(now Monument street and the site of the monument) was a noted resort for trespassers. Advertisements were issued in French and English by John E. Howard, the proprietor, to "caution all persons not to pass through or to hunt or to shoot within my enclosures, as I shall be under the necessity of proceeding in a legal manner against those who may be hereafter found trespassing."

Early in June, 1795, notice was given that "the Post Office is removed over the way, to the third house in St. Paul's lane." The wheels of the post office moved slowly, and the editors were frequently "under obligations to a mail coach passenger for the latest news from New York, up to the hour of departure." To show how irregularly news was transmitted from place to place, (now within three minutes reach,) we quote from the Daily Gazette of March 9th, an extract from the Norfolk papers of February 28th, viz:

"Thursday night arrived the ship Thomas, Captain Vickery, from London, after a passage of eleven weeks. In the ship came Captain Blaney, who was charged with despatches from our minister, Mr. Jay, to the President of the United States. He set off express immediately on landing, for Philadelphia."

Here was intelligence, in nine days from Norfolk, of the celebrated treaty of Mr. Jay with the British Government, which called forth so much feeling among the merchants, and the details of which were made known in June and July following. Public meetings were called in the large cities to discuss the treaty, and in Baltimore resolutions were adopted at a large meeting of merchants, held in July, when David McMechen, Solomon Etting, Alexander McKim, James A. Buchanan, Adam Fonerden, David Stodder and John Steel were appointed a committee to forward an address to the President, urging him to decline signing the Treaty which had been assented to by the Senate: and adopting a Resotution

That the thanks of this meeting be presented to the virtuous minority in the Senate for their opposition to the proposed treaty.

THE REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE.

From Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1848.

One of the most instructive facts as to the ruinous effect of the late revolution on the best interests of French industry, is to be found in the progressive and rapid decline in the value of all French securities, public and private, since it took place. It distinctly appears that two-thirds of the capital of France has been destroyed since the Revolution, in the short space of six weeks! Attend to the fall in the value of the public funds during that brief but disastrous period:

The value of railway stock and bank shares has declined in a still more alarming proportion. Bank shares, which in 1824 sold for 3400 francs, are now selling at 900 francs-or little more than a FOURTH of their former value. Railway stock is unsaleable, being marked out for immediate confiscation. Taking one kind of stock with another, it may safely be affirmed that TWO-THIRDS of the capital of France has perished since the Revolution, in the short space of seven weeks. The fruit of thirtythree years' peace, hard labour, and penurious saving, has disappeared in seven weeks of anarchical transports!! Of course, the means of employing the people have declined in the same proportion; for where credit is annihilated, how is industry to be maintained, before its produce comes in, but by realized capital? How is its produce to be disposed of if twothirds of the classes possessed of property have been rendered bankrupt? Already this difficulty has been experienced in France. The Paris papers of 13th April announce that seventy-five thousand persons, will be employed at the "ateliers Nationaux," or public workshops, at 30 sous a day, in the end of April-at a cost of 112,500 francs a day, or 3,375,000 francs (£150,000) a month. This is an addition to an armed force of above 100,000 men, paid for the most part two francs a day for doing nothing. No exchequer in the world can stand such a strain; far less that of a bankrupt and revolutionized country like France. It is no wonder that the French funds are down at 32, and an issue of assignats—in other words, the open and avowed destruction of all realized propertyis seriously contemplated.

This is exactly the condition to which France was brought during the Reign of Terror, when the whole inhabitants of Paris fell as a burden on the government, and the cost of the 680,000 rations daily issued to them, exceeded that of the fourteen armies which combatted on the frontiers for the Republic. In those days the misery in Paris, the result of the Revolution, was so extreme, that the bakers' shops were besieged day and night without intermission by a famishing crowd; and the unhappy applicants were kept all night waiting during a severe frost, with a rope in their hands, and the thermometer often down to 5° Fahrenheit, to secure

