as an alliance.  The procedure was in my opinion a high misdemeanor in those who acted thus in England, if they were not so very low and so very base that no acts of theirs can be called high, even as a description of criminality; and the Assembly, in accepting, proclaiming, and publishing this forged alliance, has been guilty of a plain aggression, which would justify our court in demanding a direct disavowal, if our policy should not lead us to wink at it.

Whilst I look over this paper to have it copied, I see a manifesto of the Assembly, as a preliminary to a declaration of war against the German princes on the Rhine.  This manifesto contains the whole substance of the French politics with regard to foreign states.  They have ordered it to be circulated amongst the people in every country of Europe,—­even previously to its acceptance by the king, and his new privy council, the club of the Feuillants.  Therefore, as a summary of their policy avowed by themselves, let us consider some of the circumstances attending that piece, as well as the spirit and temper of the piece itself.

[Sidenote:  Declaration against the Emperor.]

It was preceded by a speech from Brissot, full of unexampled insolence towards all the sovereign states of Germany, if not of Europe.  The Assembly, to express their satisfaction in the sentiments which it contained, ordered it to be printed.  This Brissot had been in the lowest and basest employ under the deposed monarchy,—­a sort of thief-taker, or spy of police,—­in which character he acted after the manner of persons in that description.  He had been employed by his master, the Lieutenant de Police, for a considerable time in London, in the same or some such honorable occupation.  The Revolution, which has brought forward all merit of that kind, raised him, with others of a similar class and disposition, to fame and eminence.  On the Revolution he became a publisher of an infamous newspaper, which he still continues.  He is charged, and I believe justly, as the first mover of the troubles in Hispaniola.  There is no wickedness, if I am rightly informed, in which he is not versed, and of which he is not perfectly capable.  His quality of news-writer, now an employment of the first dignity in France, and his practices and principles, procured his election into the Assembly, where he is one of the leading members.  M. Condorcet produced on the same day a draught of a declaration to the king, which the Assembly published before it was presented.

Condorcet (though no marquis, as he styled himself before the Revolution) is a man of another sort of birth, fashion, and occupation from Brissot,—­but in every principle, and every disposition to the lowest as well as the highest and most determined villanies, fully his equal.  He seconds Brissot in the Assembly, and is at once his coadjutor and his rival in a newspaper, which, in his own name, and as successor to M. Garat,