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hundred miles of Kamschatka, where he was overtaken by an ar rest from the Empress, brought back to Poland, and there dis missed. I must therefore, in justice, acquit the Empress of ever having for a moment countenanced, even by the indulgence of an innocent passage through her territories, this interesting enterprize. The pecuniary distresses of France, produced this year, a mea sure of which there had been no example for near two centuries, and the consequences of which, good and evil, are not yet calcu lable. For its remote causes, we must go a little back.
Celebrated writers of France and England, had already sketched good principles on the subject of government : yet the American Revolution seems first to have awakened the thinking part of the French nation in general, from the sleep of despotism in which they were sunk. The officers too, who had been to America, were mostly young men, less shackled by habit and pre judice, and more ready to assent to the suggestions of common sense, and feeling of common rights, than others. They came back with new ideas and impressions. The press, notwithstanding its shackles, began to disseminate them ; conversation assumed new freedoms ; Politics became the theme of all societies, male and female, and a very extensive and zealous party was formed, which acquired the appellation of the Patriotic party, who, sensible of the abusive government under which they lived, sighed for occasions of re forming it. This party comprehended all the honesty of the king dom, sufficiently at leisure to think, the men of letters, the easy Burgeois, the young nobility, partly from reflection, partly from mode ; for these sentiments became matter of mode, and as such, united most of the young women to the party. Happily for the nation, it happened, at the same moment, that the dissipations of the Queen and court, the abuses of the pension-list, and dilapidations in the administration of every branch of the finances, had ex- hausted the treasures and credit of the nation, insomuch, that its most necessary functions were paralyzed. To reform these abuses would have overset the Minister ; to impose new taxes by the au thority of the King, was known to be impossible, from the deter mined opposition of the Parliament to their enregistry. No re- source remained then, but to appeal to the nation. He advised therefore, the call of an Assembly of the most distinguished cha- racters of the nation, in the hope, that, by promises of various and valuable improvements in the organization and regimen of the go- vernment, they would be induced to authorise new taxes, to con- trol the opposition of the Parliament, and to raise the annual revenue to the level of expenditures. An Assembly of Notables therefore, about one hundred and fifty in number, named by the
