PUBLISHED WEDNESDAYS AND SATURDAYS MY 70MM ffmmh \v urr u i-m i~,-, ' - No " 6 9> HIGH-STREET, BETWEEN SECOMJJ AND JHIRI) STREETS, PHILADELPHIA. [No. 98, of Vol. ll.] Discourses on Davila No. 29. f Continued.) THE Court, feeing than theHugonots did not execute the conditions under which they had been proinifed an oblivion of the past, at tempts to take off the Piinceof Conde and the Admiral, who had retired Well accompanied, to Noyers in Burgundy. They are advertised of their danger and escape to Rochell, Yeallemble their forces, and make themselves masters of Saintonge, Poitou andTourdine. The King or ders the Duke of Atijou to inarch against them. The two armies meet at Janfeneuil, without en gaging : they meet again at Loudun ; the rigor of the season preventff a battle. The excetfive cold obliges them to march at a diltance from each other. Distempers break out in both armies and carry ofF vail numbers. They open the next campaign in the month of March. The Hugo nots pass the Charente, breakdown the bridges, and guard all the paflages. The Duke of Anjou, by the means of a stratagem, pafles the river. The battle of Jarnac ensues. On the sixteenth of March, 1569, this famous action, so fatal to the Protestant cause and to liberty of conscience in France, as to have annihilated or at least to have opprefled both for two hundred and fifty years, took place. The young Duke of Guise distinguished himfelf 011 that day, by attacking the left wing of the Calvinifts, commanded by the Admiral and Dandilot at the head of the no bility of Britany and Normandy, and gave proofs of a courage, and talents capable ot performing as much good, or committing as much evil as his father had done. The Prince ofCondewho commanded the main body, opposed to the Duke of Anjou, supported with intrepidity the shock of the enemy, and when abandoned by his right and left, charged on all fides by the conquerors and surrounded by a whole world of enemies, he and those who accompanied him, fought, with desperation. In arranging his squadrons, he had been wounded in the leg by a kick of the Duke de la Roche foucault's horse, and in ( the combat his own was killed and overthrown upon him. This Prince, thus dangerously wounded put one knee to the ground and continued tofight, until Montefquiou, Captain of the guards of the Duke ofAnjoti, shot him through the head with a pistol. Robert Stuart, who had killed the Constable at the bat tle of St. Dennis, and almost all the gentlemen of Poitou and Saintonge, were cut in pieces, by the fide of the Prince. The Duke of Anjou, fought in the firft ranks of his squadron with a valour above his years, had an horse killed under him, and ran great rifques of his life. The Hugonots loft, near se ven hundred noblemen or knights of diftintftion. The soldiers, in derision, with feoffs and jnfults, brought th e body of the Prince of Condi, upon an ass or pack-horse to the Duke of Anjou at jarnac. L'an mil cinq cens foixante & ncuf Entre Jarnac & Chateau—ncuf rut porte mort fur line ancflV, Le grand enncmi de la MciTc. Young Henry, Prince of Navarre begged the body of die Duke of Anjou, who sent it to Veil dome to the tombs of his ancestors. Thus lived and died Louis of Bourbon, Prince of Condc, whose valour, constancy and greatness of foul, diflinguifhed him above all the greatest Princes and most famous Captains of his age. I fliall re verse the reproaches of Davila, and fay that he ueferves to be cannonized as one of the proto martyrs to liberty of confidence, instead of that croud of bloody tyrants with which the calender has beeu disgraced. fOR THE GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES. PHILADELPHIA, April 6. REVIEW Of Mr. Burke's Philippic against the Revolution Society in London, and the National dffembly in t ranee—in a Letter from a Gentleman in Hart ford to one in this City, dated March 20. T HAVE just been leading the Philippic of Edmund Burke, t ' le Revolution Society in London, and the National f CI un rancc - H has flatted a croud of ideas in my mind, 0 ' propriety I submit to your judgment. his work presents itfelf in two points of view—as the dccta anon of the fuft of English Orators, and as the result of the col ed wisdom of an old and experienced Statesman 1 acknowledge that in cither view, I am difappointcd in the Wednesday, April 6, 1791. performance. As a Philippic, it undoubtedly contains many high ly labored passages, exprefled in forcible and pompous language, abounding in brilliant dilution, and full of satirical wit, indigna tion and contempt. But where is the sublimity and pathos, tho' ofien attempted, which can eftablilh him as the rival of Cicero, or Dsmofthenes ? He has written on the sublime and beautiful—he atMs to be a liiblinie and beautiful writer—but he mistakes the bent of his ge nius His predominant talent is wit—a fpiightlincfs of allusion, and brilliance of metaphor, well calculated to figure in the pro ductions of a Swift or a Builer, but which loses its principal grace when tortured into sublimity, and obfeured by theaffefted rotun dity of pompous period. Examine a sample.—" The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulnejs, and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding me mory. Thus to ad m miller the opiate potion of amnesty, powdered with all the ingredients of/corn and contempt, is to hold to his lips, lnftead of the lain of hurt vunds, the cup of human misery full to the brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs." Is this style ?—-is it sense ?