The present policy, therefore, of the Austrian politicians is, to recover despotism through democracy,—­or, at least, at any expense, everywhere to ruin the description of men who are everywhere the objects of their settled and systematic aversion, but more especially in the Netherlands.  Compare this with the Emperor’s refusing at first all intercourse with the present powers in France, with his endeavoring to excite all Europe against them, and then, his not only withdrawing all assistance and all countenance from the fugitives who had been drawn by his declarations from their houses, situations, and military commissions, many even from the means of their very existence, but treating them with every species of insult and outrage.

Combining this unexampled conduct in the Emperor’s advisers with the timidity (operating as perfidy) of the king of France, a fatal example is held out to all subjects, tending to show what little support, or even countenance, they are to expect from those for whom their principle of fidelity may induce them to risk life and fortune.  The Emperor’s advisers would not for the world rescind one of the acts of this or of the late French Assembly; nor do they wish anything better at present for their master’s brother of France than that he should really be, as he is nominally, at the head of the system of persecution of religion and good order, and of all descriptions of dignity, natural and instituted:  they only wish all this done with a little more respect to the king’s person, and with more appearance of consideration for his new subordinate office,—­in hopes, that, yielding himself for the present to the persons who have effected these changes, he may be able to game for the rest hereafter.  On no other principles than these can the conduct of the court of Vienna be accounted for.  The subordinate court of Brussels talks the language of a club of Feuillants and Jacobins.

[Sidenote:  Moderate party.]

In this state of general rottenness among subjects, and of delusion and false politics in princes, comes a new experiment.  The king of France is in the hands of the chiefs of the regicide faction,—­the Barnaves, Lameths, Fayettes, Perigords, Duports, Robespierres, Camuses, &c., &c., &c.  They who had imprisoned, suspended, and conditionally deposed him are his confidential counsellors.  The next desperate of the desperate rebels call themselves the moderate party.  They are the chiefs of the first Assembly, who are confederated to support their power during their suspension from the present, and to govern the existent body with as sovereign a sway as they had done the last.  They have, for the greater part, succeeded; and they have many advantages towards procuring their success in future.  Just before the close of their regular power, they bestowed some appearance of prerogatives on the king, which in their first plans they had refused to him,—­particularly the mischievous, and,