thirty-four articles, arranged under the following general heads :-The republic: the division of the people; the state of the citizens; the sovereignty of the people; primary assemblies; the national representation; electoral assemblies; the legislative body; sittings of the legislative body; formation of the law; laws and decrees; the executive council; the connection of the legislative body with the executive council; administrative and municipal bodies; civil justice; criminal justice; the tribunal of appeal; public contributions; the national treasury; accountability; forces of the republic; national convention; correspondence with foreign nations; guarantee of rights. This constitution, though formed in "haste, and impracticable in many of its principles, was preferable to that which Condorcet had previously offered to his country. We shall therefore, pass it by, without further attention, and leave it to its fate, which was to be very soon lost in a vortex of despotism and terror. most in stirring up the flame of civil discord. The southern departments adherred to the discomfited party; and the city of Lyons, who had always manifested a zeal for the royal cause, and had expressed a decided disapprobation of the king's death, resumed a spirit of insurrection on the publication of the new constitution. It was there determined by a meeting of the departments, not only to resist, but, if possible, to reduce the convention while Marseilles and Toulon were actuated by the same counter-revolutionary zeal, and engaged in that confederacy for dissolving the existing government, which is known by the name of Federalism. The department of the Gironde, warmly engaged in the cause of its deputies; and these discontents had risen at Calvados into open revolt. On the 8th of July the committee of public safety made their report respecting the accused deputies. It is a curious instrument, and may be considered as an abstract of the prevailing opinions of the jacobin party, or at least of those which they wished to impress on the minds of the people. "The convention has ever been divided into two parties. Whether it was intended to rebuild the throne of the ancient dynasty, or to facilitate some foreign usurpation cannot be at present determined; but it is most certain, that very dangerous projects have been formed, and that a monster has It is very natural, whether it relates to individuals or large bodies of them, that, in a state of distress and inconvenience, hope should smile on almost any change of situation or circumstance; but the people of France had little reason to rejoice in the discomfiture of the Gironde faction, and the triumph of the Jacobins. Party distraction appeared to diffuse itself far and wide; and the agitations of the city of Paris had reached the depart-been sitting among us. Formerly ments. Brissot, and several of his associate deputies, who, to avoid the decree of arrest issued against them, had fled into the provinces, exerted themselves to the ut a defender of kings, be now feigned to defend the republic. Too suspicious to have an accomplice, he contrived nevertheless to acquire partizans and adherents. This man is Brissot. Previous to the 10th ofAugust the accused deputies had avowed their attachment to the monarchy; while they acquiesced in the forfeiture of royalty they combated republicanism. They wished to restore the throne, some for the son of Louis Capet, subject to the regency of his mother, and others for the duke of York, who is now in arms against us: but they all wanted to deprive France of a popular government. Petion signed, on the 10th of August, the order to fire upon the people. Vergniaud, assisted by his accomplices, caused the king to be suspended, that he might compound with public indignation. They all temporised, and seemed to promise themselves, that a national convention would be powerful enough to crush the republican party; hence, during the first days of its sittings, Manuel proposed to the assembly to fix the residence of the president in the palace of the Tuilleries, to allow him household troops, and to decree that the people should bare their heads in his presence. Thus, was it designed to preserve, during the inter-regnum, the image of one individual power. The faction did not, indeed, condemn the immortal 10th of August; but they deplored the private accidents which attended it: they flattered the people, in order to disunite them. Buzot and Barbaroux cunningly provoked the quelling of popular commotions, and attempted to oppress the sovereign power in the name of sovereignty. Roland served them by persecuting the republicans : : we saw them continually with Roland tracing the bloody picture of the fatal days of Septem ber, and we could also accuse Manuel and Petion, then both in magisterial office, who, being urged to stop those massacres, refused to interfere from the apprehension of losing their popularity. We could accuse Brissot of having asked, in the gloom of his curiosity, if the blood of Morande, his enemy, had not been shed. But to proceed to matters of more general interest when on the evacuation of Champagne the Prussian Kalkreuth made proposals of peace to Kellermann, this