the provincial affembly at the Hague. On the twenty-fixth a conference was propofed on the part of the fenate and burghers of Amfterdam, who offered to furrender upon condition of fome mitigation in the terms of fatisfaction to the princess of Orange, and particularly provided their magiftrates might remain unchanged. As this question was faid principally to intereft the offended perfonage, the commiffioners of Amfterdam were permitted to proceed to the Hague to confer with her. But the terms offered were jointly rejected by the duke of Brunfwic and the princefs of Orange.

This negociation occupied the fpace of four days, and on the firft of October the duke of Brunfwic renewed his attack. He advanced at the fame time against the outpofts of Muyden, Diemen, Duvendrecht, Ouderkerke, and the dyke of Haerlem. The environs of Amfterdam had been partially inundated, fo that fome of thefe places could not be approached without great danger, and the citizens, anxious to preserve this celebrated capital from tyranny and violence, appear to have defended themfelves with confiderable gallantry. The Pruffians were repulfed in the majority of their attempts. Ouderkerke they faid to have attacked three times, and three times to have mifcarried. The dyke of Haerlem however, being affaulted on two different fides and by fuperior numbers, was abandoned almoft without refiftance. Amftelveen was carried in the afternoon; and Ouderkerke, being thus placed between two fires, was voluntarily evacuated.

In the evening of the fame day a new armistice was demanded by the citizens, and granted by the duke of Brunfwic. The only terms

that could be obtained were, that the municipal militia fhould not be confounded in the fate of the volunteers, and that the town fhould not be obliged to receive a garrifon. Thefe terms were accepted by the fenate on the third, but were des murred to by the burghers. In the meantime the fenators elected in the courfe of the prefent year wefe depofed on the eighth, and, upon demand of the duke of Brunfwic, one of the gates of Amfterdam was · furrendered to him on the tenth. The next day five hundred Pruffians entered the town to quell a tumult that appeared to be breaking out, but the duke engaged not to fuffer any of his troops to pass the gate except in cafes of emergency.

The princefs of Orange, in whofe character the politician was at leaft as confpicuous as any other feature, knew how to render the atonement for the affront, to which fhe had been expofed, fubfervient to the interefts of her husband and family. The perfons, who had been elected to any magiftracy in the towns of Holland in the courfe of the prefent year, were in the first intance depofed as ufurpers, and the perfons in the place of whom they had been chofen reftored to their functions. This measure however by no means included all those who were obnoxious to the ftadtholder, and accordingly the princefs of Orange fignified to the ftates of Holland, that the fatisfaction fhe fhould demand would confine itself to the deprivation of fuch perfons as fhe fhould fpecify as being fubftantially the authors of the infult at Schoonhoven. Her lift of profcription was delivered in on the fixth of October, and contained the names of seventeen perfons, among which was van BerD 3

kel,

kel, penfionary of Amfterdam, van Gyzelaer, penfionary of Dort, and feveral other of the moft diftinguished characters of the republican party. In other inftances perfons particularly marked as obnoxious were feized upon by the Pruffian foldiery, tranfported into the Pruffian dominions, and in fome cafes it is faid treated with great indignity. The celebrated Capellen van der Mersch, a baron of the province of Overyffel, appears to have died the martyr of his country. He was conducted a prisoner to Wefel in the duchy of Cleves; and, being at length permitted to return on account of his health, expired at Utrecht in the beginning of December. In the mean time refugees in great numbers poured into the territories of the Austrian Netherlands, where they found a spirit of discontent fimilar to their own, and where they probably diffeminated the independent and democratical principles that had occafioned their exile.

Impartial fpectators of this memorable event could not refrain from comparing, and the comparison was as painful as it was unexpected, the juftice and dignity of the caufe of the republicans with the feeblenefs of their efforts to refift an infolent and arbitrary conqueror. The committee of the armed burghers of Utrecht came to a refolution in the commencement of the civil war, importing their determination never to furrender their city, declaring that they would defend it till it was re duced to one undiftinguished ruin, rather than fuffer the enemy to find any thing in it upon which to glut his cruel vengeance, and that, when they could no longer refift, thofe who furvived the carnage would, if reduced to that extremity, fet fire

to the four corners of the town before they abandoned their walls. In this declaration we acknowledge the genuine language of patriotifm. Had the Batavian partifans of freedom adhered to this glorious refolution, they would at the very worst have read a leffon of magnanimity to mankind, the impreffion of which in the prefent ftate of the European conftitution would have been indelible. But they would have done more than this. There is a folemn terror in the undaunted efforts of expiring virtue, from which the hireling minifters of arbitrary power would have fhrunk back confounded. We might have feen a fecond Leonidas arrefting the millions of Xerxes at the pass of Thermopyla. Other powers, France in particular, if that had been neceffary, could not long have witneffed the generous struggle in filence and inaction, and in fuch a cause the ally, however embarrassed in finances and inaufpicious in its period of exertion, would queftionlefs have been victorious.

