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is a subject of much interest, and of still greater importance, I propose to take it first in the order of my narrative or essay, for my pages will probably admit of either of these titles. A minute history and exposition of this tremendous inquisition, is more than I now mean to undertake, although I believe that they might be, if properly executed, of more utility to mankind, than any other discussion whatever, serv ing to develop the foundations, and deformity of the French power. The task, however, would be incompatible with my present object, which is not to entangle you in deep and fatiguing speculations, nor to involve myself in inquiries of much extent, and difficulty, but to gratify your curiosity, and my own communicative humor, with as little embarrassment as possible to either of us. The genius of the French police is such, that the plan and scope of its operations are, in their details, almost beyond the reach of investigation. Still it is not impracticable to form, by means of what is manifest to every observer, some general, and at the same time very accurate notions on this head. I am not without the hope, that I shall one day be able to present the public, with a regular account of the most fearful and atrocious conspiracy, that has ever been projected, for the debasement and disunion of the human race; a conspiracy levelled against the domestic security and public liberties, not only of the country in which it is seated, but of every other portion of the civilized world.

In this light do I regard the system of the French police. I also view it as an instrument of domestic oppression, and of foreign conquest, little less potent, in the hands of the present government of France, than any other part, whether military or financial, of that portentous organization of tyranny and ra pine. Concurrently with the Conscription, it forms the secu rity of the imperial throne, and insures the success of the French arms. France, by the agency of her foreign police, is actively militant in the heart of every country.-She wages thus, without intermission, a sort of invisible and silent war, in some cases more fatal to national independence, and private morality, than would be the presence of her legions, or the ut termost havoc of her sword. At home, her political inquisition is even of more immediate importance, in the maintenance of the government, than the military force, and of more certain efficacy in paralizing and enslaving the minds of her people, than her scheme of fiscal exaction, overwhelming as it is, or than any contrivance for the purpose, which the most ingenious and ferocious tyranny could by any possibility devise.

The mechanism of the French police is complex, elaborate and vast beyond all description. There is no branch of the despotic polity which has been more studiously contrived, or which is more artificially disposed. It is co-extensive with the scheme of universal influence and dominion so justly ascribed to the French government, and moves perpetually in concert with the military force, for the attainment of a common end. The merciless and profligate violence with which the latter is employed, does not surpass in degree, the perfidy, the corruption, and the barbarity in which the action of the first may properly be said to consist. Both presuppose from the manner in which they are wielded, and the purpose to which they are applied, the absence of all human sympathies and all moral rectitude; but the institution of the police is eminently founded upon the extreme enormity, the last refinements, the absolute plenitude, of guilt. Mr. Burke may have used too strong a figure, when he said in relation to the principle of the French revolution, that it was a spirit drawn from the alembic of hell. I doubt, however, if this be not a proper type of that fatal poison of which the prefecture of Paris is the laboratory, and which, through innumerable channels, and with the most diabolical art, is distributed thence, over this hemisphere as well as the other, to corrupt and distract both the domestic circles, and the public councils of every nation.

Espionage was but too familiar to the Ancients, and among the means of oppression, or self-defence habitually employed by their tyrants. We shudder with horror in reading the language of the historians, concerning the miseries and atrocities to which this practice led, under such monsters as Dyonisius and Tiberius.* When Gibbon remarks of the principal citizens of the Roman world in the reign of Constantine, "that

* Tacitus has the following passage concerning the prevalence of Espionage under Tiberius. "Among the calamities of that black period, the most trying grievance was the degenerate spirit with which the first men in the senate submitted to the drudgery of common informers, some without a blush in the face of day, and others with clandestine artifices. The contagion was epidemic: near relations, aliens in blood, friends and strangers, known and unknown, were all involved in one common danger. The fact recently committed, and the tale revived, were equally destructive. Words alone were sufficient, whether spoken in the forum, or amid the pleasures of the table. Informers struggled as it were in a race who should be the first to ruin his man; some to secure themselves; the greater part infected by the general corruption of the times." (Annal. lib. 6.) With very little variation, this picture might serve at this moment for France. When Fourcroy, who presided over the new organization of the public schools of that country

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the terrors of a malicious information which might select them as the accomplices, or even as the witnesses, perhaps, of an imaginary crime, perpetually hung over their heads," he exhibits a state of things in one respect strikingly analogous to that which now obtains in France. It would appear, likewise, that Rome, both before and after the loss of her liberty, employed agents in foreign countries to promote her ambitious aims, by secret intrigue and the arts of corruption.

But antiquity neither saw nor ever imagined a system like the present, essentially interwoven with the social as well as the political constitution of the country; organized upon so regular and so vast a scale, bringing every foreign nation fully within its operation, extending at home to the minutest de tails of common life; pursued, in all its ramifications, with unremitting activity, and the highest exertions both of sagacity and depravity. What prevailed in this respect in former times, was no more than the casual resort of tyranny and ambition; the congenial but transitory device of single despots suspicious of the fidelity, or thirsting for the blood, of their subjects. In France espionage not only forms an integral part of the political constitution, but belongs essentially to the genius of the people: it would survive the abolishment of the conscription or of the imperial dominion; and is so deeply settled, so extensively and firmly systematised, that nothing would mate rially affect it short of a complete revolution, not merely in the spirit of the government, but in the national character, and habits.

