hed neutrality, after witnessing
repeated violation of the law of nations, not on the remote banks of the
Rhine, but on the Danish frontiers, on the Danish territory, on the banks
of the Elbe.
It certainly was no compliment to His Danish Majesty when our Government
sent Grouvelle as a representative to Copenhagen, a man who owed his
education and information to the Conde branch of the Bourbons, and who
afterwards audaciously and sacrilegiously read the sentence of death on
the chief of that family, on his good and legitimate King, Louis XVI. It
can neither be called dignity nor prudence in the Cabinet of Denmark to
suffer this regicide to serve as a point of rally to sedition and
innovation; to be the official propagator of revolutionary doctrines, and
an official protector of all proselytes and sectaries of this anti-social
faith.
Before the Revolution a secretary to the Prince of Conde, Grouvelle was
trusted and rewarded by His Serene Highness, and in return betrayed his
confidence, and repaid benefactions and generosity with calumny and
persecution, when his patron was obliged to seek safety in emigration
against the assassins of successful rebellion. When the national seals
were put on the estates of the Prince, he appropriated to himself not
only the whole of His Highness's library, but a part of his plate. Even
the wardrobe and the cellar were laid under contributions by this
domestic marauder.
With natural genius and acquired experience, Grouvelle unites impudence
and immorality; and those on whom he fixes for his prey are, therefore,
easily duped, and irremediably undone. He has furnished disciples to all
factions, and to all sects, assassins to the revolutionary tribunals, as
well as victims for the revolutionary guillotine; sans-culottes to
Robespierre, Septembrizers to Marat, republicans to the Directory, spies
to Talleyrand, and slaves to Bonaparte, who, in 1800, nominated him a
tribune, but in 1804 disgraced him, because he wished that the Duc d'
Enghien had rather been secretly poisoned in Baden than publicly
condemned and privately executed in France.
Our present Minister at the Court of Copenhagen, D' Aguesseau, has no
virtues to boast of, but also no crimes to blush for. With inferior
capacity, he is only considered by Talleyrand as an inferior intriguer,
employed in a country ruled by an inferior policy, neither feared nor
esteemed by our Government. His secretary, Desaugiers the elder, is our
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