But the fate of Holland was different, and this proud and opulent republic now for the first time received law from two of its foreign neighbours at the point of the fword. All hiftory, both ancient and modern, unites to inform us, how defirable is the ftate of that people, who are indebted for a revolution in their government to the fword of a rival. They fink into abject fubjection. All that fenfe of independence, all that eagerness of adventure and boldnefs of fpirit, that fpring from conscious fovereignty, are loft. They are degraded to the unnatural ftation of a province, dependent for its immunities and its laws upon the mercy of a fuperior. Hopelefs, defpondent, inactive and

fupine,

fupine, they no longer look for improvement themselves, or contribute to the fubftantial benefit of another. The revolution in Holland is fcarcely less a misfortune to the ftadtholderians than to their adversaries. If either England or Pruffia expect to derive advantage from their fpontaneous interference for the deftruction of liberty, it needs little fagacity to foretel that they will infallibly be mistaken. A province, fubjected to a more fortunate neighbour, is not only itself in a moft pitiable fituation, but operates like a peftilence, communicating its own diftempers to the fuperior ftate, and like a dead body attached to a living one, undermining its vigour and fettering its exertions.

The revolution in Holland was accompanied with that ungenerous and unmanly triumph, which might be expected from the circumftances which produced it. Various declarations of amnesty were published, but accompanied with fuch numerous exceptions, as totally to defeat their purpose and belie their title. They accordingly feem not to have been very fatisfactory to the predominant party, and were frequently fuperfeded by new proclamations of a fimilar tendency. In one of the lateft, which made its appearance after the bitterness of contention and the animofity of refentment might be expected to have fubfided, the perfons excepted from pardon were all magiftrates who had excited the inhabitants to difaffection, all perfons who had contributed to the clandeftine introduction of foreign forces into the republic, all fuch as had in the capacity of military officers borne arms against the ftadtholder, all members of the pretended

provincial affemblies who had fuggefted measures against him, all clergymen who had borne arms in the republican cause, and all perfons who fhould appear to have been guilty of acts of violence. To whom could fuch an amnefty have been productive of benefit? The vengeance of the house of Orange does not indeed appear to have been in many inftances fanguinary and ferocious. But they were liberal of deprivation, of corporal punishments and imprisonment. They drove numbers to depart into voluntary banishment rather than depend upon the arbitrary mercy of their opponents, and they held out threats in terrorem to deter every one from thinking or reafoning in favour of liberty, under penalty of an inquifition into his paft life, and a profecution under the exceptions of the amnefty. Among other inftances of the spirit by which the victorious party was guided, we may mention the trial pro formâ of the deceafed Capellen van der Merfch, and the fentence by which he was declared to have forfeited his life to the laws of his country.

At the particular requeft of the princefs of Orange the king of Pruffia confented to permit fome thousands of his troops to take up their winter quarters in Holland, and they did not wholly evacuate that country till May 1788. In the mean time treaties of defenfive alliance were negociated between Holland and Great Britain and Holland and Pruffia. Thefe meafures were completed by a political confederacy between Great Britain and Pruffia, which received its ultimate fanction on the thirteenth of August 1788.

