the two Councils of the successes of the French in the kingdom of Naples, suggested to Garat a buffoonery truly worthy of observation. He invited the Legislative Body-" To pray the Government to dispense with the troops levying contributions on the delivered countries; so that the blessing of liberty might be its only object!-Garat is not stupid, and had had long revolutionary experience he surely knew too well the revolutionary rotation, and its springs, to imagine that a government, like that of Paris, could adopt such generosity, or that he might not as well have proposed to disband their armies; but here are discovered the hypocrisy and intrigue of a revolutionary adept, attempting to exonerate his Republic of the shame of its robberies, and of the falsehood of its manifestoes, by feigning pity for its victims*.

The knowledge of Garat's character made it little doubtful what party he would embrace, when, in November 1799, Buonaparte overturned his patrons in the Directory. It therefore surprized nobody, when, after this event, he pronounced the speech in the Legislative Committee of the Ancients, which preceded and caused without farther discussion the acceptation

*See Garat's Speech in the Council of Five Hundred, page 4.

of

of the Consular Constitution. In reward, Buonaparte appointed him a member of his Conservative Senate, where he has continued his tool, and approved of all the different changes and innovations, though they have almost entirely annihilated the constitution that he had sworn to preserve, and such as it was proclaimed and accepted in 1799. Some of the secret and private opinions of the Senators having been reported to Buonaparte, Garat was suspected by his comrades, and accused by the Senator Lanjuinais, of being a spy to the First Consul; but in proportion as he has lost the esteem of his fellow-citizens, the favour of Buonaparte has increased; and he is now consulted and listened to on all occasions; has his courtiers and panegyrists, bestows favours, procures advancements, and distributes pensions*.

Garat is a member of the National Institute, and has, with seven thousand other metaphysical schemers, written a treatise, entitled, "The Art of Newly Constructing Society, upon the Representative System, as the best form of a Republican Government among a great people." But it is impossible to mention, among the numerous republican metaphysicians, and revolutionary

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* See Les Nouvelles à la Main, Messidor, an xi. No. xi. page 7.

tionary philosophers, one more emphatic, or more void of sense; more prodigious in analysis, and more sparing in the results; more sophistical in explanations, or more false in conclusions; or, among the demagogues, a man more perfidious, more vile, or more cowardly and ungenerous. The author of a satire published in 1799, draws correctly his portrait, as a man of letters in the three following lines:

Toujours vide de sens, et toujours plein d'emphase,

Le compas à la main mesurant une phrase,

Et pour ne rien trouver sans cesse analysant, Garat, &c. As to the morals of this republican reformer: among the papers of Fouquier Thinville, the public accuser under Robespierre, was found and shewn to his judges, a note from Garat, offering his services " to forge papers, inculpating all detained persons, whenever the public accuser or the judges were embarrassed how to condemn them." And in the Recueil d'Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 24, it is mentioned, "That a woman, who had lived with Garat seven years as his mistress, being ill used by him in 1796, declared, before the then Police Minister, Cochon, that Garat was her own brother; and that, by his orders, she had thrown four of their children into the river Seine the day after their birth.”

Garat

Garat is above 50 years of age, of a yellow complexion, almost worn out by his debaucheries and irregularities. He possesses now, according to Les Nouvelles à la Main, No. i. Brumaire, an xi. a fortune of two millions of livres, gained by his loyal industry since the Revolution*.

*The authorities for this sketch, not already quoted, are Le Dictionnaire des Jacobins; Les Annales du Terrorisme, and Le Dictionnaire Biographique.

FONTANES,

BUONAPARTE'S FIRST CHOSEN PRESIDENT OVER THE LEGISLATIVE BODY.

IT has very seldom happened, since the French Revolution, that consistency of conduct has attended the consideration and honours due to and claimed by great abilities; that the man who taught others firmness in misfortunes, and patience in sufferings, was himself constant and enduring; nor that he who, from principles, from innate principles, from conviction, from conscience, defended with his pen the prerogatives of kings, the rights of the people, and the sacredness of religion, did not at some period or other shew himself unprincipled, desert his God, his King, and his fellow-citizens, to prostitute a scandalous and sacrilegious praise on usurpation, atheism, and tyranny.

Fontanes was, before the Revolution, distinguished as a poet and as a man of letters. He had translated into French verse, Pope and Lucretius, besides several other foreign and ancient authors. Far from approving the deeds of those