th his whole family,--leaving behind him a declaration in which
he disavows and annuls that Constitution, as having been the effect of
force on his person and usurpation on his authority. It is equally
notorious, that this unfortunate prince was, with many circumstances of
insult and outrage, brought back prisoner by a deputation of the
pretended National Assembly, and afterwards suspended by their authority
from his government. Under equally notorious constraint, and under
menaces of total deposition, he has been compelled to accept what they
call a Constitution, and to agree to whatever else the usurped power
which holds him in confinement thinks proper to impose.

His nest brother, who had fled with him, and his third brother, who had
fled before him, all the princes of his blood who remained faithful to
him, and the flower of his magistracy, his clergy, and his nobility,
continue in foreign countries, protesting against all acts done by him
in his present situation, on the grounds upon which he had himself
protested against them at the time of his flight,--with this addition,
that they deny his very competence (as on good grounds they may) to
abrogate the royalty, or the ancient constitutional orders of the
kingdom. In this protest they are joined by three hundred of the late
Assembly itself, and, in effect, by a great part of the French nation.
The new government (so far as the people dare to disclose their
sentiments) is disdained, I am persuaded, by the greater number,--who,
as M. de La Fayette complains, and as the truth is, have declined to
take any share in the new elections to the National Assembly, either as
candidates or electors.

In this state of things, (that is, in the case of a _divided_ kingdom,)
by the law of nations,[30] Great Britain, like every other power, is
free to take any part she pleases. She may decline, with more or less
formality, according to her discretion, to acknowledge this new system;
or she may recognize it as a government _de facto_, setting aside all
discussion of its original legality, and considering the ancient
monarchy as at an end. The law of nations leaves our court open to its
choice. We have no direction but what is found in the well-understood
policy of the king and kingdom.

This declaration of a _new species_ of government, on new principles,
(such it professes itself to be,) is a real crisis in the politics of
Europe. The conduct which prudence ought to dictate to G