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On the Vices of the French Magistrates. Communicated by VERITAS.

So little regard has been paid in France to the decorum of its public officers, that the government have tolerated the most flagrant violations of décency in the persons of those intrusted with the superior and inferior branches of authority. The wanton conduct of Fouché, and the beastly crimes of Cambaceres, are known to all Paris; yet the former is prefect, the latter one of the consuls. But the French think more of accommodating themselves to the vices and enormities of their rulers, than of removing those who are guilty: licentiousness first made them restless, then they were under a regular government; now licentiousness and cunning have fashioned their minds and bodies to servile obedience, and they drag their disgraceful chains in silence.

"Formerly the persons in office being by birth, education, and manners, gentlemen, were civil and courteous in the discharge of their duties; but now how widely different! Those in power support, enrich themselves by extortion of every kind, and the most unprincipled, unfeeling conduct, evidently evinces the origin of their manners." Such are the expressions of the republican sufferers who dare to think of their situation; a situation of which it is difficult to convey an adequate idea, without becoming an eye-witness of the facts daily passing on the other side of the Channel.

The following is a brief portrait of Mengaud's conduct, a wretch known and detested by all who have visited Calais. It was Mengaud who gave passports to travellers in France; the first officer before whom travellers presented themselves on their arrival in Calais :

Happily for the inhabitants of Calais, M. Mengaud is stripped of a great part of his power, and will, most probably, lose the remainder: it is now vested in the mayor and the corporation. It was a change long seriously wished for, as all persons, whether French or English, were insulted by his language, beat with his hands, cane, or whip, sometimes in his office, in the street, or at the theatre, and afterwards put in prison at his pleasure, without reason or remedy !!!"

Mengaud, after detecting a poor English cabin-boy of having fifteen shillings worth of eggs in his possession, which he had purchased for a venture, gave orders to have them all seized, and appropriated to his own private use, without any better motive than his hatred of the English nation!

Anecdotes of Lucien Buonaparte. By the Same.

FEW characters are so easily to be estimated as that of the next born brother of the present First Consul of France. Lucien Buonaparte affects the candour of Englishmen; he speaks of himself, as well as of public and private concerns, without reserve; his mistress, or his bottle-companion, if they please to listen, may learn. In the boudoir, or private apartment of Mademoiselle Mezeray, his history has been orally delivered. That celebrated courtezan and actress of the THEATRE DE LA REPUBLIQUE is familiar with the strength and weakness of this renowned being, who has played such opposite parts in life,

Не appears always to speak with regret at having quitted his first post, which was custodien to a warehouse in Corsica; he declares, that during his first public appearance he was honest; he believes, that as good fortune has robbed him of his integrity, so a reverse may leave him in his native poverty; and when there exists neither motive nor temptation, he may once more have to boast of being an honest man!!! At Bastia he pilfered the property of a petty retail grocer, to whom he was bound apprentice. He was once conspicuous among the Marfeillois brigands, and assisted at the taking of the Thuilleries, and the murder of the Swiss guards: these achievements took place in August 1792.

After being received as a member in the club of Jacobins and Cordeliers, he became assassin to the sanguiuary patriots Marat and Danton; and assisted these politicians in purging the land of liberty of the aristocrats who were confined in the prisons of the metropolis. The brewer Santerre, at present the scorn of Paris, selected our hero to guard the scaffold on which Louis XVI. was decapitated; and Lucien continued to enjoy the favour of Henriot, successor of Santerre. He became successively a sans-culotte, and one of the gens d'armes, and during the usurpation of Robespierre he watched the innocent in their dungeon, and afterwards attended them to the places of death.

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Lucien married, about this time, one of the ladies called the "FURIES OF THE GUILLOTINE;" but the fate of Madame, neither Lucien (notwithstanding his frankness) nor his biographers have recorded. After the execution of Robespierre he joined his brother Napoleone at Nice, who was under arrest as a terrorist; and in the spring of 1795 they travelled together from Nice to Paris, a distance of 700 miles, on foot, and then occupied a garret in Rue de Mouffalard. After Napoleone

ON THE VICES OF THE FRENCH MAGISTRATES.

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had married the mistress of Barras (the present Consular Majesty), he had interest enough to place his brother Lucien as a war commissary at Antwerp; and the victories of Napoleone having filled his purse, Lucien appeared once more in Paris, not as a pauper, but as a profligate of hope.

When Napoleone had seized the reins of government he made the illiterate Lucien minister for the home department. Lucien now possessed the means of giving to his inclinations a full meal; and at a public assembly in the Hotel de Richelieu, where the female part of the visitors amounted to nearly two hundred, he boasted of having had personal connexion with

them all.

