The French Revolution.
During these dissensions and discontents, and this general fermentation of the public mind in Germany, political occurrences in France gave exercise and full scope for the operation of that spirit of revolt which had long growled in secret in the different corners of that great empire. The Cosmo-political and sceptical opinions and sentiments so much cultivated in all the Lodges of the Philalethes had by this time been openly professed by many of the sages of France, and artfully interwoven with their statistical economics. The many contests between the King and the Parliament of Paris about the registration of his edicts, had given occasion to much discussion, and had made the public familiarly acquainted with topics altogether unsuitable to the absolute monarchy of France.
This acquaintance with the natural expectations of the subject, and the expediency of a candid attention on the part of Government to these expectations, and a view of Legislation and Government founded on a very liberal interpretation of all these things, was prodigiously promoted by the rash interference of France in the dispute between Great Britain and her colonies. In this attempt to ruin Britain, even the court of France was obliged to preach the doctrines of Liberty, and to take its chance that Frenchman would consent to be the only slaves. But their officers and soldiers, who returned from America, imported the American principles, and in every company found hearers who listened with delight and regret to their fascinating tale of American independence. During the war, the Minister, who had too confidently pledged himself for the destruction of Britain, was obliged to allow the Parisians to amuse themselves with theatrical entertainments, where English law was represented as