As the government has lately assumed a more civilized cast, it was expected that the anniversary of the King’s death would not have been celebrated.  The Convention, however, determined otherwise; and their musical band was ordered to attend as usual on occasions of festivity.  The leader of the band had perhaps sense and decency enough to suppose, that if such an event could possibly be justified, it never could be a subject of rejoicing, and therefore made choice of melodies rather tender than gay.  But this Lydian mood, far from having the mollifying effect attributed to it by Scriblerus, threw several Deputies into a rage; and the conductor was reprimanded for daring to insult the ears of the legislature with strains which seemed to lament the tyrant.  The affrighted musician begged to be heard in his defence; and declaring he only meant, by the adoption of these gentle airs, to express the tranquillity and happiness enjoyed under the republican constitution, struck off Ca Ira.

When the ceremony was over, one Brival proposed, that the young King should be put to death; observing that instead of the many useless crimes which had been committed, this ought to have had the preference.  The motion was not seconded; but the Convention, in order to defeat the purposes of the royalists, who, they say, increase in number, have ordered the Committees to consider of some way of sending this poor child out of the country.

When I reflect on the event which these men have so indecently commemorated, and the horrors which succeeded it, I feel something more than a detestation for republicanism.  The undefined notions of liberty imbibed from poets and historians, fade away—­my reverence for names long consecrated in our annals abates—­and the sole object of my political attachment is the English constitution, as tried by time and undeformed by the experiments of visionaries and impostors.  I begin to doubt either the sense or honesty of most of those men who are celebrated as the promoters of changes of government which have chiefly been adopted rather with a view to indulge a favourite theory, than to relieve a people from any acknowledged oppression.  A wise or good man would distrust his judgment on a subject so momentous, and perhaps the best of such reformers were but enthusiasts.  Shaftesbury calls enthusiasm an honest passion; yet we have seen it is a very dangerous one:  and we may perhaps learn, from the example of France, not to venerate principles which we do not admire in practice.*

* I do not imply that the French Revolution was the work of enthusiasts, but that the enthusiasm of Rousseau produced a horde of Brissots, Marats, Robespierres, &c. who speculated on the affectation of it.  The Abbe Sieyes, whose views were directed to a change of Monarchs, not a dissolution of the monarchy, and who in promoting a revolution did not mean to found a republic, has ventured to doubt both the political genius of Rousseau, and