their place for the distribution when the doors were opened. There is nothing new in the condition of France and Paris at this time: it has been seen and experienced in every age of the world; it has been familiar to the East for three thousand years. The principle that the state is the universal proprietor, the middle classes the employes of government, and the labouring class the servants of the state, is exactly the oriental system of government. It is just the satraps and fellahs of Persia-the mandarins and peasants of China-the zemindars and ryots of Hindostan over again. Exact parallels to the armed and insolent rabble who now lord it over Paris, and through it over France, may be found in the Prætorians of Rome-the Mamelukes of Egypt-the Janissaries of Constantinople. The visions of perfectibility and utopian projects of Louis Blanc, Lamartine, and Ledru Rollin, have already landed the social interests of France in the straits of the Reign of Terror-its practical government in the armed despotism of the Algerine pirates, or the turbulent sway of the Sikh soldiery.

But the contagion of violence, the ascendant of ambition, the lust of rapine have not been confined to the armed janissaries of Paris, or their delegates the Provisional Government. They have extended to other countries: they have spread to other states. They have infected governments as well as their subjects; they have disgraced the throne as well as the workshop. Whenever a revolution has been successful, and liberal governments have been installed, there a system of foreign aggression has instantly commenced. The first thing which the revolutionary government of Piedmont did, was to invade Lombardy, and drive the Austrian armies beyond the Po; the first exploit of constitutional Prussia, to pour into Sleswig to spoliate Denmark. Open preparations for revolutionizing Lithuania are made in the grand-duchy of Posen. A war has already commenced on the Po and the Elbe; it is imminent on the Vistula. Lamartine's reply to the Italian deputation proves that France is prepared, on the least reverse to the Sardinian arms, to throw her sword into the scale; his conduct in permitting an armed abble to set out from Paris to invade Belgium, and another from Lyons to revolutionize Savoy, proves that the extension of the frontier of France to the Rhine and the Alps is still the favorite project of the French republic. If he declines to do so, the armed prætorians of Paris will soon find another foreign minister who will. France has 600,000 men in arms; Austria 500,000: 150,000 Russians will soon be on the Vistula. Hardly was uttered Mr. Cobden's memorable prophecy of the approach of a pacific millennium, and a universal turning of swords into spinning-jennies, when the dogs of war were let slip in every quarter of Europe. Hardly was M. Lamartine's hymn of "liberty, equality, fraternity," chanted, when the reign of internal spoliation and external violence commenced in France, and rapidly extended as far as its influence was felt throughout the world.

"And this too, shall pass away." The reign of injustice is not eternal: it defeats itself by its own excesses: the avenging angel is found in the human heart. In the darkest days of humanity, this great law of nature is unceasingly acting, and preparing in silence the renovation of the world. It will bring about the downfall of the prætorian bands who now rule France, as it brought about the overthrow of Robespierre, the fall of

Napoleon. The revolutionary tempest which is now sweeping over Europe cannot long continue. The good sense of men will reassume its sway after having violently reeled: the feelings of religion and morality will come up to the rescue of the best interests of humanity: the generous will yet combat the selfish feelings: the spirit of heaven will rise up against that of hell. It is in the eternal warfare between these opposite principles, that the true secret of the whole history of mankind is to be found: in the alternate triumph of the one and the other, that the clearest demonstration is to be discerned of the perpetual struggle between the noble and generous and selfish and corrupt desires which for ever actuate the heart of man.

