of the state, and the frightful ravages made in the hospitals and cha ritable asylums, from the want of medicines, and also by famine, and the diseases that accumulated in its train. The directory pointed out the remedy for these disorders in about ninety millions of livres, which remained of national domains that were ordered to be sold by a decree made in the month of March preceding, and which, being hitherto unappropriated, they imagined might be forced from the council by the energy of their representations. This melancholy statement was not altogether unfounded, but the colouring, it is said, was highly overcharged. The legislature, who held the public purse, were not ignorant how unwisely, and unworthily, in most cases, the funds had been administered which had hitherto been granted. The compte rendu of the administration had been the subject of severe animadversion; and it was found to be so far the inverse of the observation of our poet, that "the trappings of the republic might have set up a decent monarchy." The ascendency which France had gained over the rest of Europe must certainly be attributed rather to the force of her arms than the wisdom of her councils: yet the great flexibility with which the government of the day could turn the finances of the country to the purposes of their own administration, when the wealth of the state, to use the words of M. Calonne, was found in the shops of their printers, had greatly facilitated the establishment of its power. The revolutionary government, when every thing was forced to bend to the cry of the safety of the state, the legislature, who had confided the lives and fortunes of the people of France to the faction who seized on the reins of government during the time of Robespierre, were not too scrupulous in demanding an account of the expenditure of the public money; so, during the laxity of the government that succeeded, the constant depreciation of the paper was such, that any specific grant would not only have been fallacious, but would have betrayed at once the ruin into which the finances were hastening, and given a sort of legal sanction to their immediate decay. During these years of paper-currency and revolutionary government, no taxes had been demanded from the people; and therefore, as the fortune of the state lay in property in which they were not directly concerned, little notice was taken whether the public funds were honestly or corruptly administered; but, when the constitution of 1795 took place of the revolutionary system, and papermoney, in all its varying forms of assignats, rescriptions, bons, and mandats, was no longer the currency of the state, the people, who had returned to the ancient habitude of gold and silver, affixed other ideas to the value of money than it appeared to the legislature were formed by the executive government. The apprehensions of the councils, of the near dissolution of the state, were not in union with those of the directory: it was not an unpleasing spectacle also to the majority of its members, to find those, whose power they had feared, as much as they had despised their means of acquiring and confirming it, bounded, at length, in their operations, and recurring to the people for aid. Had this jealously been wisely tem tempered, great advantages would have resulted to both powers of the state; and the expenditure of what should have been granted liberally would have been in future more carefully administered: but the mixture of little passions prevented this accommodation, and the directory continued to charge the councils with impeding the operations of government by an ill-timed parsimony, which the councils retorted, by justly remarking on the profusion and rapacity of the administration. Notwithstanding these altercations, which discovered themselves less in the councils than without the walls, where the disquisitions were carried on more freely, a sense of common interest and danger engaged both parties to coalesce in preserving the machine of government. Already two jacobin confederacies, in the last year, which threatened to overwhelm the state, and bury, in one common ruin, both directory and councils, had been averted, and the authors of them consigned to punishment: the beginning of the present was marked by a conspiracy of another nature, known under the name of the royalist plot. The conspiracies of the jacobins were of all plots the least likely to succeed. The sentiment of horror, which the jacobins had inspired, was so widely and minutely disse minated, that, had they succeeded, their attempts would have been crowned with only momentary success. Whatever general vigour revolutionary government might, at certain periods, have communicated to the country, every individual had to lament partial evil in the loss of kindred or friends; and the feeling of vengeance was smothered, rather than subdued, from 1798. a regard to public order. But a royalist plot wore no such terrific aspect; various classes of the Parisians were prepared to hail its auspices; and numbers, whose love of liberty had not withstood the shock of revolutionary tyranny, beheld the discovery of this conspiracy with unconcern. It was in the favourable reception with which these conspirators were regarded by one party, and the unconcern with which their machinations were treated by others, rather than in any effective force they could have raised against the actual government, that the possibility of any danger existed. The