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small addition to the territorial taxes, enabled it to abolish the gabelle on salt and other imposts which were oppressive to the lower orders.-These proceedings increased the popularity of the assembly. And, on the other hand, the national odium and indignation towards the ancient government were heightened by the publication of what was called the minister's red book, containing an account of money issued from the treasury in pensions and gifts during the present and two last reigns. From this catalogue, which was published by a committee appointed to investigate it, and was descanted on with extreme severity in the national assembly, it appeared that the pensions and gratuities granted by the crown made a material part of the burthens which were so oppressive to the public, and that his majesty's brothers were among the principal receivers.*-The merit of some of the pensioners pleaded strongly in their favour, especially that of the military emeriti.—But these instances of well-applied liberality were little known, and had they not been repressed by the enemies of the court, who were employing this publication as a mean to exasperate the public mind, they would, perhaps, have been considered as a small extenuation of the profusion of their sovereign, in thus lavishing the revenue of a nation which was groaning under the burthen of unequal taxes.-Hence it arose that this measure was seen to answer every purpose desired by those who were labouring the subversion of monarchy.

During these civil transactions, reports were spread abroad of designs against the present government, in which his majesty was supposed to be implicated. To remove these suspicions, if possible, the king suddenly made

* Bertrand de Moleville extenuates the demerit of the court in this matter. He says, in contradiction to an assertion of Camus, that the pensions amounted to near a fifth of the annual expences, that the average annual amount of the sums entered on the red book during fifteen years from 1774 to 1789 was 14,940,000 livres; and that the king's brothers had not, on the same average, received yearly more than 2,000,000 livres.-He also disproves what the enemies of the queen had asserted respecting the vast sums remitted to the court of Vienna.-[B. de Moleville's Annals. 2. 355. 63.]—To these annual payments we must add 15,600,000 livres, granted to count d'Artois at different times, for the discharge of his debts.-[Livre Rouge. 154.]—We cannot have a stronger proof of that extreme, and even culpable ductility of disposition, and yielding temper, which were the chief causes of the king's miseries, than is afforded in these pecuniary matters. Whilst he was economical in what related to his own person, he suffered himself to be prevailed on to sanction, with his own hand, these lavish grants to his brother.

f Annual Register. 111. 113.

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made his appearance in the hall of the assembly:† and, after complaining of the attempt to shake the foundation of the new constitution, "he declared "it to be his desire that it should be known that the monarch and the "representatives of the nation were entirely united; that their wishes "were the same; that he would defend the constitutional liberty, the "principles of which had been consecrated by the general wish, in con"cert with his own; and that, conjointly with the queen, he would early "form the heart and sentiments of his son for that new order of things " which the circumstances of the empire had introduced and sanctified.” This decisive step inspired with confidence that ascendant democratic party whose intention it was to render the sovereign subservient to the legislature. It, at the same time, filled with dismay that respectable minority in the assembly which, till this instant, had, still hoped to see the dignity of the crown restored, with the splendour which would be derived from liberty, instead of the false lustre of absolute power; to see slavish submission giving place to the cheerful obedience and hearty loyalty of a free people. -The immediate consequences of it was a decree, enjoining every member to take a newly-devised civic oath, under the penalty of being excluded from giving his vote on any occasion.-After these transactions, by which the king lost the confidence of the partisans of monarchy without gaining that of the democrats, and afforded his adversaries grounds for charging him afterwards with disingenuousness, the assembly proceeded in their deliberations on several important matters which were, in succession, submitted to its consideration.

The apprehension of a war between Great Britain and Spain, in which France might be involved, occasioned the question to be discussed, "in "whose hands the power of making war or peace shall be vested?” The result of which was a decision of the assembly,‡ "that this right belongs "to the nation: that war shall not be declared but by a decree of the legislative body, which shall be made on the grounds of a formal and "necessary proposition from the king." This resolution, which added materially to the power of the legislature, was followed by another which

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+ February 4.

h Annual Register. 129.

May 22.

i Moore. 2. 149.

was rather a matter of triumph than of essential advantage to it.-All distinction of orders as to civil rights had been already abolished. But the adversaries of the nobility, not satisfied with having disarmed them, discovered their aversion, as well as the plenitude of their power, by a decree to destroy every vestige of them by the abolition of titles, armorial bearings, and liveries. Nor can we have a stronger proof of the disrespect into which the French nobility were fallen, in the assembly, than was presented on this occasion; when, notwithstanding the voices of the nobility and their friends were raised against it, a decree was passed, by which above a hundred thousand persons were despoiled of their hereditary rights without a faint effort to resist so glaring an act of arbitrary power.

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At this time also the civil list was submitted to the consideration of the assembly; and was settled by it at £.1,250,000 a year, and a dowry of £.200,000 on her majesty.-This was followed by some regulations respecting the clergy, who were declared to be elective. And a law was now passed of much importance to the commercial world, which rendered bankrupts, and even their children and those who may come in possession of their property ineligible to any public office, or to the municipal council or committee, till they shall have paid the whole, or their proportion of their father's debts.

