarchs against God and man, cannot prosper: the means which they are employing to destroy the rights and liberties of others, are the best contrived instruments for their own destruction, and the utter demolition of their thrones.

Those enormous armies, which they are officiously marching into other countries, in order to destroy constitutions of government, peaceably formed by the people, and sworn to by their kings, occasion a load of expense, which, pressing on the feeble and exhausted finances of their own countries, will soon put it out of their power to support the expensive military establishments, which are necessary to keep their own subjects in submission. Their subjects also cannot avoid asking, how are we interested in these expensive military crusades? Why must we be burdened with taxes, paid to rob our neighbours of their rights? Why must we be taxed, to compel neighbouring monarchs to commit perjury, and resume their tyranny? It is also within the bounds of possibility, that when these armies return home, recruited with the slaves whom they have robbed of their liberty, they may turn their arms against their masters, and overturn their thrones in the defence of popular rights; and equally possible, that in defence of those masters, they may rob their respective nations of all the privileges at present remaining with them. History abounds in examples of both these kinds of military violence.

What must be the effect of the present military usurpation upon the rights of independent nations, on the popular feelings in all the surrounding nations? What nation hereafter making a successful revolution, will think of retaining their former sovereign in office? Whenever such a revolution shall take place, the people will say; what is it to us, whether our late sovereign Lord approve, or disapprove, of the constitution of government which we have framed? What security would it afford us, though he should swear

to support and maintain what we have accomplished? Have we not seen kings handed to their thrones by the suffrage and heart felt loyalty of their subjects, yet insidiously using their power to undermine the constitution, and to blast the fortunes, and shed the blood of the very men, whose too credulous loyalty had been the cause of their elevation? But what though our monarch were ever so much attached to our liberties and interests; do we not see a coalition of sovereigns, banded and sworn not to permit him to execute his best purposes? How can we be sure, that he will not be forced by them to retract his concessions, violate his oath, and on resuming his tyranny, plead compulsion, as the justification of his atrocities?

Indeed, revolutionary nations are now taught, that when they reduce, and circumscribe, the authority of their kings, they should dismiss them for ever; if they wish to secure the liberty which they have regained, or to preserve their own lives and fortunes. But whither shall the unhappy monarch retire? Shall he withdraw into a private station in his own country, to become the centre of perpetual intrigues against its liberties? Shall he, by a sentence of ostracism, be banished into other countries, to arouse the indignation of other sovereigns against his own country? Indeed mankind will be more indulgent, and less provident, than ever they have been, and more merciful than the men of this age are, if they do not find a compendious way to deliver themselves from all apprehensions. The monarchs of Europe, by their present interference in the internal concerns of other nations, have whetted the axe against their own order.