directory, it is said, had long known, that commissaries from Louis XVIII. resided in Paris. These agents held a continued and active correspondence, throughout the whole republic, with the numerous partisans of the whole regimen, with whom they concerted plans, and combined operations, for the destruction of the new system, and the re-establishment of the ancient despotism. The address with which these regal commissaries concealed their operations, prevented, for a long time, the government from discovering their persons. Various insulated proofs were laid before the directory, both from the departments and in Paris; but the clue, which guided them to the inferior agents, always broke in their hands before it reached the chiefs. It was not, however, possible, that this mystery could long continue unravelled; for the obscure and partial means, of which they made use, such as secret engagements and enlistments, could never serve any effective purposes towards the success of the cause for which these commissaries were deputed. The conjecture was not ill-founded: о the the seeming laxity of pursuit in the government encouraged these agents to push on their operations with more boldness; and having, they imagined, ripened their plan for execution, they addressed themselves to Malo, who commanded a regiment of dragoons quartered in Paris, and who had distinguished himself at the time when the jacobins made their attack on the camp of Grenelle; and also to general Ramel, who commanded the guard of the two councils. The propositions made by these commissaries, at different interviews, were communicated regularly to the directory by these officers. The project was, to place Louis on the throne; and, in order to put it into execution, it was necessary to be assured of the military in Paris; to which end an immediate advance of pay was proposed, and accepted by the officers who commanded them; and who had eventually inspired such confidence, that the commissaries laid before them, it is asserted, the full powers for nego tiation, with which they were entrusted, and also a long plan of their projected operations. The plan appeared, in several in stances, to have been a literal co py of the jacobin plot formed in the beginning of the last year, under the direction of Babeuf; such as seising on the barriers of the city, the invalids, the military school, the magazines, the telegraph, the Thuilleries, the Luxembourg, and the minister's hotels; securing the course of the river above and below Paris; taking possession of the powdermills around the city; intercepting the bridges; and establishing batteries on Mount-martre to command the town. The court, or residence of the king's representative, was to be established at the temple. The plan of Babeuf was a general exter mination of the members of go vernment, with very The royalist commissaries proposed few exceptions. the proscription of the directory, in case only that they did not avail themselves of the amnesty that should be offered them; the members of the two councils were only houses; the municipalities and the to be confined in their respective chiefs of the jacobin party to be secured; the old government of Paris, by prevôts, to be re-establishburnt (by which name were distined; the jacobin journals to be guished the Sentinelle, the Redacteur), and the authors arrested; all imprisoned, except for crimes; an were to be set at liberty who were amnesty to be proclaimed in the king's name; the nounced as near at hand; the judges peace to be anto continue their functions; a proclamation to be made to the armies; embassadors till the return of the a guard placed over the foreign couriers, which should be dispatched to their respective courts; conductors to be ordered to continue their supplies; the streets to be hand-grenades, as the best instrufilled with patroles, furnished with mations to be sent into the proments for dispersing mobs; proclavinces; various persons, such as Barbi-Marbois, and Tallien, to be Vauvillers, Simeon, de Fleurien, named to offices; others to continue in place, such as Beuezech and Co. chon; and du Bar to be charged tendence of Paris. with the general military superin . at the military school at the issue of mediate mediate agents were, Duverne de Presles, an officer in the old service, but who now assumed the name of Dunan, a grocer, and the abbé Brothier; these men were furnished with special powers, and had chosen Lavilluernoy and Poly as assistants. Many persons, who were mentioned in their papers, were also arrested. What is most singular in this conspiracy, was the inadequacy of the means to the end. It was scarcely possible to suppose at first view that any one would have hazarded such an enterprize without greater probability of success; nevertheless, from the open declarations which these persons made in their examination, of their being the agents of Lewis the XVIII., and that their design was to subvert the government, or take advantage in favour of royalty of any commotion that should take place, no doubt was entertained of their intentions. It appears from their confidential communications with Malo, previous to their arrest, that they had in pay a number of the officers who had been dismissed the service, and deserters from the armies; that they had also placed confidence in that class of jacobins who went by the name of exclusive patriots, and that they fixed their greatest hopes on the divisions in the councils. These