fon for a feast of eternal commemoration, and which forces all her people to obferve it This I call regicide by establishment. Jacobinifm is the revolt of the enterprifing talents of a country against it's property. When private men form themfelves into affociations for the purpofe of deftroying the pre-exifting laws and institutions of their country; when they fecure to themselves an army by dividing among the people of no property, the eftates of the ancient and lawful proprietors when a ftate recognizes thofe acts; when it does not make confifcations for crimes, but makes crimes for confifcations; when it has its principal ftrength, and all its refources in fuch a violation of property; when it ftands chiefly upon fuch a violation; maffacring by judgments, or otherwife, thofe who make any fruggle for their old legal government, and their legal, hereditary, or acquired poffeffions-I call this jacobinifm by eftablishment. I call it atheism by establishment, when any ftate, as fuch, fhall not acknowledge the existence of God as a moral governor of the world; when it fhall offer to him no religious or moral worship;-when it fhall abolish the Chriftian religion by a regular decree ;-when it fhall perfecute with a cold, unrelenting, fteady cruelty, by every mode of confifcation, imprifonment, exile, and death, all its minifters; -when it hall generally shut up, or pull down, churches; when the few buildings which remain of this kind fhall be opened only for the purpose of making a profane apotheofis of monfters, whofe vices and crimes have no parallel among men, and whom all other men confider as objects of general deteftation, and the fevereft animadverfion of law. When, in the place of that religion of focial benevolence, and of individual felf-denial, in mockery of all religion, they inftitute impious, blafphemous, indecent theatric rites, in honour of their vitiated, perverted reason, and erect altars to the perfonification of their own corrupted and bloody republic; --when schools and feminaries are founded at public expence to poifon mankind, from generation to generation, with the horrible maxims of this impiety;--when wearied out with incefiant martyrdom, and the cries of a people hungering and thirfting for religion, they permit it, only as a tolerated evil-I call this atheism by establishment. When to thefe establishments of regicide, of jacobinism, and of atheism, you add the correspondent system of manners, no doubt can be left on the mind of a thinking man, concerning their determined hoftility to the human race, Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or footh, corrupt or purify, exalt or debafe, barbarize or refine us, by a conftant, fteady, uniform, infenfible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they fupply them, or they totally deftroy them. Of this the new French legiflators were aware; therefore, with the fame method, and under the fame authority, they fettled a fyftem of manners, the most licentious, prostitute, and abandoned that ever has been known, and at the fame time the most coarfe, rude, savage, and ferocious. Nothing in the revolution, no, not to a phrafe or a gefture, not to the fashion of a hat or a fhoe, was left to accident. All has been the refult of defign; al! has been matter of inftitution. No mechanical means could be devifed in favour of this incredible fyttem of wickednets and vice, that has not been employed. The nobleft paffions, the love of glory, the love of country, have been debauched into means of its prefervation and its propagation. All forts of fhews and exhibitions calculated to inflame and vitiate the imagination, and pervert the moral fenfe, have been contrived. They have fometimes brought forth five or fix hundred drunken women, calling at the bar of the affembly for the blood of their own children, as being royalifts or conftitutionalists. Sometimes they have got a body of wretches, calling themselves fathers, to demand the murder of their fons; boasting that Rome had but one Brutus, but that they could fhew five hundred. There were instances, in which they inverted,,and retaliated the impiety, and produced fons, who called for the execution of their parents. The foundation of their republic is laid in moral paradoxes. Their patriotism is always prodigy. All these inttances to be found in hittory, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public fpirit, at which morality is perplexed, reafon is ftaggered, and from which affrighted nature recoils, are their chofen, and almoft fole examples for the inftruction of their youth. The whole drift of their inftitution is contrary to that of the wife legislators of who keep warehoufes of infamy, would give out one of their victims to private cuftody on fo fhort and infolent a tenure. There was indeed a kind of profligate equity in thus giving to women the fame licentious power. The reafon they af figned was as infamous as the act; declaring that women had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of hulbands. It is not neceffary to obferve upon the horrible confequences of taking one half of the fpecies wholly out of the guardianfhip and protection of the other. The ar The practice of divorce, though in fome countries permitted, has been discouraged in all. In the Eat, polygamy and divorce are in diferedit; and the manners correct the laws. In Rome, while Ronie was in it's integrity, the few caufes allowed for divorce amounted in effect to a prohibition. They were only three. bitrary was totally excluded; and accordingly fome hundreds of years paffed, without a fingle example of that kind. When manners were corrupted, the laws were relaxed; as the latter always follow the former, when