"To rouse effort by the language of virtue," says Mr. Alison, "and direct it to the purposes of vice, is the great art of revolution." What a commentary on these words have recent events afforded! Judging by the language of the revolutionists, they are angels descended upon earth. Nothing but gentleness, justice, philanthropy is to be seen in their expressions: nothing but liberty, equality, fraternity in their maxims. Astræa appears to have returned to the world: the lion and the kid have lain down together.-Justice and Mercy have kissed each other. Judging by their actions, a more dangerous set of ruflians never obtained the direction of human affairs: justice was never more shamelessly set at nought in measures, robbery never more openly perpetrated by power. Their whole career has been one uninterrupted invasion of private rights; their whole power is founded on continual tribute to the selfish desire of individual aggrandisement among their followers. We do not ascribe this deplorable contrast between words and actions to any peculiar profligacy or want of conscience in the Provisional Government. Some of them are men of powerful intellect or fine genius; all, we believe, are sincere and well meaning-men. But "Hell is paved with good intentions.”— They are pushed on by a famishing crowd in their rear, whom they are alike unable to restrain or to feed. They are fanatics, and fanatics of the most dangerous kind-devout believers in human perfectibility, credulous assertors of the natural innocence of man. Thence their enormous error-thence the enormous evils they have brought upon the world— thence the incalculable importance of the great experimentum crucis as to the justice of these principles which is now taking place upon the earth. To give one instance, among many, of the way in which these regenerators of society proceed to spoliate their neighbors, it is instructive to refer to the proposals officially promulgated by the Provisional Government, in their interview with the railway proprietors of France, whom, by one sweeping act, it was proposed to "absorb" into the state. The Minister of the Interior stated that it was proposed to "purchase" the shares of the proprietors; and the word "purchase" sounded well, and was doubtless a balm to many a quaking heart, expecting unqualified confiscation. But he soon explained what sort of "purchase" it was which was in contemplation. He said that it was the intention of Government to "absorb" all the railway shares throughout France; to take the shares at the current price in the market, and give the proprietors not money but rentes, or public securities, to the same amount! That is, having first, by means of the revolution, lowered the current value of railway stock

to a twentieth, or, in some cases, a fiftieth part of what it was previous to that convulsion, they next proceed to estimate it at that depreciated value, and then pay the unhappy holders, not in cash, but in Government securities, themselves lowered to a third of their value, and perhaps ere long worth nothing. A more shameful instance of spoliation, veiled under the fine names of "absorption," centralization, and the like, never was heard of; but the Minister of the Interior had two conclusive arguments to adduce on the subject. Some of the railway lines at least were "paying concerns," and the republic must have cash; and all of them afforded work for the labouring classes, and Government must find employment for the unemployed.

To such a length have these communist and socialist projects proceeded in Paris, that a great effort of all the holders of property was deemed indispensable to arrest them. The effort was made on Monday, 17th April: but it is hard to say whether the dreaded evils or the boasted demonstration were most perilous, or most descriptive of the present social condition of the French capital. Was it by argument in the public journals, or by influencing the electors for the approaching Assembly, or even by discussion at the Clubs, as in the days of the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, that the thing was done? Quite the reverse; it was effected by a demonstration of physical strength. They took a leaf out of the book of the Chartists-they copied the processions of the Janissaries in the Atmeidan of Constantinople. The National Guard, two hundred and twenty thousand strong, mustered on the streets of Paris: they shouted out, "A bas les Communistes!"—"A bas Blanqui!”—“Vive le Gouvernement Provisoire!" and the Parisians flattered themselves the thing was done. Is not the remedy worse than the disease? What were fifteen thousand unarmed workmen spouting socialist speeches in the Champs de Mars to 200,000 armed National Guards, dictating their commands alike to the Provisional Government and the National Assembly! Was ever a capital handed over to such a lusty band of metropolitan janissaries? What chance is there of freedom of deliberation in the future Assembly, in presence of such formidable spectators in the galleries? Already M. Ledru Rollin is calculating on their ascendency. Like all persons engaged in a successful insurrection-in other words, who have been guilty of treason-he is haunted by a continual, and in the circumstances ridiculous, dread of a counter-revolution: and in his circular of 15th April, he openly avows the principle that Paris is the soul of France; that it is the advanced guard of Freedom, not for itself alone, but the whole earth; and that the departments must not think of gainsaying the will of their sovereign leaders, or making the cause retrograde, in which all nations are finally to be blessed.

The account of this extraordinary demonstration, given in the Paris correspondence of the Times of 19th April, is so characteristic and graphic, that we cannot forbear the satisfaction of laying it before our readers. It recals the preludes to the worst days of the first Revolution. "Ever since the appearance of this bold defiance to the moderate majority in the Provisional Government, and its announcement that "the gauntlet was thrown down-the death-struggle was at hand," the city has naturally been in a state of subdued ferment. Various reports, some