jected; but it is not a blind fatality, or a necessary con- "For they shall hear me call, and oft be warn'd CHAP. XV. 1794. 103. Just Provision con- rection of for the cor The death of Hébert and the Anarchists was that of guilty depravity; that of Robespierre and St of sanguinary fanaticism; that of Danton and his federates, of stoical infidelity; that of Madame Roland these exces and the Girondists, of reckless ambition and deluded virtue; that of Louis and his family, of religious forgive to think to set bounds to himself in any thing that is bad; to resolve to sin in number, weight, and measure, with great temperance and discretion; that he will commit this sin, and then give over; to entertain but this one temptation, and after that shut the door, and admit no more. Our corrupt hearts, when they are once set in motion, are like the raging sea, to which we can set no bounds, nor say to it, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further. Sin is very cunning and deceitful, and does strangely gain upon men when once they give way to it. It is of a very bewitching nature, and hath strange arts of address and insinuation. The giving way to a small sin does marvellously prepare and dispose a man for a greater. By giving way to one little vice after another, the strongest resolution may be broken. 'Tis scarce imaginable of what force a single bad action is to produce more: for sin is very teeming and fruitful; and though there be no blessing annexed to it, yet it does strangely increase and multiply. As there is a connexion of one virtue with another, so vices are linked together, and one sin draws many after it. When the devil tempts a man to commit any wickedness, he does, as it were, lay a long train of sins; and if the first temptation take, they give fire to another. Let us then resist the beginning of sin! because we have then most power, and sin least.”—TILLOT SON, Serm. X. Works, i. 91, fol. ed.—This might stand for a graphic picture of the downward progress of the revolutionary passion in nations; philosophy will strive in vain to give so clear an elucidation of the causes which render it, when once thoroughly awakened, so destructive in its career. * Paradise Lost, iii. 185. XV. 1794. CHAP. ness. The moralist will contrast the different effects of virtue and wickedness in the last moments of life; the Christian will mark with thankfulness the superiority, in the supreme hour, to the sublimest efforts of human virtue, which was evinced by the believers in his own faith. It is this superiority which provides a remedy for the injustice which has occasioned it. Posterity invariably declares for the cause of virtue; for it has ceased to have any interest to support that of vice. The march of democracy, though not prevented by the wisdom of man, is speedily stopped by the laws of nature. The people in the end learn from their own suffering, if they will not from the experience of others, that the gift of unbounded political power is fatal to those who receive it; that despotism may originate in the workshop of the artisan as well as in the palace of the sovereign; and that those who, yielding to the wiles of the tempter, eat of the forbidden fruit, must be driven from the joys of Paradise, to wander amid the suffering of a guilty world. Genius, long a stranger to the cause of order, resumes her place by its side; she gives to a suffering, what she refused to a ruling power. The indignation of virtue, the satire of talent, is wreaked on the panderers to popular gratification; the sycophancy of journals, the baseness of the press, the tyranny of the mob, employ the pencil of the Tacitus who portrays the decline and fall of such convulsions. It is this reaction of Genius against Violence, of Virtue against Vice, which steadies the march of human events, and renders the miseries of one age the source of elevation and instruction to those which are to succeed it. Whatever may be the temporary ascendency of violence or anarchy, there can be but one opinion as to the final tendency of the laws of nature. We can discern the rainbow of peace, though not ourselves destined to reach the ark of salvation; and look forward with confidence to the future improvement of the species, from amidst the storm which is to subvert the monarchies of Europe. CHAPTER XVI. CAMPAIGN OF 1794. " 1 These XVI. 1794. 