ention to the reader the fate of the design to
which this pamphlet was to be subservient. The Jacobins of Paris were
more prompt than their adversaries. They were the readiest to resort to
what La Fayette calls the _most sacred of all duties, that of
insurrection_. Another era of holy insurrection commenced the 31st of
last May. As the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on
insurrection, and of that rebellion improving upon rebellion, the
sacred, irresponsible character of the members of the Convention was
laughed to scorn. They had themselves shown in their proceedings against
the late king how little the most fixed principles are to be relied
upon, in their revolutionary Constitution. The members of the Girondin
party in the Convention were seized upon, or obliged to save themselves
by flight. The unhappy author of this piece, with twenty of his
associates, suffered together on the scaffold, after a trial the
iniquity of which puts all description to defiance.

The English reader will draw from this work of Brissot, and from the
result of the last struggles of this party, some useful lessons. He will
be enabled to judge of the information of those who have undertaken to
guide and enlighten us, and who, for reasons best known to themselves,
have chosen to paint the French Revolution and its consequences in
brilliant and flattering colors. They will know how to appreciate the
liberty of France, which has been so much magnified in England. They
will do justice to the wisdom and goodness of their sovereign and his
Parliament, who have put them into a state of defence, in the war
audaciously made upon us in favor of that kind of liberty. When we see
(as here we must see) in their true colors the character and policy of
our enemies, our gratitude will become an active principle. It will
produce a strong and zealous cooeperation with the efforts of our
government in favor of a Constitution under which we enjoy advantages
the full value of which the querulous weakness of human nature requires
sometimes the opportunity of a comparison to understand and to relish.

Our confidence in those who watch for the public will not be lessened.
We shall be sensible that to alarm us in the late circumstances of our
affairs was not for our molestation, but for our security. We shall be
sensible that this alarm was not ill-timed,--and that it ought to have
been given, as it was given, before the enemy had time fully to mature
and acc