On no other principles than these can the
conduct of the court of Vienna be accounted for. The subordinate court
of Brussels talks the language of a club of Feuillants and Jacobins.
[Sidenote: Moderate party.]
In this state of general rottenness among subjects, and of delusion and
false politics in princes, comes a new experiment. The king of France is
in the hands of the chiefs of the regicide faction,--the Barnaves,
Lameths, Fayettes, Perigords, Duports, Robespierres, Camuses, &c., &c.,
&c. They who had imprisoned, suspended, and conditionally deposed him
are his confidential counsellors. The next desperate of the desperate
rebels call themselves the _moderate_ party. They are the chiefs of the
first Assembly, who are confederated to support their power during their
suspension from the present, and to govern the existent body with as
sovereign a sway as they had done the last. They have, for the greater
part, succeeded; and they have many advantages towards procuring their
success in future. Just before the close of their regular power, they
bestowed some appearance of prerogatives on the king, which in their
first plans they had refused to him,--particularly the mischievous, and,
in his situation, dreadful prerogative of a _veto_.
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