By the battle of Marengo, Napoleone appeared to give law to the potentates of the continent; Lucien wished to avail himself of this power, and become the son-in-law of a king, an emperor, or a prince. He had married a second wife whilst he was clerk to a store-keeper in the south of France: this wife was an obstacle to the proposed royal union; Lucien gave her a glass of ice-cream-she ate of it, and DIED! The Consul himself sought for an alliance in Germany, but he sought in vain; and Lucien, to console himself for this disappointment, carried off by force, and confined for his sensual gratification, the wife of a rich Parisian banker. After quarrelling with Napoleone, he was banished from the Consular presence, and deprived of his ministry. Two rogues dread of each other; therefore Lucien's loss was compenanger sated by a lucrative embassy into Spain, by the sale of Tuscany, by the plunder of Portugal! Napoleone had his share of this peculation; and Lucien is now a senator, one of the grand officers of the Legion of Honour, and a pensioner of the Consul.

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Lucien neither holds the faculties, the courage, or military skill of Napoleone in high estimation; he says "NAP" is indefatigable and fortunate! Of Joseph Buonaparte he speaks well;, he thinks him an upright and an intelligent man; but he declares that Jerome Buonaparte "will never be fit for a stable-boy." Lucien's courage is unquestionable; he has twice fought with General Murat, who accused him of incest; and his presence of mind in calling out to the grenadiers not to desert their general, saved Napoleone from the dagger of ARENA.

Address to the Irish People; especially to the Peasants of Leinster. By a Man of Ulster.

DEAR COUNTRYMEN,

WHEN, in a former publication of the Dublin Evening Post, I addressed a letter to the peasantry of the province of Munster, I little thought that there were between them and me, within the bosom of your province, men, monsters I should call them! whose crimes, placed in comparison with the petty outrages of the counties of Limerick and Tipperary, make the latter appear almost pure and blameless. Little did I think that I should so soon have such dreadful provocation to address myself to you. In your province a crime has been committed which will ever shame the records of our country. The counties of Kildare and Wicklow are particularly charged with having principally furnished the band of hellish assassins who affrighted the capital of Ireland, murdered the good Lord Kilwarden, and with him would have destroyed the order, peace, and security of the land. You are stigmatized with this, and it behoves those who abhor the crime to rescue themselves from its odium. I cannot bring myself to believe that there can be any considerable portion of my countrymen in alliance with such actions or the principles which could produce them-I believe the great body of you to be innocent, and instructed, not only by the sad experience which we have had at home, but also by the suffering example of other nations. The crimes which have recently disgraced the Irish metropolis, I believe to have been prompted by French gold and French agents; but those crimes ought to have the salutary effect of opening your eyes to the character of that nation, and the operation of those principles which would make them a part of their offensive system against any nation or any government. If you are not to be treated like wretches without any regulated views, but that your mad mischiefs are to be opposed by the bayonet of the soldier and the rope of the executioner-if you are yet to be reasoned with, your resistance to the laws must be founded on the defects and oppressions of those laws, and the moral certainty of successful revolt, either by your own strength or by foreign interference. The first part of this proposition I shall reserve the last to be reasoned on. Of your inadequacy to overturn the government of this country by any effort wholly internal, there is already sufficient experience-to go further into the proof were a waste of words and time. The government of Ireland may be assailed by the beggary and vice of the land, but it will be

ADDRESS TO THE IRISH PEOPLE.

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defended by its property and its virtue. The next thing, therefore, to be considered is the consequences to result from the interference of France:-the simplest man in Ireland, who appeals to his understanding, will measure those consequences by the experience of other nations under similar cir cumstances and first in the list let us look at Belgium. Did she become free when wrested from the House of Austria? No; she became a province of France. Is it necessary to say more? Holland! The spirits of her ancient heroes, her free citizens, must feel all the agitation of human passion, to glance at a spot created by the hand of Liberty, but now sunk in such abject slavery as to be at once an object of scorn and instruction to the world. Venice had been an independent state for ages; she revolted against her government, and accepted the protection of Buonaparte: he made use of her riches and population in prosecution of his ambitious vjews, and what did he then? He did not restore to the Venetians their old government, he did not give them any new form of independence of his own construction; but he bestowed, he gave away, or rather he sold them to the Emperor of Germany. They, misled by the sound of French liberty, danced to the tune of Ca Ira, and now at their leisure they may chant the Galley Slave. Tuscany, affected by the madness of the times, would also have Buonaparte's freedom, and he did not refuse -the happiness, the liberty, and the property of nations are his playthings, his traffic; he handed the Tuscans over to Spain; one of the best Princes Europe could boast was superseded by an idiot, and the bauble of an Etrurian crown was placed on the head of a tool and slave of France. Piedmont! She too was invited to be, free-she repaired to the expected banquet, and had the poison of slavery thrown into her dish. Switzerland! Poor, unfortunate, ill-fated Switzerland! once simple, free, and happy, before the curse of French revolution and French principles was hurled against mankind-look at her now-three days have not passed since we have heard that her Diet, an assembly like our Parliament, if any assembly on earth can assume such glorious similitude of wisdom and freedom, three days have not passed since we learnt that her Diet was opened by a French General; and, doubtless, her Landamman and Deputies nominated by the same authority. Is this freedom? Is this independence? I should not wonder to hear to-morrow, that the next word of command from General Ney to the legislators of Switzerland was to fall into the ranks on some new expedition against the freedoni and happiness of nations. A similar fate has attended the Ligurian republic, and every spot of the earth fall

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