Every domestic functionary of that country is ex officio an informer; all from the minister of police himself, down to the humblest tide-waiter, are in a state of mutual, vigilant, and for the most part malignant supervision: Every condition of private life to the lowest grade, is similarly circumstanced. Gibbon somewhere observes, that the obscure millions of a great empire, have much less to dread from the cruelty, than from the avarice of their masters; and that their humble hap

proposed Tacitus to his Emperor as one of the classics to be introduced into them, the latter exclaimed with much warmth, "Allez donc, c'est un calomni ateur."-"Go to!-He is a libeller." No doubt the injury which the histo rian has done to the fair fame of Tiberius and Nero, must awaken sympathy in the bosom of this other "benefactor of the human race." Tacitus was mistaken when he supposed "that the ancient historian is safe from the se. verity of criticism;" but prophetic in the question which he almost imme. diately subjoins to this remark," Will there not be at all times a succession of men, who from congenial manners and sympathy in vice, will think the fidelity of history a satire on themselves?" (Annal: Ïib. 4.)

piness is principally affected by the grievance of excessive taxes. This remark would not hold good in reference to the lower and more indigent classes of France, who, while they suffer the heaviest pressure of the grievance of which the historian speaks, are visited by their government with a still more cruel scourge in the terrors, the penalties, the mutual distrust, and the abject guilt in which they are involved by the police.

It is a part of the regular, official duty of every functionary of the French government abroad, by secret machinations, to facilitate the extension of the imperial power or influence, over the country in which he is placed. He is commissioned not only to ascertain and report, the means which already exist about him, for the accomplishment of this purpose;-to study and take advantage of dispositions originally favourable to the same end, but actively to create facilities, and remove obstructions. He is the member of an organized and numerous corps, who labour in the same vocation; who, like their brethren in France, have, either in the foreign metropolis or elsewhere, a common centre or head, by which their task is prescribed, their movements are regulated, the fruits of their execrable industry collected, registered, and transmitted to Paris. All this is executed with the utmost regularity and method. The whole system is thoroughly digested, and in exact correspondence and symmetry with that which prevails in France.

The scheme of action for the foreign agents embraces-a minute inquiry into the physical, as well as moral resources of a country; the intimidation of the weak; the seduction by bribes or promises of the needy and the profligate; the exasperation of the disaffected and the prejudiced;-the defamation of the enlightened and the good;-the excitation of domestic jealousy and distrust;-the assiduous propagation of every falsehood of what nature soever, that can serve to recommend or exalt the character of the French government, or to discredit and vilify that of the British. There is no part of the foreign territory where the functions of the French emissary can be exercised to advantage, that he is not to be found; there is no proceeding either public or private, no description of persons or occurrences susceptible of being made useful to his purpose, which does not fall under his scrutiny. The rulers of a nation particularly, are watched with the most indefatigable diligence; their characters thoroughly sifted; their counsels steadily pursued; their secrets penetrated and converted into

snares and pitfalls.* At the same time there is no character which may not conceal one of the civil propagandists of French despotism; no shape under which he may not lurk, whether that of a French royalist, an Irish or a Spanish patriot, a popular demagogue, an opera-dancer, or even a soi-disant British spy.s When I reflect on the genius and operation of the French pot lice, and call to mind the zeal with which the present ruler of France has constantly laboured to corroborate and extend that system, I am forced to smile in bitterness, at the encomiums, which many well-meaning writers have passed upon him, for abolishing the Inquisition in Spain. The political tribunal which he proposed to introduce in its stead, would have soon caused the Spaniards to feel, that the bigots of the church were, when contrasted with the military legislators of the present day, but clumsy artificers of terror, and sluggish ministers of the demon of persecution. The domestic police of France as far surpasses the Spanish inquisition in cruelty and oppression, as her foreign police exceeds the celebrated plan of dominion imputed to the Jesuits, in extent and efficacy, in enmity and injury to the human race. Admitting all that has been said of the old bugbears of Europe to be just, they still are little more than mere phantoms, in comparison of the horrible engine of which I am speaking.

You may have observed, in reading the new criminal code of the French empire, that the penalty of being placed for a certain number of years under the immediate inspection of the higher police of the state, is attached to almost all cases of delinquency,

We may appeal on this point to the open confessions of the French go. vernment. The following declaration in the shape of a note on a speech of Mr. Canning wherein this gentleman speaks of the secret correspondence of the British government with the continent,-is to be found in one of the Moniteurs of 1810.

"Mr. Canning has covered himself with ridicule by this assertion. If we could lay open the archives of the police, and make known the famous conspirators of whom Mr. Canning speaks, the world would see conspiracies and plots after the manner of Drake, to whom adventurers applied in order to filch his money, and learn from himself what he was about. The cunning gentry! they boast to having secret intelligence with France, and they are ne vertheless surrounded by our spies. We look into their cabinet, and were we chal lenged to the trial, we could bring to light the official correspondence of the subministers of England and their agents, with those whom they call conspirators, and thus render them the laughing stock of all Europe. We should add here, in order to calm the apprehensions of the inhabitants of the territory which Mr. Canning would subject to the severity of the laws, if what he says were true,-that the government has not had cause to complain of a single Frenchman. Communications with England have taken place, but they were carried on by subaltern agents of our police, under the express authority of the French ad ministration. Such are the spies of Mr. Canning."

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