ing papers, and in collecting evidence against the deposed monarch, produced on the sixth of November, a report full of vague and unsupported accusations; and on the following day the committee of legislation presented a plan for his trial; in the preface to which it was declared-"That the moment is now arrived when the French nation can give to the world an example of the justice of a great people, exempt from any impure mixture of the human passions." This plan is detailed in the following articles:

1. Louis XVI. may be tried. 2. He shall be tried by the national convention.

3. Three commissioners, chosen from the convention by public election, shall be charged with the care of collecting all the documents necessary for the trial, and of presenting the result of them to the convention.

4. The commissioners shall terminate their report by an enumeration of the crimes.

5. The enumeration shall be printed and distributed.

6. Eight days after, a discussion shall commence on the act of accusation, when the charges shall be adopted or rejected.

7. If the act is adopted, it shall be communicated to Louis XVI. that he may provide for his defence.

8. A copy of the report and other papers respecting it, shall be also presented to Louis XVI.

9. If he demands the originals, they shall be carried to him by twelve commissioners.

10. The originals shall not be carried from the archives, until copies of them are taken,

11. The national convention shall fix a day on which Louis XVI. shall present his defence.

12. Louis XVI. shall present his defence in writing and signed by himself.

13. Louis XVI. may give verbal

answers.

14. After he has made his defence, and the expiration of any interval settled by the convention, they shall pass a sentence by public vote.

This mode of passing sentence was supported with great violence by the inveterate faction of the mountain, in the expectation that some whose consciences acquitted the king, might, from terror of the populace, be influenced to pronounce against him. If the opinion of the convention had been taken in the usual way, it would have been less subject to the operations of fear; but if it had been determined by ballot: there would most probably have been a majority in favour of the king on the first question; and, without doubt, a very decisive one, against his death.

The following were the principal proofs of guilt which were produced against the king.

1. A receipt from Bouillé, dated Mayence, October 15, 1791, containing an account of the expenditure of the sum of 993 millions, issued for the formation of the camp of Montmedy. This money had been distributed among the following persons:-Monsieur, the comte d'Artois, the prince de Nassau, the duc de Choiseul, Demandell, Bon, Hamilton, Lassale, Weyman, and several other general officers and private persons.

2. Another signed Choisel Stan

3. A letter, stating that the diamonds of madame Elizabeth had been transmitted on the 22d of June, 1791, to an officer of Hussars, who had carried them to the brothers of the late king,

4. A paper, proving that the editor of the Postilion de la Guerre, (a newspaper), had received 8000 livres from the civil list; and the Logographe (another public print) no less than 60,000 livres, during the short space of three months.

5. A great number of letters, &c. proving that Louis Capet was a monopolizer of corn, sugar, and coffee: these monopolies were made in foreign countries: the treasurer of the civil list superintended the business, and was ordered to advance to the amount of three millions.

6. A new order of chivalry, introduced under the name of "Chevaliers de la Reine;"-the decorations of this order consisted of a medal, one side of which was adorned with the portrait of the queen; the other had the following inscription- Magnum regina nomen adumbrat. Several persons had received this decoration, notwithstanding an express decree, forbidding the creation of any new orders of chivalry.

7. A bundle of papers, which prove that a person of the name of Gilles had received 12,000 livres, in order to pay a band of 60 men, against the express letter of the constitution; which forbids the king to maintain any armed men, without the permission of the legislature.

8. A paper box, full of proofs that Louis Capet had continued the

VOL. XXXV.

had emigrated to Coblentz; that a number of conspirators were continually assembled at the Tuilleries; that Bouillé had the audacity to repair there, since the invasion projected in 1791; and that from the day that the ci-devant comte d'Artois had been decreed to be in a state of accusation, Louis had assigned a pension of 200,000 livres to his children.

The consideration of the report was immediately succeeded by a question, of all others the most embarrassing to the convention, concerning the constitutional inviolability of the king. There can be no doubt that the king's life was fully protected by the constitution; and he could not, with any semblance of justice, have been condemned to death, although every charge brought against him had been proved; which was not the fact with one of them. The objection, however, which arose on this consideration, was most iniquitously over-ruled in the convention, by a post facto law; a measure equally unjust and destructive of freedom, as well as in direct opposition to those rights of man, which the French nation had held forth, with so much pride and effrontery, to the rest of Europe.

