government, overlooking the past, would | us, and could be viewed by us in no other reclaim La Fayette and his fellow-suf- light, than as one of those who rose ferers as French citizens. How much and fell in the course of the Frence revosuch & conduct would suit the generosity lution. and magnanimity of the French republic! and what a contrast it would be of republican resentment and monarchical gratitude, that from this Atheistical government we should learn the principle of the forgiveness of injuries, and lessons of eternal vengeance only from the regular Christian government of kings!

of that was true, and that the enemy of our enemy was our friend. However the demands of personal safety, or the ruin of his ambitious schemes, had made the marquis an enemy to the men who at that time filled the usurped government of France, his hostility to Austria was not less than before, nor was he competent to divest himself of it, all at once, for his own convenience. As to the question of his being taken on neutral ground, it was one with which neither of the contending parties had any thing to do. To the third, or neutral power, on whose territory he was taken, and to it alone, it belonged to complain of the act as an infraction of neutrality; so that neither France nor America, and still less England, had any thing to do with it. Viewing the transaction, therefore, in its own direct form, and in all its relations, there was no injustice in it with regard to the infraction of neutrality, no violation of the law of nations.

sequently attended him, should be an eternal lesson to all those who, actuated by similar motives of guilty ambition, would bring ruin on their country. When at the head of the National Guards, did he lead them, as was his duty, to the relief of his king? If he had not done so, what excuse could be offered for him? Would it be said, that he acted under the impression of terror for himself? If so, would they insist upon that as an excuse? or would they say, that he ought not to have risked his life. A soldier, honoured with such rank and favour, commanding the guards, could not have fallen in a nobler cause. He ought, even though certain of death, to have encountered it in discharge of his duty, and expiated, in some sort, the great calamities his ambition had occasioned. His own excuse was, that he had no command over the guards; but what could be said of a man, who having declared that he had no command over troops, continued nevertheless along with them? He should have retired, and in repentance endeavoured to atone for the ruin he had made. But no: it was well understood what part he played, and what end he had in view. After having amused the king with a promise that there was no danger, which threw him off his guard; after the palace had been forced, and the royal family placed in imminent danger, he appeared. Lulled into security by his promises, the king and queen had gone to rest: the mob burst so suddenly into the palace, that her majesty was obliged to escape undressed. La Fayette said, that no farther violence would be offered; but when called for, he was not in town. For how much mischief was he not answerable!

The marquis de la Fayette was, therefore, to be considered by the House (since he was forced upon their deliberations) first, as a prisoner of war, under the ordinary law of nations, and next, as a stranger to England. This last position no one could deny. He was not a native, nor had he been naturalized; he had never been in our service; he had never been even our prisoner; this country had no share in him or his services; he was no inhabitant of any country which had been conquered and delivered up to the king of Great Britain; he was not one of those who embodied in the cause of their lawful monarch and government, or joined those who ranged under the banners of England, and were murdered in cold blood by their enemies; he never had even constructively Having so far shown the culpable put himself under the protection of this conduct of La Fayette, he would now go country; he had never been friendly to to the great act of merit to which the her interests. So that he was as com- friends of the marquis had been obliged pletely separate from this country, its in- to resort for want of better, and on which terests, or its favours, as any other person they seemed to lay so much reliance, as whatsoever on the face of the globe. On an act that was to redeem all that he had the subject of La Fayette's merit in the done before, namely, his merit in shakrevolution he would say but little. it ing and breaking down that constitution had, in fact, been so slenderly relied upon which had for ages existed, and which, by the hon. gentleman, that it was unne- though abused, was yet capable of reforcessary for him to enter much into it; mation. Appeal had been made to his but never, never should be forgotten his conduct, in having saved the king from gross and criminal neglect in June 1789; that very danger into which his machinanever his conduct on the memorable tions had betrayed him; to all which he 5th and 6th of October, in which there (Mr. W.) gave no credit, nor, he believed, was clear and evident matter for con- would the House, or any unprejudiced demnation, which, with the fate that sub- rational person-no, not an iota of credit

farther than this, that his ambitious strides | had brought him to a period at which he was obliged to stop; and that he refrained from his own factious proceedings only when a more furious faction threatened to overpower him. He would not say, for he did not believe, that La Fayette wished entirely to destroy the king, or to erect a republic in the place of the monarchy, but that he wished to lower the king to a state of independence on himself, and to be, like Trinculo in the Tempest, "viceroy over him." To encounter such cvidence of guilt, stronger proofs than any which had been adduced were necessary. Considering the temper and opinions of the hon. gentlemen opposite, it appeared somewhat extraordinary that they should be advocates for La Fayette. They might be supposed to forgive his "treachery to his sovereign the king," but how could they pardon him for the more abominable crime of "treason to the sovereign people?" This was one of the wonstrous inconsistencies in which the conductors of revolutions necessarily involved themselves. If La Fayette was fallen into misery, he had fallen a victim of his own act, and his own principles. He had brought himself into that state into which all fomentors of great and ruinous revolutions must necessarily fall. He had betrayed and ruined his country and his king, and took refuge for his character and conscience in his own defeat; claiming merit for stopping just at that point, beyond which it was out of his power to go; and then he became the enemy of those whom he had made the instrument of his designs upon the king. He was the first to bring destruction upon the supreme power and the first that turned against the Jacobins. That he was the author of infinite calamities, no one would deny, of what his motives had been, there was no proof; but there was no more presumption in favour of his innocence, than there was in favour of any of the other persons who were concerned in that horrible transac

tion.