they are not able to regulate them, or to vanquish them. Of this circumftance the legiflators of vice and crime were pleafed to take notice, as an inducement to adopt their regulation; holding out an hope, that the permiffion would as rarely be made ufe of. They knew the contrary to be true; and they had taken good care, that the laws fhould be well feconded by, the manners. Their law of divorce, like all their laws, had not for it's object the relief of domeftic uneafinefs, but the total corruption of all morals, the total disconnection of focial life. all countries, who aimed at improving in- It is a matter of curiofity to obferve the operation of this encouragement to dif order. I have before me the Paris paper, correspondent to the ufual register of births, marriages, and deaths. Divorce, happily, is no regular head of regiftry among civilized nations. With the Jacobins it is remarkable, that divorce is not only a regular head, but it has the poft of honour. It occupies the first place in the lift. In the three firft months of the year 1793, the number of divorces in that city amounted to 562. The marriages were 1785; fo that the proportion of divorces to marriages was not much less than one to three; a thing unexampled, I believe, among mankind. I caufed an enquiry to be made at Doctor's Commons, concerning the number of divorces; and found, that all the divorces (which, ex cept by fpecial act of parliament, are feparations, and not proper divorces) did not amount in all thofe courts, and in an hundred years, to much more than one fifth of thofe that paffed, in the fingle city of Paris, in three months. I followed up the enquiry relative to that city through feveral of the fubfequent months until I was tired, and found the proportions ftill the fame. Since then I have heard that they have declared for a revifal of thefe laws but I know of nothing done. It appears as if the contract that renovates the world was under no law at all: From this we may take our estimate of the havoc that has been made through all the relations of life. With the Jacobins of France, vague intercourfe is without reproach; marriage is reduced to the vileft concubinage; children are encouraged to cut the throats of their parents; mothers are taught that tenderness is no part of their character; and to demonftrate their attachment to their party, that they ought to make no fcruple to rake with their bloody hands in the bowels of those who came from their own. To all this let us join the practice of cannibalism, with which, in the proper terms, and with the greatest truth, their feveral factions accufe each other. By cannibalism, I mean their devouring, as a nutriment of their ferocity, fome part of the bodies of those they have murdered; their drinking the blood of their victims, and forcing the victims themfeives to drink the blood of their kindred slaughtered before their faces. By cannibalilm, I mean alfo to fignify all their nameless, unmanly, and abominable infults on the bodies of thofe they flaughter. As to thofe whom they fuffer to die a natural death, they do not permit them to enjoy the last confolations of mankind, or thofe sites of fepulture, which indicate hope, and which meer nature has taught to mankind in all countries, to foothe the afflictions, and to cover the infirmity of mortal condition. They difgrace men in the entry into life; they vitiate and enslave them through the whole course of it; and they deprive them of all comfort at the conclufion of their dishonoured and depraved exiftence. Endeavouring to perfuade the people that they are no better than beaits, the whole body of their inftitution tends to make them beafts of prey, furious and favage. For this purpole the active part of them is difciplined into a ferocity which has no parallel. To this ferocity there is joined not one of the rude, unfashioned virtues, which accompany the vices, where the whole are left to grow up together in the rankness of uncultivated nature. But nothing is left to nature in their fyftems. The whole body of this new fcheme of manners in fupport of the new scheme of politics, I confider as a ftrong and decifive proof of determined ambition and fyltematic hoftility. I defy the molt refining ingenuity to invent any other caufe for the total departure of the jacobin republic from every one of the ideas and ufages, religious, legal, moral, or focial, of this civilized world, and for her tearing herfelf from its communion with fuch studied violence, but from a formed refolution of keeping no terms with that world. It has not been, as has been falfely and infiduously reprefented, that these miscreants had only broke with their old government. They made a fchifm with the whole univerfe; and that schifm extended to almost every thing great and small. For one, I with, fince it is gone thus far, that the breach had been fo complete, as to make all intercourfe impracticable; but partly by accident, partly by defign, partly from the refiftance of the matter, enough is left to preferve intercourfe, while amity is deftroyed or corrupted in its principle. This violent breach of the community of Europe, we must conclude to have been made (even if they had not exprefsly declared it over and over again) either to force mankind into an adoption of their fyftem, or to live in perpetual enmity with a community the most potent we have ever known. Can any perfon imagine, that in offering to mankind this defperate alternative, there is no indication of a hoftile mind, because men in poffeffion of the ruling authority are fuppofed to have a right to aft without coercion in their own terrtories? As to the right of men to act any where