merciful king, and the nobility of France who have
been faithful to their honor and duty, as a set of inexorable and
remorseless tyrants. How this notion has been infused into them I cannot
be quite certain. I am sure it is not justified by anything they have
done. Never were the two princes guilty, in the day of their power, of a
single hard or ill-natured act. No one instance of cruelty on the part
of the gentlemen ever came to my ears. It is true that the _English_
Jacobins, (the natives have not thought of it,) as an excuse for their
infernal system of murder, have so represented them. It is on this
principle that the massacres in the month of September, 1792, were
justified by a writer in the Morning Chronicle. _He_ says, indeed, that
"the whole French nation is to be given up to the hands of an irritated
and revengeful noblesse";--and, judging of others by himself and his
brethren, he says, "Whoever succeeds in a civil war will be cruel. But
here the emigrants, flying to revenge in the cars of military victory,
will almost insatiably call for their victims and their booty; and a
body of emigrant traitors were attending the King of Prussia and the
Duke of Brunswick, to suggest the most sanguinary counsels." So says
this wicked Jacobin; but so cannot say the King of Prussia nor the Duke
of Brunswick, who never did receive any sanguinary counsel; nor did the
king's brothers, or that great body of gentlemen who attended those
princes, commit one single cruel action, or hurt the person or property
of one individual. It would be right to quote the instance. It is like
the military luxury attributed to these unfortunate sufferers in our
common cause.

If these princes had shown a tyrannic disposition, it would be much to
be lamented. We have no others to govern France. If we screened the body
of murderers from their justice, we should only leave the innocent in
future to the mercy of men of fierce and sanguinary dispositions, of
which, in spite of all our intermeddling in their Constitution, we could
not prevent the effects. But as we have much more reason to fear their
feeble lenity than any blamable rigor, we ought, in my opinion, to leave
the matter to themselves.

If, however, I were asked to give an advice merely as such, here are my
ideas. I am not for a total indemnity, nor a general punishment. And
first, the body and mass of the people never ought to be treated as
criminal. They may become an object of more or