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1814; and by the forcible replacement of him by the armies of Great Britain and her allies, after the decisive victory of Waterloo in the following year. The French people, however, recovered their liberty, and, in one week, neutralized all our efforts during a war of a quarter of a century, by dethroning in 1830, the family that has cost the labouring classes of this country so much misery.

The total amount of taxes in France some years previous to the Revolution was in sterling money, £24,375,000. The expense of collection between 10 and 11 per cent. The number of persons of all kinds employed in the collection was about 250,000.

The total amount of taxes of England and Scotland in 1784, including the cost of collection, poor-rates, and turnpikes, was about £17,800,000.

The total amount of taxes, including the cost of collection, poor-rates, and turnpikes in 1842, was about £60,000,000.

So much for wars to force a royal family on a foreign nation!

In proportion to the population, the expenditure of France before the Revolution, was at the rate of about £1 sterling a head. In Great Britain, it is now at the rate of about £2 sterling a head. But in France, it was not so much the amount of the gross taxation, as the unequal pressure, and the injustice of the principle, that caused the evil. The fabric of British taxation is so constructed as to rest on the mass of the population, and press them down with a physical and moral weight:—the physical load, is the actual tax that curtails the subsistence of the labouring classes; and the moral weight, is the injustice of charging them with the expense of protecting the property of the

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wealthy and powerful, in order to save the abstraction of a certain proportion of that property to secure itself. It is necessary to expose the evil principle of British taxation, by every mode of illustration; and, although it is perfectly true, that the wealthiest and most powerful man in the British dominions is as much under the law, and amenable for a breach of it, as the humblest peasant that digs the soil; still it must be impressed on the public mind, that laws taxing or restricting the food of the people, are not felt so as to inconvenience, to a perceptible degree, the wealthy and powerful individuals who make the laws; the labouring classes, and all who exercise industry, are grievously injured in their circumstances by such laws. It is the more necessary to place these truths in a clear light, as, during the agitation caused by the provision-laws, it was repeatedly demanded by the defenders of them, in what consisted the injustice and partiality of laws to which all classes from peers to labourers were alike subject? It was asked, does the poor man pay a higher duty on his sugar, coffee, or tea, than the richest individual in the land? Does the lawmaker not pay a heavy duty on his high-flavoured wines and other foreign luxuries? and on the porter and ale used in his family, does he not pay the same duty as the labourer? In these cases, it is true that rich and poor are placed on apparently an equal footing, but there the equality ends; for can it be said, that in the object and ends of this enormous taxation, there is reciprocity between the great body of contributors, and the class of men who make and administer the laws, and, above all, who control the distribution of the amount collected?

In France, before the Revolution, the mass of the population was loaded with a heavy taxation, which galled by the

bad adjustment of its weight, and superincumbent was the pressure of privileged classes who preyed on the industry of the people.

Necker was beset by a crowd of begging aristocrats, who pressed on him their respective demands on the exchequer. To one, who asked for a thousand crowns, as being a sum that could not put the treasury to much difficulty, he answered "that a thousand crowns were the amount of the land-tax of two villages, and left the applicant to judge whether he had a right to such a tax."* Barruel, a contemporary historian, thus describes the aristocracy just previous to the Revolution: "Greedy courtiers disgust the monarch with their intrigues-alienate the people by their scandals-corrupt them by their impiety-and irritate them by their luxury.” †

Thiers, in his History of the French Revolution, gives the following picture of the state of society before the great catastrophe: "Grandees, who had abandoned their feudal dignity in favour of the monarch, and who disputed among themselves by intrigue, the property of the people, which was delivered into their hands; and besides an immense population, without any relation with this royal aristocracy, except that of an habitual submission, and the payment of taxes." t "The courtiers who enjoyed the fruits of their abuses, would have wished to see the embarrassments of the treasury terminate, provided it did not cost them a single sacrifice-they commiserated at the chase the vexations exercised against the labourers."§ • Vol. I. p. 47.

† Barruel's History of Jacobinism; English translation by Clifford, 1798. Vol. II. p. 444. Thiers' History, Vol. I. p. 5.

§ Ibid. Vol. I. p. 11.-One of the Ministers of the British Government remarked, in August, 1842, as a reason for the prorogation of Parliament, that pheasant-shooting had commenced.

What a striking likeness there is between the French aristocrats at the chase, pitying the vexations exercised against the labourers-and the English legislative sportsmen pursuing their game, while the manufacturing towns of England were in a state of convulsion, by the taxation that is ruining their resources!

The exactions of the aristocracy irritated the French people, and alienated their minds from the laws and monarchical institutions of their country. The monarch was patriotic, and of a disposition the farthest removed from acts of tyranny; he and his family were humane and benevolent, but they fell victims to popular fury. Their execution was a great national crime; and it was foolish, because it was useless. The aristocracy could not save them, but they fled from their country-left it to its fateand threw themselves into the ranks of its enemies. The French nation, like noble steeds become wild

"Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race
Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out-
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make

War with mankind."

Macbeth.

Several circumstances concurred to precipitate France into the abyss of her Revolutions of 1789 and 1793. The intrigues of the secret societies instituted by Voltaire, and conducted by his successors-the discovery of the conspiracy against society by Weishaupt, and the German Illuminati-and the ripening of the plans of the great leaders of the revolutionary party-all came to a head and burst forth into action, within that interval of five years.

The secret association, which comprised all the most violent revolutionists, disguised the real designs of the conspirators, and secured the benevolent sympathies of the public, by assuming the philanthropic name, or designation,

of "Friends of the Blacks" of the West Indies and the Americas. This, and the other secret societies, at length merged into the famous club of the Jacobins.

Among the immediate causes of the excitement of the public mind about this time, the return of the troops that had aided the Americans in the achievement of their national independence, must not be omitted, as stimulating the people, by the speeches of the soldiers in favour of liberty.

The French people, being thus predisposed for great changes, were impelled to action by the secret movers; and the movement was accomplished on the principle laid down by the secret club of the Propagandists. The whole doctrine of this sect rested on the following basis: "Want and opinion are the two agents which make all men act; cause the want-govern opinions—and you will overturn all the existing systems, however well consolidated they may appear.* The funds of this club, or order, were in the year 1790, about one million sterling in specie.

The scarcity of bread, amounting to famine, was one of the most distressing circumstances in the outbreak of the Revolution. The outbreak was the actual effect of hunger, and was caused by the acts of the revolutionary leaders. The finances of the government were in a state of derangement, which prevented measures for the supply of food. But all the corn that could be procured was bought by the conspirators, and stowed in warehouses, or deposited in barges, and sent from place to place, out of reach of the inhabitants of Paris, who clamorously called for bread. Barruel accuses Necker and Philip d'Orleans as the authors of this attempt to starve the people. It appeared that a great quantity of corn was deposited in Normandy, which the Parliament

* Barruel's History of Jacobinism, vol. ii. p. 437.

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