And the rights imprescriptive * of man Ascertains by the pillage of woman. EGALITE'S retrogade worth Surpasses all praise or rehearsal, * A favourite term with French philosophers-" Droits imprescriptibles." Rights against which the antiquated prejudices respecting probity, property, honour, &c. are of no validity. M. Carra is so strenuous an assertor of these imprescriptive rights of man, that he long ago ventured his neck in support of them, by an act of burglary in the shop of a milliner. The most notorious depredations of our philosophical plunderer were committed on the property of females. When publicly reminded of the honourable transaction above-mentioned, he acknowleged the truth of the charge, but asserted, as a sufficient apology for the fact, that he was only sixteen years old when he achieved this his first Civic Enterprize. He has, however, since demonstrated his unabated attachment to these imprescriptive rights, by recent exploits of equal celebrity. In delivering his sentiments to the Convention, he introduces the regeneration of morality in the rear of those inestimable benefits which mankind are to reap from the revolution accomplished by his enlightened compatriots. The Additional Notes will furnish the reader with a short trait of these sentiments, and shew more particularly the happy method which French philosophers adopt of recommending the ingenuity of their speculations by the purity of their practice. See No. III. Additional Notes at the end. + M. Egalité ci-devant Duc d'Orleans, first prince of the blood royal of France. I know no touch of consanguinity. Troilus and Cressida. By scoundrels of ocean and earth All jacobin murderers own His precedence, and hail him “Tu Brute!" Thus you see in how striking a light The gallantry displayed by this illustrious patriot, when Due de Chartres, and commanding the third division of the fleet with which d'Orvilliers engaged Admiral Keppel in July, 1779, procured him the ironical appellation of L'Heros d'Ouessant." The most experienced calculators of his numerous negative merits, soon after he had attempted an aerial adventure in a balloon, with his usual intrepidity and success, commonly characterized him in the following terms: "Poltron par l'air, poltron par terre, poltron par mer, escroc par tout." "Uniquement occupé de mon devoir, &c. Je vote pour la mort" (du roi.) EGALITE.-Moniteur. Intent solely on discharging my duty, &c. I give my vote for the death (of the king.) * The nearer bloody. The near in bood, Macbeth. All murders past do stand excus'd in THIS, And this, so sole and so unmatchable, Shall prove all deadly bloodshed but a jest K. John. When our Senators sage we invite From the gallies, the forge, and the gibbet: Who with reason, you'll own, rule the roast; At your folly mankind will exclaim If you share not the fruit of our labours, * M. Isnard, for example, the son of a cook; and M. Ruelle, a leading member of the Convention, the quondam administrator of roast and boiled in an obscure eating-house near London, in whose hands there is reason to expect that the regenerated constitution of France, which they have kept so long in hot water, must at length go to pot. A spice of the science of Cookery appears to be an indispensable ingredient in the composition of illustrious characters, both ancient and modern. Homer, if we search his books, Will shew us that his heroes all were cooks, &c. King's Art of Cookery, &c. Caliburn, the sword of King Arthur, and the Sword of the renowned Pendragon, were as serviceable in the kitchen as in the field, if we may credit their poetical historian, John Grub, heretofore of Christ's church, Oxford, who says of the last of these worthies: "His sword would serve for battle, or for dinner, if you please; "When it had slain a Cheshire man 'twould toast a Cheshire cheese." The Reformation-Dagger of Hudibras seems to have been With the sparks of our patriot-flame While we freely enlighten our neighbours. From these sparks you may kindle a blaze, And a grand conflagration you'll raise Let but PRIESTLEY and PAINE blow the bellows. equally adroit and accommodating with the swords of these Cambro-Britons, though of a far less sanguinary temper than the daggers of French reformers. It was a serviceable dudgeon Either for fighting or for drudging; To bait a mouse-trap, 'twould not care. All will allow the valiant champion, Guy of Warwick, to have been æquè laureâ Culinæ ac Martis insignitus, who have contemplated his stupendous porridge-pot in Warwick castle; and Colbrand, his gigantic antagonist, must have been little inferior to him in the former respect, since he is described by the above cited Poet, Grub, as advancing to the combat "Brim-full of wrath and cabbage," undoubtedly of his own cooking. Nor, in an enumeration of heroes and legislators, will impartiality permit me to pass over in silence the late BAMBER GASCOIGNE, (egregii gustûs Senator) indisputably the first broiler of sprats in Christendom. Yet it is evident, from the recent samples of state cookery which they have given us, that all must yield the palm to the Conventional cooks; nay, I am confident that even our own VOL. II. C Even now is your church undermin'd * With PRIESTLEY'S polemical nitre : justly celebrated Cooks of Colnbrook, if they are yet in being, will surrender with pleasure to the Archimagiri Gallici those heroi-culinary titles under which themselves have figured in the old catch with such meritorious distinction. There was Slice-cook, and Hash-cook, &c. &c. * We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition, which a single spark may hereafter inflame, so as to produce an instantaneous explosion, in consequence of which, that Edifice, the erection of which has been the work of ages, may be overturned in a moment, and so effectually, as that the same foundation can never be built upon again. Priestley's Import. of Free Enquiry in Matters of Religion, p. 40. rejoice to see the warmth with which the cause of orthodoxy, that is, long established opinions, however erroneous, and that of the hierarchy, is now taken up by its friends; because, if their system be not well founded, they are only accelerating its destruction. In fact, they are assisting Me in the proper disposal of those trains of gunpowder which have been some time accumulating, and at which they have taken so great an alarm, and which will certainly blow it up at length as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as completely as the overthrow of the late arbitrary government in France.-Priestley. The Cap of Liberty with which, Fennel tells us (p. 25,) the devout Parisian reformers have decorated the images of our |