But while the mock trial was preparing for this degraded and insulted monarch by his wicked and inveterate enemies; the sad and adverse state of his fortune did not deprive him of every friend; several of his former adherents offered to stand forth in support of his innocence at the hazard of their lives. M. Cazèles, so distinguished in the first assembly by his zeal for monarchy and aristocracy, and who [0]

was

was then in England, solicited a passport, that he might appear as counsel for his former king. The same offer was made by M. Narbonne, ex-minister of war, and M. Lally Tollendal. The marquis de Bouillé transmitted an attestation in his favour, respecting the flight to Montmedy, and an exculpatory letter of M. Choiseul, respecting the money paid by the marquis to the king's brothers. M. Bertrand also ex-minister of marine, then an emigrant in England, manifested the most zealous solicitude to appear as an evidence on the trial of his deposed sovereign. But when the proposal made by Manuel, for assuring to all those who should speak for the impeached Louis, the protection of the laws, was suppressed by murmurings and hootings, the spirit by which the assembly was governed was too manifect to expect honour or justice from its conduct or decisions. sides, when Robespierre moved, on the 3d of November, that sentence should be pronounced against the king without further inquirywhen it was declared by him and his party, that the forfeiture of his crown implied the forfeiture of his life-that to put the question, whether he is a criminal?" would be to betray the faith due to the sovereign people, and that liberty demanded the immediate infliction of his punishment; there could then be but one apprehension, and one opinion of the final catastrophe, though the immediate completion of it was opposed and prevented by the more moderate party. Their opinions prevailed, and the arraignment of Louis was decreed. But though he was now reduced to a simple and accused ci

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tizen, he seemed to inspire the convention with apprehension and dread. They feared that the sad spectacle of degraded majesty, and the notorious injustice of the proceedings against him, would, in spite of all their cunning and hor‍rid manoeuvres, awaken the loyalty that slumbered, stimulate the loyalty that was still awake, or recall the loyalty that had wandered, to unite in saving the royal object of its former duty, affection, and ve neration, from the fate that appeared to await him. Conscious of acting with violence, the ruling powers feared it might be returned upon themselves. But what could be feared or hoped in a city, where 80,000 national guards, well equipped and disciplined, suffered themselves, on a former occasion, to be, as it were, disarmed by less than 6000 federated rabble from Marseilles and Brittany.

The many thousand inhabitants of Paris whose hearts were still loyal to the king, and whose wishes and prayers were continually offered up, not only for the preservation of his life, but the restoration to his throne, were either overcome by fear, or rendered powerless by astonishment, or deceived by false expectations; and Louis XVI. the best of their kings was left to his fate.

On the 11th of December, at so early an hour as five in the morning, the generale was beat throughout Paris, and a considerable body of cavalry, with several pieces of artillery, were introduced into the garden of the Temple. The noise occasioned by these preparations would have caused no small alarm to the king and the royal family, if they had not been previously in

formed

formed by Clery, his valet de chambre, of the designs which the convention had been agitating respecting him.

At 11 o'clock, while the king was endeavouring to calm his spirits by giving the usual instructions to the dauphin, or amusing the young prince by some engaging recreation, two persons of the municipality entered to inform him that they must, by order of the convention, conduct the young Louis to his mother. Of this cruel and unexpected separation, the king in vain demanded the reason; and, in a short time, one of the commissioners returned to inform him, that Chambon, the mayor of Paris, was preparing to make him an official visit. In this interval, the removal of the dauphin from him seemed to affect the king far more than any apprehension he entertained of the mortifying arrangements which were making to receive him as a public criminal, or the fate which he thought would finally await him.

At one the mayor appeared:He was accompanied by Chaumette, solicitor of the commune, Coulombeau, secretary of the rolls, several municipal officers, and Santerre, commander of the national guards, with his aids-de-camp. The mayor informed the king that he came to conduct him, to the convention, in consequence of a decree, which the secretary should read to him. When that office was performed, the king concluded some observations on the cruelty of depriving him of the society of his son, by saying, I am ready to follow you; not indeed because I am disposed to obey the convention; but because my enemies pos

sess the power to enforce obedience. A large military escort attended him from the gate of the Temple. At length, accompanied by the mayor, two generals, one of whom was Santerre, not long before a brewer, but now commander of the Parisian guards, and several municipal officers; in an ordinary dress, with neglected hair, and a face long unshaven, Louis XVI. was presented at the bar of the national convention. Nay, such were the form and appearance of the fallen monarch, that he seemed to subdue, for a moment, the horrid malignity of his enemies, and to awe the uproar of inveterate jacobinism into something like a respectful silence. The tumult of · those who occupied the seats and galleries ceased at once, and sunk into a solemn stillness, when the extraordinary spectacle of their former king was presented to them in such a state of humility and degradation.

Barrere, the president, immediately addressed him as he stood at the bar.-" Louis, the French nation accuses you. The national convention decreed, on the 3d of Dec. that you should be tried by it. On the 6th of December it was decreed, that you should be brought to the bar; and while the charges against you are read, you are permitted to seat yourself."

Louis, who well knew that it would be as vain to disclaim the authority as to resist the power of the convention, submitted in silence to the proceeding against him: and having availed himself of the permission to sit, heard, with profound attention the several papers read, in which he was accused of crimes which may be arranged in two [02]

distinct