of a deliberate project-framed and acted upon, even before the reign of the Directory!" This conclusion was "sanctioned by the acknowledgement of all the actors in the scene of the revolution, with whom I had occasion to converse (says the writer) in Paris." The archives of antiquity have been ransacked by the French, to collect the arts of fraud, terror, and seduction, that they might combine cunning with force, to deceive, overwhelm, and confound mankind: "Combining the subtlety of the Roman senate, and the ferocity of the Goth; the wildest passions with the most deliberate perfidy; they have far exceeded all the examples furnished by the records of antiquity." "From the commencement of the revolution, emissaries have been scattered over Europe, in order to study and delineate its geographical face. The harvest of their labors, deposited at Paris, has furnished their government with a knowledge of the territory of the other powers, much more minute and accurate, than what the latter themselves possess." Several hundreds of clerks are employed at Paris in this business, of collecting these details, tracing maps, and aiding the accomplishment of this great plan. Spain was thus marked out before her invasion. And England has been thus partitioned. The designs of France upon Spain were all previously matured. The writer heard it much conversed upon in the metropolis, that the Bourbons were to be dethroned in Spain, and a Bonaparte placed in their stead. And for years before the seizure of the royal family, Spain was deluged with French emissaries, to prepare the way for the event. The universal empire of the French is the popular song at Paris, and in different parts of the nation, Paris, the metropolis of the world, is the great idea, with which the people not only of Paris, but of the provin cial cities, and of the country, are enamored, when they can so far forget their own wretchedness, as to turn their attention to it.

Upon Russia the writer remarks; "The divisions of Russian cabinet, and the preponderancy of a French faction at St. Petersburgh, which now sways their national councils, constitute another and great source of

weakness. The French partizans have subdued the spirit of Alexander, by an exposition of the impotency of his means; and have debauched his principles by specious statements of the benefits he is to derive from French alliance."

With respect to the old Jacobinic agency being successfully employed by the present French government, the writer remarks as follows; "But there is another species of hostility, preliminary to open violence, and scarcely less efficacious in the end, which they are now indefatigably waging against this country, (America.) They are in fact at war with us, to the utmost extent of their means of annoyance. What the sword fails to reach may be almost as destructively assailed by the subtile poison of corrupt doctrines, by domestic intrigue, by the diffusion of falsehood, and by the arts of intimidation. The world has not more to dread from their comprehensive scheme of military usurpation, than from the co-extensive system of seduction and espi onage, which they prosecute with a view, either to supersede the necessity, or to insure the success, of conquest by arms. Upon the model of their domestic policy in this respect, they have established a secret inquisition into the manageable vices and prejudices, into the vulnerable points, as well as the strong holds, of every country, obnoxious to their ambition. As they station a spy in every dwelling of the French empire, so they plant traitors every where abroad, to corrupt by bribes, to delude by promises, to overawe by threats, to inflame the passions, and to exasperate the leading antipathies, of every people. As they maintain by their domestic police an intestine war in France herself, so by their foreign missions they sow every where abroad the seeds of division and discontent. They foment the animosities of faction, and prepare the train for the explosion, which, by disuniting and dissipating the single, as well as federatwe strength of a nation, lays her completely at their mercy."

The writer proceeds to give a striking account of the perfection, to which the art of espionage is wrought in France: every family and even individual being watch

ed by some secret spy; so that none can with safety communicate his sentiments to another, unless they be such as the government would approve. He states an account given by one, who had been a chief clerk in one of the offices of this diabolical machination. The clerk informs, that when the revolution in France was accomplished, he thought the object of this business was obtained and finished; and that great was his surprise, when he found it continued! And concerning the extent of this secret agency, he proceeds; "By means equally profligate they exercise a supervision over other countries, and improve to their own advantage whatever principles of corruption and disunion may be interwoven with their social or political constitutions. These French agents never loiter in the discharge of their functions, nor sleep on their watch. No means nor instruments, however contemptible in appearance, are neglected in the prosecution of their plans. It is notorious, that even the foreigners employed in the theatres and opera houses of Europe, to minister to the public amusements, are marshalled in the service of the French gov. ernment, for the purpose either of collecting information themselves, or of facilitating the labors of more intelligent agents. The Gazettes of every part of the continent of Europe are debauched by largesses, or driven by force, to war against humanity, by propagating the misrepresentations of this horrible despotism. During the peace of 1802, an attempt was made to enlist the principal Gazettes of England in the same cause. A person of the name of Fievee, who has since officiated as editor of the Journal de l'Empire, was deputed to England on what he boastingly styled, un voyage de corruption. He returned however unsuccessful; and vented his own spleen, as well as that of his government, in a libellous book on the British nation.

