Will he say whether the King of Sardinia’s horrible tyranny was the cause of the loss of Savoy and of Nice?  What lesson of moderation does it teach the Pope?  I desire to know whether his Holiness is to learn not to massacre his subjects, nor to waste and destroy such beautiful countries as that of Avignon, lest he should call to their assistance that great deliverer of nations, Jourdan Coupe-tete?  What lesson does it give of moderation to the Emperor, whose predecessor never put one man to death after a general rebellion of the Low Countries, that the Regicides never spared man, woman, or child, whom they but suspected of dislike to their usurpations?  What, then, are all these lessons about the softening the character of sovereigns by this Regicide peace?  On reading this section, one would imagine that the poor tame sovereigns of Europe had been a sort of furious wild beasts, that stood in need of some uncommonly rough discipline to subdue the ferocity of their savage nature.

As to the example to be learnt from the murder of Louis the Sixteenth, if a lesson to kings is not derived from his fate, I do not know whence it can come.  The author, however, ought not to have left us in the dark upon that subject, to break our shins over his hints and insinuations.  Is it, then, true, that this unfortunate monarch drew his punishment upon himself by his want of moderation, and his oppressing the liberties of which he had found his people in possession?  Is not the direct contrary the fact?  And is not the example of this Revolution the very reverse of anything which can lead to that softening of character in princes which the author supposes as a security to the people, and has brought forward as a recommendation to fraternity with those who have administered that happy emollient in the murder of their king and the slavery and desolation of their country?

But the author does not confine the benefit of the Regicide lesson to kings alone.  He has a diffusive bounty.  Nobles, and men of property, will likewise be greatly reformed.  They, too, will be led to a review of their social situation and duties,—­“and will reflect, that their large allotment of worldly advantages is for the aid and benefit of the whole.”  Is it, then, from the fate of Juigne, Archbishop of Paris, or of the Cardinal de Rochefoucault, and of so many others, who gave their fortunes, and, I may say, their very beings, to the poor, that the rich are to learn, that their “fortunes are for the aid and benefit of the whole”?  I say nothing of the liberal persons of great rank and property, lay and ecclesiastic, men and women, to whom we have had the honor and happiness of affording an asylum:  I pass by these, lest I should never have done, or lest I should omit some as deserving as any I might mention.  Why will the author, then, suppose that the nobles and men of property in France have been banished, confiscated, and murdered, on account of the savageness and ferocity of their character, and their being tainted with vices beyond those of the same order and description in other countries?  No judge of a revolutionary tribunal, with his hands dipped in their blood and his maw gorged with their property, has yet dared to assert what this author has been pleased, by way of a moral lesson, to insinuate.