No greater proof of such adherence need
be required than their refusal to repeal those obnoxious decrees (passed
in the months of November and December, 1792,) which created so general
and so just an alarm throughout Europe, and which excited the reprobation
even of that party in England, which was willing to admit the equivocal
interpretation given to them by the Executive Council of the day. I
proved, in the Letter to a Noble Earl before alluded to, from the very
testimony of the members of that Council themselves, as exhibited in
their official instructions to one of their confidential agents, that the
interpretation which they had assigned to those decrees, in their
communications with the British Ministry, was a base interpretation, and
that they really intended to enforce the decrees, to the utmost extent of
their possible operation, and, by a literal construction thereof, to
encourage rebellion in every state, within the reach of their arms or
their principles. Nor have the present government merely forborne to
repeal those destructive laws--they have imitated the conduct of their
predecessors, have actually put them in execution wherever they had the
ability to do so, and have, in all respects, as far as related to those
decrees, adopted the precise spirit and principles of the faction which
declared war against England. Let any man read the instructions of the
Executive Council to PUBLICOLA CHAUSSARD, their Commissary in the
Netherlands, in 1792 and 1793, and an account of the proceedings in the
Low Countries consequent thereon, and then examine the conduct of the
republican General, BOUNAPARTE, in Italy--who must necessarily act from
the instructions of the Executive Directory----and he will be compelled
to acknowledge the justice of my remark, and to admit that the latter
actuated by the same pernicious desire to overturn the settled order of
society, which invariably marked the conduct of the former.
"It is an acknowledged fact, that every revolution requires a provisional
power to regulate its disorganizing movements, and to direct the
methodical demolition of every part of the ancient social constitution.--
Such ought to be the revolutionary power.
"To whom can such power belong, but to the French, in those countries
into which they may carry their arms? Can they with safety suffer it to
be exercised by any other persons? It becomes the French republic, then,
to assume this kind of guardianship over
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