general transmitted them to the diplomatic committee and the council; but the accused deputies then governed the helm, and the letters of Kellermann are buried in secresy: and yet those very men, to save the king, appeared to be alarmed at the menaces of Europe. In despair at their defeat they changed their system. Brissot, who predominated in the council, exerted his influence over the choice of our deplomatic envoys: his friends and accomplices filled those places, and were directed by him. Mean while Barbaroux called a battalion of Marseillois to act against the convention, and rang the alarm of civil war. The traitor Damourier kept on his mask as long as Louis lived. He wished to favour young Orleans in preference to the young Capet: Buzot therefore proposed the banishment of the Bourbons, in order to attach the soldiers to a youth, who thus appeared to be delivered up to the fury of his enemies. Dumourier endeavoured to possess himself of our strong holds, threatened the national representation, and proposed to march to Paris to second the efforts of his accomplices. By these and others who formed their liberticide coun cil, they contrived to trouble Bourdeaux, Marseilles, Lyons, the north, and Corsica, where Paoli was crying down anarchy, in order to wrest that Island from the republic. Amidst these shocks, the committee of twelve was formed, to discover the conspirators; but being chiefly composed of their partizans or accomplices, it only became their support. It stripped Hubert, the substitute of the commonalty, of his functions, as the despot had done it betrayed its plan, of subjugating the citizens by terror. Many horrid scenes succeeded, which brought to our remembrance those perplexed movements of the first days of August, where the citizens implored the vengeance of the nation upon a menacing court. Indeed, a just sentiment of anticipation hurried on the people of Paris, since, in one night preceding the 21st of May, the alarm gun was to be spiked, the cannon of the commons, and of the temple, were to be seized, the son of Louis Capet to be proclaimed king, and his mother regent. When this plot had been executed, the individuals who composed the league, were to have been, in their own right, the life guards of the new king, and those who signalised themselves on the occasion, were to have been decorated with a black and white riband, and an appendant medal, representing an eagle in the act of destroying anarchy. This plot was on the eve of being put in execution: but the 31st of May, and the 2d of June, have extinguished it; and, from that period, the people have received a free and protecting government at our hands." Among the extraordinary cir cumstances of the eventful moment which is now before us, is the death of Marat, the friend or rather the tool of Danton and Robespierre, and, at least, a reputed leader of that party which had now obtained the ruling power in France. This furious incendiary, who, from the violence of his character, has been suspected of insanity, was assassinated on the 13th of July, by a young, well-educated and beautiful woman, from Caen, in Normandy, in the department of Calvados, which appears to have been particularly attached to the Gironde party. Charlotte Cordé was the extraordinary person who had conceived the project, as far as it depended upon her single arm, of destroying those men whom she believed to be the leading tyrants of her country. She had been for some time in correspondence with the principal persons of the opposite party; and was probably inflamed by them to that pitch of patriotic enthusiasm, which ended in the death of Marat and her own. After several unsuccessful attempts, the important moment at length arrived, when she found herself in his presence. The conduct of her Brissotin friends became the subject of conversation; and at the moment when Marat declared, that such traitors would find their reward be neath the guillotine, she plunged a dagger in his breast. Having perpetrated the deed which was the object of her visit, she walked, with perfect composure, out of the house, treated the officers who seized her with silent contempt; and suffered death on the scaffold, with the same calm fortitude which accompanied the perpetration of the deed that brought her to it. The The remains of the murdered Jacobin was buried with great pomp, and the corpse of this friend to anarchy was exposed in such a manner, and conducted with such accompaniments, as to excite, in its passage to the grave, the savage and cruel spirit which had been the principal feature of his life. Marat was an unfeeling, violent, and cruel character. It was he who, at a very early period of the revolution, uttered the horrid sentiinent, that three hundred thousand heads must be struck off, before liberty could be established. He was ever ready to incite others to violence and outrage, but was fearful of acting in his own person. He certainly possessed considerable abilities, and had acquired reputation by his literary productions, which were on the blended subjects of anatomy and metaphysics. Brissot, in his address to his constituents, represents Marat as a man whose soul is kneaded up in blood and dirt, the disgrace of the revolution' and of humanity; a wretch, whose crimes, added to the massacres of the 2d of September, have retarded for ages the universal revolution of mankind. The convention now proceeded to frame various decrees for civil, military, and naval regulations, for the dispatch of criminal causes, a branch of the executive government with which they appear to have been well acquainted, and the encouragement of the arts: ainong their less humanizing proceedings, the convention decreed, on the 27th of July, 100,000 livres, for the encouragement of artists; but when, or in what manner it was applied, we have no authority to specify. The following decree, pro posed by Barrere, on the 1st of August, and adopted by the convention, we shall give at large. 