according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no fuch right exifts. Men are never in a ftate of total independence of each other. It is not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can purfue a confiderable course of action without its having fome effect upon others; or, of course, without producing fome degree of refponfibility for his conduct. The fituations in which men relatively ftand produce the rules and principles of that refponfibility, and afford directions to prudence in exacting it. The ADDRESS of Mr. Justice Rooke to the Jury, at the Old Bailey, on Friday October 16, in fumming up the Evidence on the Trial of John Sellers, Elifabeth Jones, and Richard Footner, for the Murder of Mr. Thomas Yates. It was our Intention to give a particular Account of this Trial; but having already stated the Subftance of the melancholy Affair (fee Pages 147 and 220). we now think it will be fufficient to give the Summing up of the Evidence by the learned Judge, in the following Addrefs to the Fnry, from which it will clearly appear what Points of the Evidence affected the Verdict that was` given. Gentlemen of the Jury, THIS is an indictment against the three prifoners, John Sellers, Elifabeth Jones, and Richard Footner; and the indictment ftates, that John Sellers has murdered Thomas Yates, by fhooting him with a piftol; and that Elifabeth Jones and Richard Footner were prefent, aiding and abetting at that murder. The queftion for you to try, therefore, will be, whether Sellers is guilty of having wilfully fhot Thomas Yates, and whether thefe perfons, Elifabeth Jones and Richard Footner were, at the time of committing the murder, at the time of the killing, either actually, or by any rule of law, conftructively prefent when he was fo killed? In order to clear this cafe of any doubt in point of law, I fhall firit ftate to you what I take the law of the cafe to be, and then you will be better enabled to apply the facts to that law. I take it to be clear, that whoever had the title to this house, Mr. Yates, at this time, having been in the real joint poffeffion, or permiffive poffeffion by himself, and his fervant being there (to fay nothing of the wife) if he took a walk in the garden, and they thought proper to bolt him out, if he attempted, by any force of breaking the windows, to get in again, he was jultifiable in fo doing; and if any perfon has wantonly fhot him in that attempt, he is guilty of murder. That law I have not a doubt about; that Mr. Yates himfelf feems to have a right to come in-he had never quitted the whole prem fes was gone out to walk in the garden, and had (from being in what fome of the witneffes call, a joint poffeffion, and others fpeak of, as a permiffive poffeffion) a right to come into the houfe again when his fervant affifted him; and if Sellers wilfully fhot at him, he is guilty of murder. That is the principal point, and if you fhould think that Sellers has done an act, which either amounts to murder or manlaughter, then you will have to confider whether Jones or Footner were abetting, Sellers at the time he committed the fact. Now this I fhould hold to be abetting, that if they faw Mr, Yates coming into the house, and told Seliers to go down with a loaded piftol and fhoot him, and fay, don't let him come in, they being in the houfe, and telling him to do that, would, in my opinion, be guilty as abettors, and would have a fufficient conftructive prefence to warrant their being found guilty upon the allegations of this indictinent. This I ftate only as gene-. ral law it will be neceffary for you now 'to attend to the facts, as the witnesses have proved them, and then it will be for you to fee whether this piftol was fired wilfully or accidentally: if wilfully, it is murder, if accidentally, it is manslaughter; and then you will have to pronounce how far Jones and Footner have been abettors in the killing. [Here the learned judge fummed up the evidence on both sides]. This is the whole of the evidence on the one fide and on the other, and now to apply that evidence to the cafes of the different perfons: Elfabeth Jones and Richard Footner are charged then with being prefent, and aiding and abetting Sellers at the time he fired off this piftol There is no direct evidence of their being prefent, of their having counselled him, or having had any thing to do with him. On the contrary, there is very strong evidence in favour of both of them. There is evidence in favour of Jones, that at the very first fight of the piftols the faid the would rather leave the house than they thould be there; and that it was not till her attorney and Sellers had inter pofed, and affured her that he need not : or other (and we are not informed when be alarmed, that he would confent to 1 he must not come in.' Mr. Yates is frightened and retreated, and in the time of retreating the pitol goes off. It may be faid in Sellers' favour, that he fired it upon a retreating and not upon an advancing man. That circumftance is in his favour. It is faid by Mr. Sellers, that Mr. Yates touched the pistol," and so gave the jar; it is pofitively faid by the girl, that Mr. Yates did not touch the pistol, nor could touch the piftol; and the converfation between Mr. Yates and Sellers in the garden, if you believe the witnefs, is, that he asked whether they were in the act of a scuffle at the time the piftol went off; he faid no, no; but when he asked him if he thought the piftol was fired off maliciously, Mr. Yates faid, in that very awful moment, yes, yes. Whether he would confider the turning afide a pistol a fcuffle or not, is for you to turn in your own minds. You have heard what the girl fays now, that he put forth his hand, and he could |