us see, a little, how mobs have acted under the famous Government that the Doctor so much admires.
I shall not attempt a detail of the horrors committed by the cut-throat Jourdan and his associates in Provence, Avignon, Languedoc, and Rousillon—towns and villages sacked, gentlemen’s seats and castles burnt, and their inhabitants massacred; magistrates insulted, beat, and imprisoned, sometimes killed; prisoners set at liberty, to cut the throats of those they had already robbed. The exploits of this band of patriots would fill whole volumes. They reduced a great part of the inhabitants of the finest and most fertile country in the whole world, to a degree of misery and ruin that would never have been forgotten, had it not been so far eclipsed since, by the operation of what is, in “that devoted country,” called the law. The amount of the damages sustained in property, was perhaps a hundred thousand times as great as that sustained by the revolutionists at Birmingham. When repeated accounts of these murderous scenes were laid before the National Assembly, what was the consequence? what the redress? “We had our fears,” says Monsieur Gentil, “for the prisoners of Avignon, and for the lives and property of the inhabitants of that unhappy country; but these fears are now changed into a certainty: the prisoners are released; the country seats are burnt, and”—Monsieur Gentil was called to order, and not suffered to proceed; after which these precious “Guardians of the Rights of Man” passed a censure on him, for having slandered the patriots. It is notorious, that the chief of these cut-throats, Jourdan, has since produced his butcheries in Avignon, as a proof of his civism, and that he is now a distinguished character among the real friends of the revolution.
Does the Doctor remember having heard any thing about the glorious achievements of the 10th of August 1792? Ref 009 Has he ever made an estimate of the property destroyed in Paris on that and the following days? Let him compare the destruction that followed the steps of that mob, with the loss of his boasted apparatus; and when he has done this, let him tell us, if he can, where he would now be, if the Government of England had treated him and his friends as the National Assembly did the sufferers in the riots of the 10th of August. But, perhaps, he looks upon the events of that day as a glorious victory, a new emancipation, and of course will say, that I degrade the heroes in calling them a mob. I am not for disputing with him about a name; he may call them the heroes of the 10th of August, if he will: “The heroes of the 14th of July,” has always been understood to mean, a gang of blood-thirsty cannibals, and I would by no means wish to withhold the title from those of the 10th of August.
Will the Doctor allow, that it was a mob that murdered the state prisoners from Orleans? Or does he insist upon calling that massacre an act of civism, and the actors in it the heroes of the 12th of September? But whether it was an act of civism, a massacre, or a victory, or whatever it was, I cannot help giving it a place here, as I find it recorded by his countryman, Doctor Moore.
“The mangled bodies,” says he, “were lying in the street, on the left hand, as you go to the Chateau, from Paris. Some of the lower sort of the inhabitants of Versailles were looking on; the rest, struck with terror, were shut up in their shops and houses. The body of the Duke of Brissac was pointed out, the head and one of the hands was cut off: a man stood near smoking tobacco, with his sword drawn, and a human hand stuck on the point: another fellow walked carelessly among the bodies with an entire arm of another of the prisoners fixed to the point of his sword. A wagon afterwards arrived, into which were thrown as many of the slaughtered bodies as the horses could draw: a boy of about fifteen years of age was in the wagon, assisting to receive the bodies as they were put in, and packing them in the most convenient manner, with an air of as much indifference as if they had been so many parcels of goods. One of the wretches who threw in the bodies, and who probably had assisted in the massacre, said to the spectators in praise of the boy’s activity, ‘See that little fellow there; how bold he is!’
“The assassins of the prisoners were a party who came from Paris the preceding evening, most of them in post-chaises for that purpose, and who attacked those unhappy men while they remained in the street, waiting till the gate of the prison, which was prepared for their reception, should be opened. The detachment which had guarded the prisoners from Orleans, stood shameful and passive spectators of the massacre. The miserable prisoners being all unarmed, and some of them fettered, could do nothing in their own defence; they were most of them stabbed; and a few, who attempted resistance, were cut down with sabres.
There never was a more barbarous and dastardly action performed in the face of the sun. Gracious Heaven! were those barbarities, which would disgrace savages, committed by Frenchmen! by that lively and ingenious people, whose writings were so much admired, whose society has been so much courted, and whose manners have been so much imitated by all the neighbouring nations? This atrocious deed executed in the street of Versailles, and the horrors committed in the prisons of Paris, will fix indelible stains on the character of the French nation. It is said, those barbarities revolted the hearts of many of the citizens of Paris and Versailles, as much as they could those of the inhabitants of London or Windsor. It is also said, that those massacres were not committed by the inhabitants of Paris or Versailles, but by a set of hired assassins. But who hired those assassins? Who remained in shameful stupor and dastardly inactivity, while their laws were insulted, their prisons violated, and their fellow-citizens butchered in the open streets? I do not believe, that from the wickedest gang of highwaymen, housebreakers, and pickpockets, that infest London and the neighbourhood, men could be selected who could be bribed to murder, in cold blood, such a number of their countrymen. And if they could, I am convinced that no degree of popular delusion they are capable of, no pretext, no motive whatever, could make the inhabitants of London or Windsor, or any town of Great Britain, suffer such dreadful executions to be performed within their walls.”
No; I hope not: yet I do not know what might have been effected by an introduction of the same system of anarchy, that has changed the airy French into a set of the most ferocious inhuman bloodhounds that ever disgraced the human shape.
From scenes like these, the mind turns for relief and consolation to the riot at Birmingham. That riot, considered comparatively with what Dr. Priestley and his friends wished and attempted to stir up, was peace, harmony and gentleness. Has this man any reason to complain? He will perhaps say, he did not approve of the French riots and massacres; to which I shall answer, that he did approve of them. His public celebration of them was a convincing proof of this; and if it were not, his sending his son to Paris in the midst of them, to request the honour of becoming a French citizen, is a proof that certainly will not be disputed. Ref 010 If, then, we take a view of the riots of which the Doctor is an admirer, and of those of which he expresses his detestation, we must fear that he is very far from being that “friend of human happiness,” that the Democratic Society pretend to believe him. In short, in whatever light we view the Birmingham riots, we can see no object that excites our compassion, except the inhabitants of the hundred, and the unfortunate rioters themselves.
It was the form of the English Government, and those artificial distinctions; that is to say, of King, Prince, Bishop, &c. that he wanted to destroy, in order to produce that “other system of liberty,” which he had been so long dreaming about. In his answer to the address of “the republican natives of Great Britain and Ireland resident at New York,” he says, “the wisdom and happiness of republican Governments, and the evils resulting from hereditary monarchical ones, cannot appear in a stronger light to you, than they do to me;” and yet this same man pretended an inviolable attachment to the hereditary monarchical Government of Great Britain! Says he, by way of vindicating the principles of his club to the people of Birmingham, “the first toast that was drunk was, ‘The King and Constitution.’ ” What! does he make a merit in England of having toasted that which he abominates in America? Alas! philosophers are but mere men.
It is clear that a parliamentary reform was not the object; an aftergame was intended, which the vigilance of Government, and the natural good sense of the people, happily prevented; and the Doctor, disappointed and chagrined, is come here to discharge his heart of the venom it has been long collecting against his country. He tells the Democratic Society that he cannot promise