1st. The national convention denounces the British government to Europe, and the English nation. 2. Every Frenchman that shall place his money in the English funds, shall be declared a traitor to his country. 3. Every Frenchman who has money in the English funds, or those of any other power, with whom France is at war, shall be obliged to declare the same. 4. All foreigners, subject of the powers now at war with France, particularly the English, shall be arrested, and seals put upon their papers. 5. The barriers shall be instantly shut. 6. All good citizens shall be considered as under an especial obligagation to search for foreigners denounced, as concerned in any plot. 7. Three millions of livres shall be at the disposal of the minister at war, to facilitate the march of the garrison of Mentz to La Vendée. 8. The minister at war shall send to the army, on the coast of Rochelle, all the combustible materials to set fire to the forests and woods of La Vendée. 8. The women, the children, and old men, shall be conducted to the interior parts of the country., 10. The property of the rebels shall be confiscated for the benefit of the republic. 11. A camp shall be formed, without delay, between Paris and the northern army. 12. All the family of the Capets shall be banished from the French territory; those excepted, who are under the sword of the law, and the the offspring of Louis Capet, who are in the Temple. 13. Marie Antoinette shall be delivered over to the revolutionary tribunal, and shall be immediately conducted to the prison Conciergerie Louise Elizabeth shall remain in the Temple till after the judgment of Marie Antoinette. 14. All the tombs of the kings, which are at St. Denis, and in the departments, shall be destroyed, on the 10th of August, &c. From this decree, so charged as it is with hostile design, and democratic vengeance, the legislators who adopted it, proceeded to settle and arrange such public diversions and amusements, as were deemed proper to fill up the interval of cruelty; or, as some may think, to incite them to it. On the second of August, therefore, it was decreed, 1. That the theatres appointed by the municipality, should act three times, in every week, the dramatic pieces, called Brutus, Caius Gracchus, and William Tell, with such lesser exhibitions as are most proper to maintain, in the hearts of Frenchmen, the love of liberty and republicanism. 2. One of these pieces shall be acted once in every week, at the expence of the republic. 3. Every theatre, in which any performance, tending to revive royalty, shall be audaciously represented, shall be shut up, and the managers punished with exemplary severity. It was also ordered, that the Marseilles hymn, which was hereafter to be denominated the hymn of liberty, should be sung after the concluding scene of all theatrical spectacles. We must now mention a very ex traordinary project, which marks the daring spirit of the man who conceived it. On the 15th of August, Barrere proposed, that the people of France should declare, by the mouth of their representatives, that they will rise in one body, in defence of their liberty, equality, independence, and the constitution. This proposition being received with loud bursts of applause, Barrere presented a plan for carrying his design into effect; and it was shortly introduced in its matured state, by the committee of public welfare. Barrere concluded the speech with which he introduced the decree, in the following manner. "How happy will the time be, when, after having driven their enemies from their sacred territories, the people of France shall, on their frontiers, erect majestic columns, on which they will engrave the sublime decree, by which you have declared, in their name, that you renounce every idea of conquest, and the abolition of royalty. Behind and near these columns, shall be impregnable strong holds, arsenals well stored, and freemen. Thus shall you wait in peace, the respect or hatred of the universe." This extraordinary decree contains the following articles. 1. From this present moment, till that when the enemies shall have been driven from the territories of the republic, all Frenchmen shall be in permanent readiness for the service of the armies. The young men shall march to the combat; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and cloathes, and attend in the hospitals; the children shall make lint of old linen; the old men shall cause |