This foreign police (adds the writer) was propagated under the old regime. During the reign of Jacobinism the number of its agents was multiplied, and its activity greatly increased. Those means, he says, which were employed by-the Jacobins, to subvert all governments, are now, under the military despotism of Bona

parte, levelled, upon a more enlarged plan, and with more active industry, against the liberties and morals of every people! That we ourselves are vigorously as sailed, no reflecting man, as it appears to me (says the writer) can for a moment doubt. Inaccessible as we are at this moment, to any other mode of aggression, this engine of subjection is used against us with redoubled force and adroitness. In this way we are perhaps more vulnerable than any other people. There is none, whose party feuds may be more quickly inflamed into the worst disorders of faction. The simplicity and purity of character, by which we are, when viewed in the aggregate, so advantageously distinguished above the nations or Europe, is almost as favorable to the designs of France, as the corruption or venality of her neighbors. A backwardness to suspect treachery, may entail all the consequences of a willingness to abet it. One, who has had an opportunity of observing the workings of the French influence eisewhere, cannot possibly mistake the source, from which the politics of some of our own Gazettes are drawn. The most unwearied industry to disseminate falsehoods on the subject of GreatBritain; a watchful alacrity to make even her most innocent or lau able acts the subject of clamor; a steady, laborious vindication of all the measures of France; and a system of denunciation against those, who pursue an opposite course, are the distinguishing features of the venal presses of Europe; and the symptoms, by which those of our own country may be known. The distance, at which we are placed from the immediate range of the power of France, opens to her missionaries here a wide field for invention and exaggeration. What is by them wickedly fabricated, is innocently believed, and propagated by the multitude of well meaning persons, whose antipathies against England blind them both to the atrocious character, and to the hostile designs of our real and most formidable enemy."*

With respect to the burdens of the people in France; also with respect to the most perfect organization of the

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military despotism there, this author gives a most striking view. Their revenue in one year was 402 millions of dollars. But this was something extraordinary. The annual amount of their public burdens, at a moderate calculation, exclusive of a 20 per cent cost of collection, is 240 millions of dollars. The annual expense of the Imperial household is five millions, six hundred thousand dollars. The collectors of the rev. enue form a complete machine of despotism. Every village and commune has a taxgatherer. He pays to a particular receiver of a district. The latter pays to a general receiver of a department. Thence it goes into the treasury. But beside these, there are inspectors, verificators, controllers, directors, sub-directors, inspectors, sub-inspectors, clerks, visitors, receivers, excisemen, and a variety of others, all appointed by the emperor, all perfect tools of his ambition, and who serve as a host of spies and of petty tyrants, to devour, to watch, and to manage the people; who are deceived and blinded by duplicity and perfidy. If a man refuse to pay all, that is demanded of him, a file of soldiers are immediately quartered upon him, till his tyrants are satisfied.

The post office establishment is of the same complexion. Every communication is examined; and nothing passes, but what accords with the views of the emperor. In Paris only, thirty clerks are constantly employed in opening and copying letters in the post offices. "The feudal vassalage (says the writer) never exerted an influence half so pernicious," as the present influence of the French despotism. "The anarchy of the revolution relaxed the springs of industry, and destroyed the influence, and banished the consolations of religion. And the present government have neither strengthened the one, nor restored the other." The writer ascertains the violent enmity of the emperor against commerce in general, as inconsistent with that universal military despotism which he designs. Yet Bonaparte studiously dissembles this enmity. "The assurances of his unremitting solicitude (for commerce) are loud and solemn, just in the degree, that they are insincere and unproductive." At times his enmity bursts forth.