To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of France, you would imagine that they were talking of Persia bleeding under the ferocious sword of Thamas Kouli Khan,—­or at least describing the barbarous anarchic despotism of Turkey, where the finest countries in the most genial climates in the world are wasted by peace more than any countries have been worried by war, where arts are unknown, where manufactures languish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture decays, where the human race itself melts away and perishes under the eye of the observer.  Was this the case of France?  I have no way of determining the question but by a reference to facts.  Facts do not support this resemblance.  Along with much evil, there is some good in monarchy itself; and some corrective to its evil from religion, from laws, from manners, from opinions, the French monarchy must have received, which rendered it (though by no means a free, and therefore by no means a good constitution) a despotism rather in appearance than in reality.

Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as not the least certain.  No country in which population flourishes, and is in progressive improvement, can be under a very mischievous government.  About sixty years ago, the Intendants of the Generalities of France made, with other matters, a report of the population of their several districts.  I have not the books, which are very voluminous, by me, nor do I know where to procure them, (I am obliged to speak by memory, and therefore the less positively,) but I think the population of France was by them, even at that period, estimated at twenty-two millions of souls.  At the end of the last century it had been generally calculated at eighteen.  On either of these estimations, France was not ill-peopled.  M. Necker, who is an authority for his own time at least equal to the Intendants for theirs, reckons, and upon apparently sure principles, the people of France, in the year 1780, at twenty-four millions six hundred and seventy thousand.  But was this the probable ultimate term under the old establishment?  Dr. Price is of opinion that the growth of population in France was by no means at its acme in that year.  I certainly defer to Dr. Price’s authority a good deal more in these speculations than I do in his general politics.  This gentleman, taking ground on M. Necker’s data, is very confident that since the period of that minister’s calculation the French population has increased rapidly,—­so rapidly, that in the year 1789 he will not consent to rate the people of that kingdom at a lower number than thirty millions.  After abating much (and much I think ought to be abated) from the sanguine calculation of Dr. Price, I have no doubt that the population of France did increase considerably during this latter period:  but supposing that it increased to nothing more than will be sufficient to complete the twenty-four millions six hundred and seventy thousand to twenty-five millions, still a population of twenty-five millions, and that in an increasing progress, on a space of about twenty-seven thousand square leagues, is immense.  It is, for instance, a good deal more than the proportionable population of this island, or even than that of England, the best peopled part of the United Kingdom.