Page:Conciones ad populum. Or, Addresses to the people (IA concionesadpopul00cole).pdf/74

 First, on the people of France. Instant death was threatened to all taken in arms;—beheading and confiscation to the members of the departments, districts, and municipalities; military execution to the members of the national assembly, magistrates, and all the inhabitants of Paris; and total destruction to that City. All places and towns shall incur the same punishments as those inflicted on the inhabitants of Paris.—Such was Brunswick's manifesto. "The mode of civilized War will not be practised," says Burke. Our Government were projecting to starve the whole nation, and many of our senators did not scruple to proclaim the war a war of extermination. If we by the shadow and mockery of unreal things have been alarmed into blind reliance on men the most weak and unprincipled, can we wonder that a nation, whose whole horizon was black with approaching tempests, should be equally incautious! Hunted on all sides, insulted by unceasing and brutal menaces, they felt the blended influence of terror and indignation—by the first they were impelled to become voluntary slaves to the bloody fanatics, whose wild energies seemed alone proportionate to the danger; by the latter their gentler feelings were suspended, and the