cess distinguished by her virtues and piety, were successively dragged from the Temple to the Conciergerie, and thence to the scaffold.—The dauphin, though originally of a vigorous constitution, fell a victim, at the age of ten years and two months, to the studied barbarity of his treatment.
We have to regret that these memoirs are not continued after the dauphin's death, though Madame Royale (now the Duchess of Angouleme) remained in the Temple six months after that event, exposed alone to the persecutions and insults of her enemies. She was released on the 11th of December, the seventeenth anniversary of her birth, to experience vicissitudes no less wonderful, though happier in their issue, than those through which she had already passed.
Whatever opinion may be entertained of the principles which led to the revolution in France, no diversity of sentiment can prevail with regard to the atrocities of the Revolutionists. It will ever remain a problem in the history of mankind, that a people distinguished by their refinement, should have become all at once equally distinguished by their barbarity;—that a people almost singular in their attachment to monarchy, should, under the reign of the best of their monarchs, have forgotten their loyalty and allegiance; and, in the wildness of republican frenzy, have sought to annihilate every thing connected with a government, for which, but lately before, they thought it all their glory to live and to die. The poison administered by their philosophists might, perhaps, vitiate the principles of the whole mass of the community; the corrupt example of a court might have diffused through all ranks its pernicious influence; but will these causes account for the violence of their revolutionary fury, unless we suppose, that the force of the revulsion, which burst asunder all their former political associations, tore up at the same time all the good principles of their nature, and drove them from the excess of admiration and devotion, to the opposite extreme of contempt and hatred?
The translation, conducted on the most correct ideas, combines, very successfully, the simplicity of the original with the purest English idiom. The translator has occasionally elucidated the text with notes, which will be found very useful to those who are not intimately acquainted with the early history of the French revolution.
The science of Political Economy owes its rise to the eighteenth century. Many facts, and several of the principles which now enter into treatises on that subject, had been previously ascertained, but it was reserved for Stuart, Turgot, Smith, and other eminent men of the last age, to combine them into one consistent and harmonious whole, and to analyze, in a much more accurate manner than had ever been done before, the sources of wealth, and the laws which regulate its distribution among the different classes of society. Since the publication of the Wealth of Nations, political economy has been greatly improved. That great work, by shewing its infinite importance to our best interests,—by proving that no legislative measures could be adopted clashing with its principles, but what must be vitally injurious to the community at large,—and by successfully exposing many absurd theories, enactments, and practices, hitherto looked upon, as the acme of genius and wisdom, contributed in a very high degree to draw public attention to the science of which it still continues the brightest ornament. More lately, the profound and original inquiries of Mr Malthus have cast a new light on many subjects, which had either been entirely neglected, or only cursorily noticed by Dr Smith; while the extraordinary events of the last twenty years have enabled us in various instances, to try the deductions of theory by the touchstone of experience. The suspension of cash payments at the Bank of England, with the subsequent depreciation of our currency, and derangement of the exchanges, rendered us much better acquainted with the theory of banking and money. And amid all the complicated evils arising from our general factitious system,—the orders in council, the corn laws, and such like measures, have at least served to bring under our view a variety of unprecedented phenomena in economics, and by interesting the public, and giving