—is it Englilh ? But let us view him in the light of an able politician. He if undoubtedly right in aflertingthat Francchas at present no permanent constitution, and that government cannot long fubfiftin the National AlTembly. He is right in his idea that the revolution to this period has been the work of deftru&ion, that it has annihi lated the power, and seized the revenues of the King, the Clergy, and the Nobility—that it has rased to the ground the Baftile ot despotism, and has not yet eretted the fair edifice of constitu tional and well balanced government on its ruins. He may be right in deferibing the loss of public credit in France, a.id the in stability of their paper aflignats. He is right in censuring many wild relolvcs of the National Aflembly, many a£ts of unbounded licentiousness in the populace, and many needless indignities of fered to the persons of their sovereign and his family. Did it require the talents of a great statesman to discover that in the French revolution much was wrong, and all was incom plete ? Can this calumniator of France, be the fame Edmund Burke, who exhausted all his tropes in praise of America during her late contest with Britain ? At the very period of his panegyrics, would not our total want of a constitutional government, the weaknefsof our confederation, the depreciation of our currency, our public distresses, the wild ideas of licentious liberty, and the unbridled insolence ot our populace against the dignity of a So vereign, happily indeed for himfelf, beyond the reach of personal insult, have afforded him themes equally plausible and just, for contemptuous Philippic and melancholy prognostication ? No— he then asserted that wc had performed miracles—that we had tried anarchy, and found it tolerable—and that society was well regulated in America, by a Congress without power, and a go vernment without resource. He has since discovered that such miracles are incompatible with the climate of France! But whence all his fury against philosophers, who have aflerted the rights of mankind, and his frequent ridicule of this enlightened age. On the subjeCts of religion, of government,and of humanity,is not this age more enlightened than the preceding ? I grant that many of the philosophers whom he attacks were inaccurate in their ideas, and wild in their theories. Awakened (to express myfelf in Burke's manner) from the midnight darkness of despotism, their eyes were dazzled by the orient light of liberty, und instead of discerning objects in their native reality, their unaccustomed optics were pleasingly overstrained by a confufed glare of vifronary splendor. But have they done no service to mankind, and was no innova :ion neceflary to human happiness ? I am accustomed to view things on the brighter fide, and am pleafea with every bold effort of the mind, and every attempt to aflert the rights and dignity of man. Government, morality and religion, are too august in themselves, too well supported by reason, and too neccflary to the existence of rational society, to be overthrown by the attacks even of anar chy, sophistry, and infidelity. The world may perhaps reap even tual advantage from the labors of philosophers, whose tenets in many particulars deserve abhorrence—from the prophane ridicule of Voltaire, the wild reveries of Rouss e au. and the immoral sophistry of Hume. Such writers can never destroy the citadel of government, but they will demolish the bulwarks of tyranny — they cannot rase the temple of religion, but they will level the outworks of superstition and enthusiasm. But what mull be the view of a writer, who could overlook the merits of a Montesquieu, a Raynal, a Mably, and the long lift of amiable aflertors of the rights of mankind, and blend them with the faflious and the infidel, in one undiftinguifhing censure on philosophers ? What was the situation of France before the revolution—an un connected groupe of provinces, regulated by separate and contra dictory laws and customs of-junsprudence, and only held togeth er as a nation, by the undefined and despotic power of the sove reign. Her religion, bigotry in the lower ranks, deism in the higher, and intolerance in all. Her King, a despot in name ; her nobility infinitely too numerous for a Senate, and pofieffed of no legislative powers ; and her parliaments not even the shadow of a house of representatives. Her military force in the hands of the crown, her commerce degraded, her revenues colleCted by extor tion, and a great part of her lands mortgaged to support the indo lence of her clergy, her nuns, and her friars. Amid the prelent diffufion of science, and with the example of Br it ifh freedom at her door, and American independence among her allies, it was impoflible she could have continued long in so mortifying a situation. Though the only power of her fovcreign was despotism, her sovereign could be a despot no longer. No spring was left of fufficient force to move the wheels of a govern ment at once so complicated and disjointed. A revolution, if not immediately neceflary in theory, must appear to every reflect ing mind, at least unavoidable in fa£L If this sketch be justly drawn, what will become of all the elo quent periods of Burke's declamation, in which he advises them toguascl aga:nft innovations, and only endeavor to amend their ancient constitution. What was their ancient constitution, but an arbitrary and unlimited monarchy ? From their early history he might indeed have revived some unacknowledged clerical and ariftrocratical claims, but he could not find a trace of popular freedom. His amendments to the constitution of France must have been only made by adding some props and braces to the tot tering pillar of despotism. If a thorough reformation was necefifary in France, were not mo ft of the measures, which are the fubje&s of his censure, equal ly neceflary for the attainment of that end ? Was it not necessary to annihilate arbitrary power, that they might pave the way tor a limited monarchy ? Was it not neceflaryto destroy the exorbitant 805 [Whole No. 202.] claims of too numerons a nobility, before they could cftablilh a well-chosen and well-regulated house of Lords ? Might it not be neccflary to raise the representative power, which never before exilied, above its proper balance, that it might gain fuflicient force and energy to hold its just rank in a permanent conditution ?