Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

From the Western Star.

THE CORDWAINER—No. X.

We have paid one compliment to French economy; it is to be wished that equal commendation were due to their whole system of politics. But revolutions are but in their pupilage. Mr. Paine and I shall yet set matters to rights.

It is the part of wisdom to profit by experience.—Ye little think, heedless mortals! what wrestlings of mind, watchful days, and sleepless nights, we authors and political instructors endure for your sakes. I have long anticipated a revolution on the other side of the Channel, and many a choice plan have I in store for it, if Englishmen will be advised by me. The following are among the notes in my common place book.

NATIONAL CONVENTION—Let it be better regulated than the French—Apropos. Frequent election of President, that all may have a chance. Let each member have a separate box; number the boxes, and locate the members. The floor of each box to consist of a trap door, from the spring of which, a concealed cord to communicate with the President's box, at the end thereof a handle, marked with a number correspondent with that of the box. These handles to be disposed within reach of the President, that, on occasion, by pulling a cord, an obnoxious member may be dropped into a vault below, as the last resort of discipline, to be dealt with there. This however, never to be adopted till the milder forms of discipline have failed.

Gallery—Totally wrong in France. Miserable economy indeed!—What an amazing expense must it be to hire such a throng, perhaps at high wages, merely to hiss at, and interrupt, or to clap and applaud, a party; when a hundredth part of the expense, with a little mechanical invention, would answer the same purpose! For instance: a pair of organ-bellowses may be placed to communicate with, and charge with wind, a number of light casks, properly disposed. Any child may play the bellows. A talisman at the foot of the President may command a valve in each of these, which pressed, shall open a vent, and shall produce a complete hissing. A cat-call may be placed in each cask, to heighten the effect. If these be insufficient to drown a speaker, or a party, the boy at the bellows may, at a signal from the President, play a hoarse-fiddle. This last, however, should be reserved for applause, (being an excellent imitation of clapping) except on particular emergencies; and to distinguish the applauding hoarse fiddle from the condemning hoarse fiddle, let the former be accompanied by some imitative sounds, produced by the President, by the touch of a few keys before him, opening trumpet pipes, which may be made to pronounce tolerably such words as—'bravo!' 'liberty!' 'equality!'

JACOBIN CLUB.—By all means.—Let it sit directly over the heads of the Convention. There must be a tube or conductor, through which papers may be passed from the Jacobin Hall above, to the President's table below. The President of the Convention must like-wise sit over a trapdoor, the spring of which must be at the command of the President of the Club, to enforce obedience to their decrees. If on the receipt of a decree of the Club, requiring him to applaud, or to condemn a speaker, or to drop a member into the vault, the President of the Convention shall disobey, the President of the Club but pulls his cord, and lodges him in the vault. The key of this vault to be kept by the President of the Club. By this arrangement not only the expense, but the delay, uncertainty and danger of an armed force, will be completely avoided. This brings me to La Guillotine, that pruning-knife—that finishing touch, in revolutionary economy.—Indispensable. With regard to the application of it, I would have some plain, uniform criterion. For instance: As every thing depends upon dispatch and discrimination, let a shell be found, or a helmet made, which shall exactly fit the head of Citizen Robespierre, Mr. Paine, the Author of the Jockey-club, or some other known and tried Democrat, and let all suspected heads be proved by this. Depend upon it, the square head of an Aristocrat will no more fit the smooth arched concave, than my flat foot shall a Chinese lady's slipper.

As to those Royal Heads, as a different process may be advisable with them, I have been somewhat puzzled to hit on a satisfactory one. The result of my researches is briefly thus: Since any process of Inquiry, a priori, would be
attended with a variety of obstacles, difficulties and delays, all or most of which may be avoided by a process a posteriori, it is but to pass them thro' the Mill first, and they shall be as passive and as pliant as a cheese-cake.—Question them, accuse them, revile them—no pert reply, no saucy denial or evasion, no exculpation. You have only to label them with the words 'Tyrant' and 'Traitor,' pike them up in the market place, let the author of the Jockey-Club, in addition to his former labours, write their 'Memoirs,' and, believe me, in spite of their inviolability, they shall rot and stink like the head of a beggar.