of France is important, not only from his
official and personal authority, but because it displays very clearly
the actual condition of the army in France, and because it throws light
on the principles upon which the Assembly proceeds in the administration
of this critical object. It may enable us to form some judgment how far
it may be expedient in this country to imitate the martial policy of
France.

M. de La Tour du Pin, on the fourth of last June, comes to give an
account of the state of his department, as it exists under the auspices
of the National Assembly. No man knows it so well; no man can express it
better. Addressing himself to the National Assembly, he says,--

"His Majesty has _this day_ sent me to apprise you of the multiplied
disorders of which _every day_ he receives the most distressing
intelligence. The army [_le corps militaire_] threatens to fall into the
most turbulent anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to violate at once
the respect due to the laws, to the king, to the order established by
your decrees, and to the oaths which they have taken with the most awful
solemnity. Compelled by my duty to give you information of these
excesses, my heart bleeds, when I consider who they are that have
committed them. Those against whom it is not in my power to withhold the
most grievous complaints are a part of that very soldiery which to this
day have been so full of honor and loyalty, and with whom for fifty
years I have lived the comrade and the friend.

"What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and delusion has all at once
led them astray? Whilst you are indefatigable in establishing uniformity
in the empire and moulding the whole into one coherent and consistent
body, whilst the French are taught by you at once the respect which the
laws owe to the rights of man and that which the citizens owe to the
laws, the administration of the army presents nothing but disturbance
and confusion. I see in more than one corps the bonds of discipline
relaxed or broken,--the most unheard-of pretensions avowed directly and
without any disguise,--the ordinances without force,--the chiefs without
authority,--the military chest and the colors carried off,--the
authority of the king himself [_risum teneatis_] proudly defied,--the
officers despised, degraded, threatened, driven away, and some of them
prisoners in the midst of their corps, dragging on a precarious life in
the bosom of disgust and humiliation. To fill up