United States or India ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
That was, indeed, the practical point at issue; the stern logic of facts ranged on the Jacobin side all clear-sighted men who were determined that the Revolution should not be stamped out by the foreign invaders. On the ground of mere expediency, men must rally to the cause of the Jacobinical Republic. Every crime might be condoned, provided that the men now in power at Paris saved the country.
A crisis therefore rapidly developed between the still Jacobinical Directory and the two legislative Councils, in each of which the royalists, or moderates, had the upper hand. The aim of this majority was to strengthen the royalist elements in France by the repeal of many revolutionary laws.
Under these circumstances, there were many obstacles to a permanent union, and it was more bitterly opposed in Scotland than in England. The more patriotic desired complete independence. Many were jealous of the superior prosperity of England. The people in the Highlands and the north of Scotland were Jacobinical in their principles, and were attached to the Stuart dynasty.
The scruples of George III., who although as King of Ireland he yielded to the claims of Catholics to the suffrage by giving the Royal consent to the enfranchising Act of Grattan's Parliament in 1793, were such that they made him declare that his coronation oath compelled him to maintain the Protestantism of the United Parliament of the three kingdoms and express himself to Dundas of opinion that Pitt's emancipation proposals were "the most Jacobinical thing ever seen."
Thus, though as innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was incapable of setting the Thames on fire, you would have guessed him, by his speeches, to be one of the most determined incendiaries that ever applied a match to the combustible materials of a contested election; while, being by no means accustomed to respect his adversaries, he could not have treated the Earl of Lansmere with less ceremony if his Lordship had been a Frenchman.
Three Directors, Barras, La Réveillière-Lépeaux, and Rewbell, refused to listen to these behests, and insisted on the appointment of Jacobinical Ministers even in the teeth of a majority of the Councils.
Just were never weary of contrasting the virtues of a simple pastoral life with the corruptions and weakness engendered by foreign commerce; and when, early in 1793, Jacobinical zeal embroiled the young Republic with England, the orators of the Convention confidently prophesied the downfall of the modern Carthage.
Two of their tools, Picot and Le Bourgeois by name, plunged blindly into a plot, and were arrested soon after they set foot in France. Their boyish credulity seems to have suggested to the French authorities the sending of an agent so as to entrap not only French émigrés, but also English officials and Jacobinical generals.
Between these three parties there were violent contentions, and the struggle for ascendency soon commenced, to end in the complete triumph of the Jacobinical revolutionists.
Napoleon, surrounded by a Jacobinical ministry, insisted upon war. The very idea of proposing a German for the throne of Spain appeared to him to be a sufficient cause for issuing a declaration of hostilities. The gauntlet thus thrown down, the Prussian monarch was too chivalrous to decline the challenge.
Word Of The Day