WE

E are arrived at a period in our foreign history when the northern and the western divifions of Europe were once more deftined to fill the most confiderable feene in the political drama. Catherine, emprefs of Ruffia, who for various reafons deferves to be ftyled the Semiramis of the north, afcended the throne in the year 1762; and it is not to be fuppofed that an adminiftration of twenty-five years had failed to render her principles and character fubjects of fufficient notoriety. If the public patronage of literature and talents, if an affiduous attention to the fine arts, if the love of splendour and the ambition of rendering her capital the centre of all that elegant leifure has been accustomed to admire, can give a title to immortality, the claims of the czarina are indifputable. But thefe are the bounds of her pretentions. She continually indeed fends forth miffions of her younger fubjects to acquire knowledge in foreign realms; but he does not feek to annihilate that flavery and vaffalage, with the exiflence of which knowledge and improvement are incompatible. She feeks to extend the commerce of her fubjects to diflant climates; but he takes no effectual fteps to diffeminate that fpirit of manufacture and induftry, without which commerce is an un

fubftantial phantom. She is feized with the frenfy of conqueft; while her actual dominions, confiderably more extenfive than the empire of ancient Rome, afford fcope for the activity of the wifeft politician. She is ever employed in warlike preparations or in war; though her territories, without this preternatural exhaufture, are little better than an uninhabited defert. She furveys with fcientific accuracy the extremities of her empire; while its centre and its heart are totally neglected. The activity of her defigns are exhausted in the intrigues of foreign courts. France has long been accufed of invading the tranquillity of her neighbours by the arts of corruption. But France, in all the wantonnefs of civilization and wealth, was never more indefatigable in this refpect, than the Tartarian sovereign of the favages of Mufcovy.

Scarcely was the feated on the throne, before fhe intruded by vialence a prince on the Courlanders, and reduced that important principality to the dependence of a province. She next gave a monarch, and a fyftem of government, or rather of anarchy to Poland. Not contented with this, the engendered the tyrannical and unprincipled defign of difmembering the provinces of Poland. She fought, and frequently

with

with fuccefs, to dictate through the medium of intrigue to the cabinets of Stockholm and Copenhagen. But her principal ufurpations were on the falling empire of the Turks. By the war of 1768 the acquired the provinces of Catharinoflaw, the fite of Cherfon, and the navigation of the Black Sea. By an uninterrupted series of arbitrary proceedings and cabal, fhe fubjugated the ineftimable and beautiful peninfula of Crim Tartary, acquired various diftricts in the province of Circaffia, and rendered the princes of Georgia her feudataries and vaffals. Already nothing in the north and the east could refift her defpotic sway; and to complete her defigns, fhe was enabled to gain over the reftlefs and capricious mind of the emperor to her fide, and to negotiate with him a fort of indefinite project for the conquit of Conftantinople and the partition of Greece.

While thefe projects were forming by the emprefs of Ruffia, the court of the grand fignior feemed to difplay nothing but fymptoms of imbecility and decay. The fubordinate princes of Tripoli, Algiers and Tunis could by no means be perfuaded to yield to the dictates of Conftantinople refpecting their conduct towards the powers of Europe, and were hardly induced to pay their annual tribute to the Ottoman Porte. The pacha of Scutari, a diftrict upon the borders of Venetian Dalmatia, had wantonly entered in a hoftile manner upon the territories of the republic, and his punishment was demanded by their ambaffador. But the Porte, fo far from being able to deprive him of his government, found itfelf expofed to his inroads and devaftations, and was engaged with him in a fruitless conteft, fometimes by undecifive battles, and fometimes by

negociations in which he appeared to dictate to the fupreme government, for more than two years. In other parts of the empire, a fort of enthu fiaftical and prophetic leaders made their appearance, afferted a kind of political independence, and committed every fpecies of excefs with impunity. The province of Egypt, which had given perpetual uncalinefs to the court of Conftantinople, now threatened to shake off the yoke and engrofs a fovereignty to which for many centuries it had been a ftranger.

It was in this alarming crifis that a bold and daring genius arose, who promised to arreft the falling greatnefs of the Ottomans. Haffan Ali is faid to have been a native of Algiers, and, being obliged for fome reafons to fly from that fubordinate principality, he entered into the immediate fervice of the grand fignior. He attached himfelf principally to the maritime profeffion, and ferved with diftinction in the laft war against the Ruffians. It has been fuppofed, that, if his advice had been followed, the enemy would have been deprived of fome of the most confiderable advantages they gained in the principal naval action of that war. He had gradually rifen by his reputation and his merits through feveral inferior offices to the ftation of capitan pacha or high admiral of the Turkish dominions. At this time he was more than feventy years of age; and, unfubdued by the natural infirmities of fo advanced a period, he breathed nothing but military ardour, together with hatred and vengeance of the ufurpations of Ruffia. As a first step to the accomplishment of his favourite defign, he endeavoured to feize upon all the offices of government, and to engrofs the avenues to

the