But yet thou shalt have freedom—
—So! to the Elements
Be free, and fare thou well.
—The Tempest.
We have now completed our Engagement with the Public. The Anti-Jacobin has been conducted to the close of the Session in strict conformity with the Principles upon which it was first undertaken.
Its reception with the Public has been highly favourable:—it certainly has been out of proportion to any merit which has appeared in the execution of the Work. This is not said in the mere cant of Authorship. We are sensible that much of our success has been owing to the improved state of the Public mind;—an improvement existing from other causes, and to which, if We have in any degree contributed, it has in return operated to our advantage, by a reaction more than equal to any impression which our exertions could have produced. There is, however, one species of merit to which We lay claim without hesitation:—We mean that of the Spirit and Principles upon which We have acted. That Spirit, We trust We shall leave behind us. The SPELL of Jacobin invulnerability is now broken.[[306]]
We know from better authority than that of Camille Jordan, that one of our Daily Papers was, early in the French Revolution, purchased by France, and devoted to the dissemination of tenets, which, at the period to which We allude, seemed necessary to the success of the Ruling Party.
For some time matters went on swimmingly. The Editors of the favoured Prints divided their time and their attention between London and Paris; and the superiority of the governing Party in France, over its Opponents, was as duly, and as strenuously maintained in the English Papers, as in the “Journal du Père de Chène,”[[307]] “Journal par L’Ami du Peuple,”[[308]] or any other Journal that issued from the Presses of the Jacobin Society.
As the principles of the Revolution, however, acquired consistency in France, the struggle between the Governing Party and its Opponents became an object of less moment, and the Jacobins had leisure, as they long had had inclination, to turn their views to this Country.
A State, enjoying under a Government which they had proscribed as utterly incapable of producing either, as much freedom and happiness as comport with the nature of Man, was too bitter a satire on the decision of these new Solons, to be regarded with patience; and the pens which had been so industriously employed in celebrating the plunderers and perturbators of France, were now engaged in the benevolent design of recommending their principles, and their plans of ameliorating the condition of the human race by Atheism and Plunder, to the serious notice of the People of Great Britain.