1. of the Revo THE war," says Jomini, "so rashly provoked by the CHAP. declamations of the Girondists, was hardly commenced in good earnest, when it became evident that all the established relations and balance of power in Europe were Military to be dissolved in the struggle. France and England had France in not yet joined in mortal conflict, and yet it was easy to consequence foresee that the one was destined to become irresistible lution. at land, and the other to acquire the dominion of the seas. It was not the mere energy of the Revolution, 1 Jom. v. 3. nor the closing of all other avenues of employment, which produced the fearful military power of France. causes, while they alone were in operation, proved totally insufficient to withstand the shock of the disciplined armies of Germany. It was the subsequent despotism of the Committee of Public Salvation which consolidated the otherwise discordant materials of the Revolution, by superinducing the terror of authority on the fervour of freedom. The mere strength of enthusiastic feeling, even when exerted in the noblest of causes,-that of national defence, can never produce those steady and persevering efforts which are requisite for durable success. It is power and force which can alone mould the evanescent passions into a lasting form. Liberty without discipline would have perished in licentiousness; discipline without spirit would have proved inadequate to the struggle. It was the combination of the two which became so fatal to the European XVI. CHAP. monarchies, and, by turning all the energies of France into one regulated channel, converted the Reign of Terror into the School of Conquest. 1794. 2. weakness. But while these changes were in progress on the conAnd naval tinent of Europe, a very different fate awaited the naval armaments of France. Power at sea, unlike victory at land, cannot spring from mere suffering, or from the energy of destitute warriors turned out with arms in their hands to plunder and oppress mankind. Fleets require nautical skill, commercial wealth, and extensive credit. Centuries of pacific exertion, habits acquired during many successive generations, are essential to greatness on that element. The general meets with resources of all kinds in the countries into which he turns his troops; the admiral finds nothing to support him in the sterile waste of the ocean and before he can even put to sea and brave the fury of the waves, he must have laid in extensive stores, and constructed and equipped his vessels at an enormous expense. Without an accumulation of capital, and the gradual formation of a nursery of seamen, it is in vain to contend with an established naval power. The destruction of the capital and commerce of France during the fury of the Revolution, while it augmented, by the misery it produced, the military, destroyed, by the penury it occasioned, the maritime resources of the Republic. Before the British fleets had issued from their harbours, the flag of France had almost disappeared from the seas; commercial wealth, private enterprise, were extinguished; and the sanguinary government found that victories were not to be acquired at sea, like conquest by land, by merely Th. vi. 271. forcing column after column of conscripts on board their vessels.1 Jom. v. 4. 3. The consequence was, that from the very first the naval Respective superiority of Great Britain became apparent. France, navies of the at the commencement of the war, had eighty-two ships of the line, and seventy-seven frigates; but the officers, chiefly drawn from the aristocratic classes, had in great part emi two powers. CHAP. XVI. 1794. grated at the commencement of the Revolution; and those of an inferior order who supplied their place, were deficient both in the education and experience requisite for the naval service. On the other hand, Great Britain had one hundred and twenty-nine ships of the line fit for sea, besides twentyfour guard-ships, and above one hundred frigates, of which ninety of each class were immediately put in commission; while seamen of the best description, to the amount of eighty-five thousand, were drawn from her inexhaustible merchant service. Unable to face their enemies in large fleets, the French navy remained in total inactivity; 1 New Ann. but their merchants, destitute of any pacific employment Register, for their money, fitted out an immense number of privateers, Jom. v. 278. which, for a considerable time, proved extremely injurious App. No. 6. to British commerce. 1 pp. 336-342. James, i. of the Ha Act. Ar against it. The efforts of government at the same period were 4. vigorously directed to the suppression of sedition in Great Suspension Britain. The great extent and obvious danger of the illegal beas Corpus and revolutionary societies which had been formed in every gument of part of the kingdom, in close alliance with the French Mr Fox Convention, left no room for doubt that vigorous measures were necessary to arrest the contagion. For this purpose, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was proposed in Parliament by government, and excited the most angry discussions both in the legislature and the nation. Mr Fox objected in the strongest manner to the proposed measure, as destructive to the best principles of British liberty. "Was the government about," he exclaimed, "in their rage at the hatred excited by their tyranny, to erect tribunals to punish the indignant public? Was terror, as in France, to be made the order of the day, and not a voice to be allowed to be lifted against government? Was it resolved to demolish the British constitution, one part after another, under pretence of preventing its destruction by French principles? The object of the societies, which they did not scruple to avow, was to obtain universal suffrage. The word Convention was now held up as an |