tem in the exhaustion of the
treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the
nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness,
and dauntless spirit, led herself to the guillotine, drew the
King on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and
calamities which will for ever stain the pages of modern
history. I have ever believed, that had there been no Queen,
there would have been no revolution. No force would have been
provoked, nor exercised. The King would have gone hand in hand
with the wisdom of his sounder counsellors, who, guided by the
increased lights of the age, wished only, with the same pace,
to advance the principles of their social constitution. The
deed which closed the mortal course of these sovereigns, I
shall neither approve nor condemn. I am not prepared to say,
that the first magistrate of a nation cannot commit treason
against his country, or is unamenable to its punishment; nor
yet, that where there is no written law, no regulated tribunal,
there is not a law in our hearts, and a power in our hands,
given for righteous employment in maintaining right, and
redressing wrong. Of those who judged the King, many thought
him wilfully criminal; many, that his existence would keep the
nation in perpetual conflict with the horde of Kings, who would
war against a regeneration which might come home to themselves,
and that it were better that one should die than all. I should
not have voted with this portion of the legislature. I should
have shut up the Queen in a convent, putting harm out of her
power, and placed the King in his station, investing him with
limited powers, which, I verily believe, he would have honestly
exercised, according to the measure of his understanding. In
this way, no void would have been created, courting the
usurpation of a military adventurer, nor occasion given for
those enormities which demoralized the nations of the world,
and destroyed, and is yet to destroy, millions and millions of
its inhabitants."

A majority of the French authors of the time agree with Mr. Jefferson.

HINDOSTANEE NEWSPAPERS: THE FLYING SHEETS OF BENARES.

One of the most successful applications of lithography is in the
reproduction of the Hindostanee or Persian writing, used in India. It is
too irregular an