were, however, very disproportionate means, since the persons whom they named to distinguished places under their new government, such as Simeon, Cochon, Tallien, and others, heard first of such nomination when the papers were read at the councils, and very easily exculpated themselves from any knowledge of the honours which had been reserved for them, and which, it appears, they were only to wear till the establishment of the new go vernment, when they, also, were to be set aside, and sacrificed for their republican crimes. The principal agents in this conspiracy, and those to whom it appeared, by the papers in their possession, that subordinate parts had been allotted, were sent by an arrêté of the directory, before a military commission. Repeated and numerous reclamations were made by the counsel, and friends of the prisoners, against this proceeding, which they declared to be an act of tyranny, incompatible not only with the principles of a free constitution, but in direct opposition to the laws. The minister of justice defended the decree of the directory by citing a law, which maintained the competency of a military tribunal to judge those who had been guilty of the crime of embauchage, or enlisting soldiers for the enemy, which he said was certainly part of the crime of the prisoners and their agents. The counsel for the prisoners appealed to the tribunal de cassation, or tribunal of reversion, who ordered all the relative papers to this affair to be laid before them, which order the directory opposed, by decreeing that this tribunal was incompetent to judge of the affair. The appeal to the legislative body, to whom petitions were addressed by the prisoners' counsel, for their interposition between the tribunal and the directory, was rejected, and the prisoners were left to the decision of the court-martial, to which they had been sent by the executive power. After a very long trial, the court (8th April) unanimously declared Dunan (or Duverne de Presles), Brothier, Devilleurnoy, and Poly, guilty of the crime of enlisting men for the enemy, and, consequently, liable to the sentence of death; but 02 in in consideration of the extenuating circumstances which attended their crime, the court, affected by the frankness with which they had made their several confessions, by virtue of a law which permitted court-martials to commute punishments, condemned Duverne de Presles and Brothier to ten years imprisonment; Poly and Lavilleurney, their accomplices, the first to five, the last to one year; and acquitted all the rest. This unexpected exercise of lenity excited considerable surprise among all parties. The royalists, who had joined themselves with the extreme observers of the constitution to exclaim against the tyranny of withdrawing persons accused from their legal judges, and subjecting them to the decision of a court-martial supposed to be necessarily under the influence of government, drew favourable omens from this sentence of impunity to the speedy establishment of their system; while those who saw in the subversion of liberty a crime which no punishment could expiate, murmured at the court-martial for having betrayed its trust. The different parties soon found new subject of speculation, since the same day on which the court-martial pronounced sentence, an arrêté was made by the directory, ordering that the prisoners should be again indicted before the common tribunals, on the ground that the courtmartial not having been able to take cognisance of any other crime than that of enlisting soldiers for the nemy; and the prisoners hav. ing been notoriously guilty of conspiracy in other ways against the republic, they should undergo that examination for these facts before the civil tribunals, to which the other was not competent. If the public indignation had been excited when first these prisoners (contrary, as it was rightly asserted, to the constitution) were sent before a court-martial, the conduct of the directory in pursuing to death those whose lives the severest of all tribunals had spared, was regarded as an act of consummate tyranny, and a violation of every principle of law and justice. The directory, however, it afterwards appeared, had no such intentions. On the contra ry (if the plot itself was not wholly a fiction), they determined, at least, to turn it to the disadvantage of their adversaries in the councils. "It was evident," say the advocates for the directory, " that these men would not have so inconsiderately risked their lives, if they had not been influenced by some greater assurance of success than what appeared from the first examinations; it was clear that something yet remained undiscovered, that the foundation, on which for fifteen months past they had built their hopes, was more solid than the capricious anger of jacobins, the precarious attachment of dismissed officers, and deserters, or the inefficacious, and scattered support of the provincial royalists. It was of less importance that these men should undergo the punishment allotted for their treason, than that the means by which they hoped to effect a counter-revolution should be discovered. Their lives were forfeited beyond the possibility of pardon, except they would redeem them by the ingenuousness and freedom of their confessions. It appears that all of them had not the courage, or constancy of martyrs; for the chief of the conspiracy saved his own life, and consequently those of his associates, by the confession |