The civic oath had bound the king and the national assembly to each other, and many of the late measures had a tendency to conciliate the attachment of the nation to the present system. But those wise politicians who had brought the revolution so near to a conclusion, reflecting on the general effect of exhibitions which strike the senses, and the fondness of the French nation for parade, devised the expedient for interesting the body of the people in the revolutionary cause by a public act of CONFEDERATION. The day already distinguished as the anniversary of the taking of the bastile being announced for that purpose, the president and the inhabitants of the surrounding country laboured with indefatigable industry to prepare a grand amphitheatre in the camp de mars, near the city.Persons of all descriptions pressed to do their part in the work; the sexes vied with each other in zeal; and the genius of the nation was seen in the manner of conducting the operations; in which gaiety and mirth were blended

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Moore. 2. 103.

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blended with labour. The preparations being completed by the appointed day, the ceremony was performed with great pomp; his majesty, and the national assembly, and la Fayette on the part of his troops, solemnly swearing to maintain the constitution, amidst immense crowds of spectators, after the celebration of the mass by the popular bishop of Autun, assisted by 200 priests dressed in white garments bound with the national coloured

ribbons.'

The expediency of this celebration, in order to persuade the whole nation of the general attachment to the existing government, and thus create a confidence in it, was already evident. While the assembly was exerting itself to establish the constitution on a firm basis; the partisans of the old government in the provinces, irritated by the vexatious tyranny of the democrats, particularly in the affair of the abolition of titles, were meployed in exciting opposition to its measures.-The convention was alarmed by intelligence of the intrigues and movements of the aristocrats in various quarters of the kingdom.-Symptoms of disaffection appeared in the fleet fitted out at Brest on occasion of the expected hostilities between Great Britain and Spain. "-The same disaffection had discovered itself in the army. The marquis de Bouillé, governor of Metz, who was known to be a steady loyalist, had been ordered by the assembly to quell the mutinous troops and citizens of Nancy, which, in the extreme of democratic licentiousness, had bid defiance to all discipline, and he had offended the democrats by the alertness and severity with which he had executed his commission."—He was suspected of using means to effect a counter-revolution by creating disaffection among the troops. The Parisian mob clamoured against him as a partisan and instrument of the aristocrats to shed the blood of their patriotic brethren: and, to such an excess was their violence carried, that they surrounded the house of assembly, and peremptorily demanded the heads of de Bouillé and all the ministers who had been concerned in the transaction. °

This affair was followed by an immediate change in the administration. -When Necker left his peaceful retreat in Switzerland, and was led by the love of fame to take part again in these scenes of turbulence, he was not

aware

July 14.

I Moore. 2. 156. m Ann. Regist. 145.

n Bouille. 206. Ann. Regist. 153.

• Idem. 153.

aware that the views of the French patriots far exceeded his own, and they would prove uncontrollable by him. He meant only to reform, and built his hopes of glory on being the restorer of the French monarchy. They meant to abolish. They appear at this period to have considered their interests as totally incompatible with the existence of the smallest remain of the feudal system; to have been afraid of the lion even when he lay dead at their feet.-As soon as the assembly perceived that he was not disposed to countenance their revolutionary measures, they grew dissatisfied with him and at last, such was the change of sentiment in the nation during the progress of the revolution, that this reformer, this champion of French liberty, who had laid the foundation of the democratic power by advising his sovereign to consent to the double representation of the tiers etat, completely lost their favour by advising the king not to give his sanction to the decree for the abolition of tithes.-After this he found himself surrounded by enemies: and when he heard his head demanded by the voice of the populace, which he knew to be in harmony with the sentiments of the democratic partisans in the assembly, not aspiring to the honour of martyrdom from the hands of those who, a few months since had hailed him as their deliverer, he sent his resignation to the national assembly. This was received with mortifying indifference, and he was suffered, after some small obstruction from the municipal officers, to retire quietly to his native country. Persecution, whatever affliction might have accompanied it, would have consoled him with the idea of importance. But contempt inflicted a wound for which vanity had no remedy. Happily for him, he could still have recourse, for consolation, to a consciousness of upright intentions even in his most erroneous councils.-A new arrangement was now made of the ministry; in which monsieur de Montmorin took the lead as premier, assisted by de Lessart, who succeeded Necker as minister of finance; and Thevenard and du Portail succeeded de Luzerne and Tour du Pin in the naval and war departments.

Our attention is now called to the conduct of the French government towards foreign nations.-We, at this time, find it addressing addressing a manifesto to other states, in which they declared, "that the French nation, proud of having regained the rights of nature, would never outrage them in other

66

VOL. III.

P Ann. Regist. 150. 54.
2 B

66 men. 9 Ann. Regist. 145. 146. Odouards, 2. 145.

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