which might naturally be expected from the sufferings in which it has
involved both Princes and subjects, nor are its future effects dreaded
from its past enormities. The cause of this impolitic and anti-patriotic
apathy is to be looked for in the palaces of Sovereigns, and not in the
dwellings of their people. There exists hardly a single German Prince
whose Ministers, courtiers and counsellors are not numbered, and have
long been notorious among the anti-social conspirators, the Illuminati:
most of them are knaves of abilities, who have usurped the easy direction
of ignorance, or forced themselves as guides on weakness or folly, which
bow to their charlatanism as if it was sublimity, and hail their
sophistry and imposture as inspiration.

Among Princes thus encompassed, the Elector of Bavaria must be allowed
the first place. A younger brother of a younger branch, and a colonel in
the service of Louis XVI., he neither acquired by education, nor
inherited from nature, any talent to reign, nor possessed any one quality
that fitted him for a higher situation than the head of a regiment or a
lady's drawing-room. He made himself justly suspected of a moral
corruption, as well as of a natural incapacity, when he announced his
approbation of the Revolution against his benefactor, the late King of
France, who, besides a regiment, had also given him a yearly pension of
one hundred thousand livres. Immediately after his unexpected accession
to the Electorate of Bavaria, he concluded a subsidiary treaty with your
country, and his troops were ordered to combat rebellion, under the
standard of Austrian loyalty. For some months it was believed that the
Elector wished by his conduct to obliterate the memory of the errors,
vices, and principles of the Duc de Deux-Ponts (his former title). But
placing all his confidence in a political adventurer and revolutionary
fanatic, Montgelas, without either consistency or firmness, without being
either bent upon information or anxious about popularity, he threw the