— Might it not be necelTary to melt down the whole people into a general mass, previous to the new calling and organizing a •veil balanced government ? Can the negative to these queltions be proved true, and till proved, may we notchcck at least the severity ot our censures ? Burre dwells principally on minutia : He catches the pi&ure of the present moment, but seems not to possess the talent of re trofpett and profpe6t, which accompanies a great mind. He indeed justly censures the capital error of the National As sembly—their ideas of pure democracy, and their apparent ignor ance of the neceflity, the indispensable neceflity, of the different orders in government; but he seems not to dwell on the fubjeft as a matter of importance : He throws it out as a vague fentimcnt arising in a mind, aiming its artillery at more essential obje£ls, at Parisian triumphs, profcriptivc injullice, Dr. Price, and the Revo lution Societv Whether the cftablifhment of a well-balanced government, and a free constitution in France will be effe&ed, as in America, b\f the united wildom of a National Convention ; or whether it mull be preceded by the horrors of a civil war. and finally be eftablifti ed in a treaty of accommodation, time alone can determine. But I think we may venture to predi£t that France will never again be fubje& to arbitrary government, and that (lie will at no very distant period reap an ample harvest from those feeds of li-< berty already planted in her foil, but which a Burke could not discover among the broken furrows. The advantages gained by France in the present revolution must be extensive and permanent—the errors of the National Affemhly will be transitory in effe£l—and post rity fpcaking of them here after, may perhaps invert the sentiment of Shakespeare, and fay, " The good that tkey have done lives after them, " The evil lies interred with their bones." Thus, fir, I have in a very hasty manner given way to my feel ings on the firft perusal of Mr. Burke's pamphlet. I pretend not to fufficient information to enter into minuter disquisitions. I will turn to a more agreeable fubjefh The firft Congress has now completed its sessions. If they do not retire with a loud clamour of universal applause. they may re ceive fufficient consolation from the general happiness which they have diffufed over our country. In no nation, by no legislature, -was ever so much done in so fhorta period for the cftablifhment of government,order,public credit and general tranquility. I only fear that the manifeft incrcafeofour cir culating coin, together with the additional resources of millions of paper securities so rapidly appreciating, and the circulation of bank notes, may injure those general habits of industry and eco nomy, introduced by former years of penury and distress : it will, unless drained off in more extensive and bene'ficial channels of commerce. CONGRESS. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES SATURDAY, Feb. 7. The B ANK BILL under consideration. MR. GILES'S Si'eech concluded. AGENTLKMAN from Massachusetts (Mr. Sedgwick) finding the usual import of ihe terms used in the constitution to be rather unfa* vorable to the docflrines advanced bj liim, ha» favored us with a new exposition of the word (necejfaryj he fays that neceflary as applicable to a mean to produce an end, should be construed so as to prodoce the greatest poifible quantum of public utility. I have been taught to conceive that the true exposition of a neceflary mean to produce a given end, was that mean, without which the end could not be produced. The gentleman's reasoning however if pursued will be found to teem with dangerous effects, and would juftify the aflumption of any given au thority whatever : Terms are to be so conltru ed as to produce the greatefl: degree of public utility—Congress are to be the judges of this de gree of utility ; this utility when decided on will be the ground of constitutionality, hence any measure may be proved constitutional which Congress may ludge to be ufeful ; these deduc tions would suborn the conllitution itfelf ar.d blot out the great dillinguifhingcharafteriftic of the free conititutions of America—as compared with the despotic governments of Europe, whicli confiftsin having the boundaries of governmental authority clearly marked out and afcertnined. The exclusive jurifdktion over 10 miles square has been adverted to by one gentleman (Mr. Ames) as a fpecifird authority, to which the one contended for is suggested to be incidental ; lie has reasoned iit this manner, Congress pofiefs jurifdic'tion over 10 miles square, &c. Congress may therefore eftablifli a bank, within the 10 miles square—and as principle is not applicable .0 place, Congress may exercise the fame autlio
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