ADDITIONAL NOTES.

No. I.

M. MARAT.

The following detail is given verbatim from the Star,

March the 4th, 1793.

GLASGOW.

"FROM an investigation lately taken at Edinburgh, it is said, that Marat, the celebrated orator of the French National Convention, the humane, the mild, the gentle Marat, is the same person who, a few years ago, taught tambouring in this city, under the name of John White. His conduct, while he was here, was equally unprincipled, if not as atrocious, as it has been since his elevation to the legislatorship. After contracting debts to a very considerable amount he absconded, but was apprehended at Newcastle, and brought back to this city, where he was imprisoned. He soon after executed a summons of cessio bonorum against his creditors; in the prosecution of which, it was found that he had once taught in the Academy at Warrington, in which Dr. Priestley was tutor; that he left Warrington for Oxford, where, after some time, he found means to rob the Museum of a number of gold coins and medallions; that he was traced to Ireland, apprehended at an assembly there in the character of a German count, brought back to this country, tried, convicted, and sentenced to some years hard labour on the Thames. He was refused a cessio, and his creditors, tired of detaining him in goal, after a confinement of several months, set him at liberty.

1

He then took up his residence in this neighbourhood, where he continued about nine months; and took his final leave of this country about the beginning of the year 1787.

"He was very ill-looked; of a diminutive size; a man of uncommon vivacity, of a very turbulent disposition, and possessed of a very uncommon share of legal knowledge. It is said, that while here, he used to call his children Marat, which he said was his family name."

No. II.

M. MERLIN.

The portion of which he had despoiled his intended bride, M. Merlin speedily dissipated by gambling at Spa. To repair his losses he broke open the strong box of Madame la Baronne Vanderberg, who lodged in a chamber adjoining to his apartment-borrowed a horse, which he sold at Nancy, and afterwards, in a state of extreme distress, was (for the second time) received with kindness, and his enormities freely forgiven, by an affectionate father, whom, in return for his liberality and indulgence, this bright exemplar of filial gratitude denounced to the Convention as a Feuilliant, and moved for his accusation, in Nov. 1791. Flower of Jacob. p. 71.

In proof of the general candour and impartiality which actuated the self-constituted judges of their unhappy monarch, let us not forget the humane sentiment expressed in the sitting of December 3, by this amiable character, M. Merlin, who avowed to the Convention "his regret that he had not poniarded his sovereign, when he threw himself, on the 10th of August, upon the protection of the National Assembly."

See Le Moniteur, No. 339.

No. III.

M. CARRA.

"What then does the Revolution denote? It denotes that the regeneration of our politics has preceded, as it ought, the regeneration of our morality: for it would be absurd to rest our claim to the distinguishing character of a nation of philosophers, on the mere subversion of that general despotism which surrounds us. The grand epoch of the new birth of liberty can only commence from the moment when the very sources of abuse shall vanish before the eternal Rights of Man. Let us labour to annihilate them among our neighbours."

Carra.-Moniteur, Jan. 4, 1793.

M. Carra's private practice, like that of some other philosophical moralists, appears to have been somewhat at variance with his public principles. The regeneration of his politics having taken place subsequent to that of his morals. Of regenerate morality he gave an early exemplification, by breaking open and pillaging the house of a milliner, in his sixteenth year; the proces verbal of which transaction was detailed in a French paper "La Feuille du Jour," of Feb. 1792, and authenticated by his own acknowledgement before stated in page 14: but had his policy been regenerated at that period, it would most probably have prevented his apprehension and condemnation to the gallows; the mitigation of this sentence having been effected solely by the interest of some respectable friends of his uncle.

During his subsequent exile from France, he taught languages at Vienna, where he gave a farther exemplification of regenerate morality, as well as of regenerate liberty, by making free with a gold watch, the property of the young Countess of Hardeck, his pupil. But his policy either was yet in embrio, or little better than a regenerate abortion; and a second detection and degrada

tion obliged our felonious Philosopher to take French leave of Vienna. See Fennel's Review, &c.

It is a singular hardship that the fair sex should have been such sufferers (as appears from the two instances above cited) by the regeneration of morality and new birth of philosophical liberty, &c. and we fear lest it should render them averse from novel generation of every kind, and strengthen their honest prejudices in favour of the old domestic practice of their grandfathers and grandmothers.

The following Jeu d'Esprit, which I recollect having met with in some periodical publication, may shew that female prejudices of this description are not extinct.

On a late invented Dance on the stage, called

A NEW WAY OF WOOING."

A Dance they perform at the Playhouse, cries Sue,
"Tis "A NEW WAY OF WOOING," I'm told;

A plague on't, quoth Nell-Let who will take the New,
I like none so well as THE OLD.

No. IV.

KERSAINT'S SPEECH.

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The notes signed "Kersaint" are extracted from the translation of that officer's memorable speech lately published by Ridgway but it has been found necessary to correct them by a faithful collation with the original Speech, as given in the Moniteur, or Gazette Nationale. In the last of these extracts, where the orator talks of the treaty to be signed with this country, the publisher has prudently forborn to give any intimation of the place whereon it is to be signed; "Sur les Ruines de la

Tour de Londres;" as well as to notice the significant epithet "détrompe," (the English of both which expressions are distinguished by italics in the extract alluded to) for fear, it is presumed, of wounding the patriotic sensibility of his AngloJacobin readers.

No. V.

HOTTENTOTS, APES, AND ATHEISTS.

The work of M. Vaillant, referred to in the notes of page 27, has been reviewed by the learned M. de la Métherie, and the other ingenious conductors of the " Journal Physique." Of their very curious Comment, upon M. Vaillant's interesting information, together with the text, I shall subjoin a faithful translation, as it affords additional proof of the general prevalence of that Atheistical Fanaticism which has been openly avowed and triumphantly vaunted at various times, and on various occasions, by many persons of Republican eminence, besides Mr. Jacob Dupont in his celebrated speech before quoted in page 13.

"The author (M. Vaillant has refuted all that Kolbe has advanced respecting their religion," &c.

"I have not perceived among this people (the Gonaquois "Hottentots) any trace of religion, any thing which approaches 66 even towards the idea of a Being who shall punish and reward. "I have lived a considerable time with them-I have been do"mesticated with them in the bosom of their peaceable deserts"I have, in the company of these brave people, made excursions "in very remote regions. In no part of them have I met with 66 any thing which has a resemblance to religion." Vaillant.

Here we have a grand problem, in the history of the human race, resolved. It has long been pretended that no human society could subsist without religion; that they who would endeavour to obliterate every religious idea were no other than