cluded all fort of defence; but what I had written went much farther than defence.

With refolutions overcome, as foon as they were formed, by occupation or idleness, I was awakenb 2 ed

dealt only in living fubjects. The reeking hearts of Foulon and Berthier, and many more, minced down by the professors, while palpitating under the diffecting knife, are bold evidences of their zeal. They have even far outdone the original by their copy. The Egyptian practitioners difplayed their art only upon condemned criminals, given up to them by the law. Your profeffors dragged from before the feat of judgment men uncondemned, men even unheard, men whom the judges even of democracy endeavoured to protect, or at leaft pretended to do it, and, ftretching them on the diffecting table, demonftrated to their students, amidst the writhings and convulfions of expiring nature, the means, ends, and objects of the rights of men.!

Studies of this kind, do not qualify for practice in Scotland. The doctors of Paris will get no establishment here. Other testimonials of skill most be produced, than the purchased diploma of a mob. Till then we must (though as civilly as we can) decline the honour of your attendance. To you, Gentlemen, we have no objection; but we do not like the school in which you have been taught, and we think very ill of its doctrines.

What is it that rational men can find to applaud in the revolution of France? Is it the capture of the Baftile ?

Gentlemen, when I first heard that this fortress was demolifhed, I rejoiced as much as any of you can do. If eating and drinking are to be reckoned the appropriated and legitimate marks of applaufe, I should have met with you any where, and fhould have ate myself (had you demanded it) into a furfeit, or drunk till my eyes reeled in their fockets.

ed only by the establishment and manifeftoes of the Society of the Friends of the People, begun at London in fummer 1792. I then wrote a few pages; which form the beginning of this addrefs. I

Indeed I did confider it to be a great deliverance. Little did I think that this fortrefs was demolished, only to make a Baftile of all France. Little did I imagine that is was demolifhed by favages, and not by heroes. But its captors did not leave their nature long in queftion. They have published their own annals, and recorded their own triumphs. Read them, Gentlemen; tell me if all the centuries of the Baftile can equal the months of their domination. When Arné mounted its walls, I had figured to myself the shades of patriots long departed, the Bruti and Sidneys, and all the fpirits of the illuftrious dead, hovering in air over the battlements, fmiling upon the children of liberty in France; and my foul, in imagination,flew to join them. Alas! Gentlemen, it was no fuch heavenly vifion! the demons of perdition rode in the air! The towers of the Battile fell before the incantations of the enemy of man! The fhades of the brave and free, did not tune their heavenly harps to the immortal song of liberty! The fpirits of the abyfs difcordantly howled the dirge of the human race!

A man in whose mind the very name of freedom, did not raise strong emotions, and who judged of every thing merely in reafon, might have condemned the taking of the Bastile by an armed mob, during the fiting of an affembly, whose bufinefs it was legislatively to correct the establishments, and abolith the evils of France, This he might have done even though as ill informed of the caufes and ends of this demolition, as myself, and most of the inhabitants of this country, were at that period. This he might have done, even confidering this capture in all the light colouring, in which the songsters of the

day,

I have mentioned there alfo the way in which (after again ceafing) it was refumed.

It has been gone through with great interruptions; and in the very middle of many other things.

b 3

day" (fome of them, I am forry to fay it, female ones) have decked it. But this I could not do. The exceffes of new born liberty must have my pardon, because in fimilar circumftances they might have had my participation. But when it became evident that the deftroyers of the Baftile were to be the tyrants of France; when they deftroyed all government but their own defpotifm; and established a fytem of cool and deliberate murder; my foul turned with abhorrence from these men of blood; nor can I conceive how any human creature can now, by any self illufion, continue to allow the falfe glare, and affected fplendour of this capture, to play about his fancy, and prevent the eye of reafon and natural feeling from fixing upon its obvious caufes and effects; both of them fuch as to degrade and vilify the nature of man.

If it is not the capture of the Baftile, furely, Gentlemen, it is not the fifth and fixih of October, that you mean to celebrate. Even in Paris itself, these days are not defended. I cannot conceive they should be applauded here.

However, in this ftrange hiftory of the triumphs of France, it is not eafy to fay what may be done. Paris has lately witneffed another triumph; more execrable far, in my opinion, than even the infernal proceffion of October 1789. I do not know, Gentlemen, what you think of this last triumph; but I know to a certainty, that he who can endure the one will applaud the other.

I really do entreat your attention, Gentlemen, while I venture to place the late tranfactions in Paris, for a few moments under your view, and to ask whether a revolution, which can permit fuch things, deferves to be celebrated by human beings.

We

things. I had got to to the length of the thirtyfirst page, when the news arrived of the first days of September. It was afterwards laid afide for a time; and a very long interval took place during the

We are every day told, that a revolution cannot be effected but by blood. So far as this propofition applies to the vindication of the revolution in France, it takes for granted what the history contradicts.—A revolution had taken place in France, a complete revolution; and the hair of not one man's head had been touched in all her borders. It is the deftroyers of this revolution, who have spilt the blood of France. The armed mob who legislate for it, and who style themselves the nation, wished a revolution of their own making. In all reafon and argument, this revolution should be vindicated before it be praised. We know that they have destroyed the states which they themselves called for. They have given us no reason to think that they were wifer and better at this last period, than they were in the former. But before you shed blood, you should fhew reafons.

But how is it that blood has been fhed in France! Has it been in generous and manly contention! Has it been in open and honourable struggles! Blood has been fhed" in the "olden time," and it has dignified that very humanity which it seemed to outrage. But is it thus in France? Alas! Genalemen, how dreadfully the reverfe! In France, the curfe of the prophet has met with the most awful completion. Her "flain men are not flain with the fword, nor dead in battle!" Mean and cowardly affaffinations have ufurped the place of honourable warfare. Every thing difgraceful and degrading, ferocious and brutal, every thing that contaminates and pollutes the human mind, are now the characteristicks of a nation; once in gallantry of arms and heroic fpirit, the model and boast of Europe.

the winter. I had much befides to do. It does not become me to fay what I have done (and I am very fenfible of what ought to be done) in that flation to which private friendship, withe at

This is indeed a miferable revolution! Much blood has been fhed in this way. But it is not the numbers they have murdered, that fo much conftitute their crimes; dreadful as this confideration is. It is the principle of murder (eftablished as the firft grand inference from the code of the rights of men) that is the most horrible.-The moral politics of the Old Man of the Mountain excepted, and thofe of the gang of fanatical affaffins whom he reared, nothing has hitherto appeared in the world, fimilar to what is now to be celebrated as liberty in France. The wiflom and goodness of the Almighty, I reverence too much to challenge. Yet the argument for an evil principle (could providence allow things to remain as they are in France) would receive a confirmation, which all the perverted science of the human mind had never been able to give it in any former age. They do not even murder with the humanity of the old murderers. They cut mens' hearts into quivering morfels, fmall enough to be pecked by a sparrow.

Is this the anniverfary, Centlemen, that you are about to celebrate! Is this the liberty, which is to be held a boon from the Creator to the human race! But we must turn our eyes from fuch objects. Circumstances equally degrading are to be found. None can be found fo horrible.

What do you think, Gentlemen, of the treatment of the King and Queen of France! I am not going to talk of the merits of different forms of government. If the French with, or if you with, for a democracy, many good men (though I do not admire their wisdom in it) have done the fame. But in that cafe, why do they keep their King and Queen? Two human beings kept

for