M. La Fayette, then, being thus proved to be, as to England, a total stranger, the question to which he proposed next to advert was, that of humanity, which, in point of fact, was the whole question of the night. With respect to the rigour with which that gentleman was described to have been treated, he believed there was much of exaggeration in it; but taken as a subject of humanity to work [VOL. XXXII.]

upon, he did not see how or why it should be separated, as it were, and selected from others. As the mere suffering of an individual, it must certainly excite pity: there was no case of calamity whatever, which, if seen abstracted from other considerations, but must excite the feelings of every one deserving the name of man. In this view all cases of suffering had a right to be considered: but was every case, public or private, to draw interposi tion in its behalf? Did gentlemen look round, and consider the innumerable calamities that by the wise dispositions of Providence, beset human nature on every side, and offered so many subjects of appeal to our commiseration? Did they recollect how many, without offence or fault of magnitude, but merely under the influence of error, were drinking of the bitterest cup of life, to which it was impossible to extend interposition. Did they consider how many there were besides La Fayette, pining in confinement, for debt or for crime? To see or think of a human creature enduring the rigours of imprisonment, or being carried to the execution of that punishment which the laws award for the expiation of crime, abstractedly, must wring the heart of any man with sympathizing commiseration; but men should not, in such cases, consider the suffering separate from the causes and circumstances which occasioned it; humanity would kindle compassion; but reason must overrule that feeling in consideration of the cause. This was the reigning practical fallacy by which questions of a very simple nature were attempted to be confounded. In the number of those who had produced the French revolution, and followed it up with those enormities which had surpassed all that poets had ever fancied, there were many who viewing their sufferings in naked abstraction, would excite compaɛsion. For instance, that gentleman named Collot d'Herbois-he was condemned to Guiana, to which place vast numbers of the most learned and venerable men existing, the clergy of France, had also been condemned, for no other reason but bccause they refused to abjure their religion, deny their God, and act in contradiction to their consciences. The place was chosen as that in which human nature would be most exposed to suffer, and every thing was done to render the natural evils of the country more dreadful and destructive. If we were to abstract the [4 T]

Having discussed these points, he would now apply himself to a part which would bring the House nearer to the consideration of the propriety of interference. Would the House, he asked, believe that the Emperor was unmindful of his consanguinity with the royal sufferers under this man's plans? Could they suppose that that monarch, knowing all that had been just stated to be true, could fail of harbouring a just indignation against the author of his near relation's calamities and death?

sufferings of the wretch from the crimes | cutioner-but never could or would that led to it, we could not but wish him forgive La Fayette. rescued from such misery. We would say (perhaps as others may say in nearly similar cases),"'Tis true Collot d'Herbois killed many thousand people; 'tis true, that when the guillotines were insufficient, and the executioners were fatigued with putting them to death, he sent them, for more speedy dispatch, into a great square, where he fired upon them with cannon, and ordered in a party of cavalry to cut and trample to death the few who had escaped the guns; but 'tis also true, that the thing is passed; and that the men are in their graves, and cannot be brought to life again. Poor Collot! He is not the better for being in Guiana-what is the use of it-let us send for him, and bring him home-how can men of feeling think of prolonging the punishment of poor Collot Herbois!" This was a perfect illustration of that false humanity by which gentlemen wished the House now to be guided; but he would tell them, that true humanity taught a different lesson, and interdicted the practice of that spurious im posture under the name of it, which they advised. Mankind were not formed to pity at once the oppressed and the oppressor; the choice of the hon. gentlemen opposite, was, to take up and espouse the cause of the oppressor; but for his part, he would. take up and espouse that of the oppressed. He could not separate the idea of M. La Fayette from the millions who were suffering by his crimes. Did gentlemen doubt it? Let them look into our streets, and see men equal to La Fayette in honour, in rank, in talents, in courage, in every valuable quality which his warmest advocates could boast that he possessed, exiled from home, ruined by the revolution, of which he was the leader and instigator, and involved in misery, in wretchedness, and beggary, by his crimes. Did gentlemen who urged this measure know, or rather was it possible they should not know, that the opinion of all the best informed men in France was, that La Fayette's conduct to the king was cruel, ferocious, and unmanly? And was it not universally known, from those who were in the confidence of the queen of France, that that august and magnani. mous personage often declared, he was the only man she could never forgive? She was often heard to say, she could forgive Barnave, nay, would interpose between him and the stroke of the exe

And were we, without being apprized what his designs were, or what his actual treatment of La Fayette, to interpose with respect to his mode of treating the personal author of such crimes? Surely not: it would be not only impolitic and impertinent, as respecting ourselves, but extremely indecent and improper, as regarding his imperial majesty, to interpose in a case that lay so very near him. In answer to an hon. gentleman who had countenanced the motion by a speech and an amendment, and in whose opinion it was our duty to go about Europe to dictate rules of policy, he would say, that his sentiments had overleaped the distinction made by the hon. gentleman opposite to him, for the same pitiable representation and relief which they confined to one, he would extend to all; so that where was the work of the House in interference to stop? While scenes of misery in gross and in detail surrounded us, and impressed upon our senses, whichsoever way we looked, how was it that gentlemen were so cold and so callous, as never to be quickened into feeling but by the solitary case of La Fayette? In the greater instances, when the worst of horrors were going forward, when our ears were constantly assailed with the cries of one-half of france murdering the other, did the House forget that the very suspicion that those sufferings were the motives to our interference, was sufficient to illegitimate all other causes of war; that this so vitiated it in gentlemen's estimation, that the whole formula of their objections, construed into plainer language, was, that the war was unjust and detestable, because excited by feelings for such misery and destruction! If gentlemen wished for proper objects for the exercise of their humane feelings, let them look to the thirty thousand priests pining in the prisons of