a treaty of peace would suffice to place Europe under the yoke. Yes, I call it a yoke, for nations accustomed coctimes to give the law, and never to receive it, to suffer a diminution of all political influence; to submit to a compulsory desertion of its faithful Allies, and to the annihilation of its friends. I call it a yoke, for a Power of the first order to be reduced to the second, and to be condemned to sanétion, by its silence, every thing which injustice and ambition may attempt.

"One only motive could decide a nation, under existing circumstances, not to go to war; and that is, the fear of sustaining fresh losses, of be ing obliged to submit to new sacrifices, and that fear, by the conclusion of a peace, would be converted into certainty. Let Europe disarm, and invasions, annexations, and conquests, the bitter fruits of disastrous. campaigns, will be renewed in the bosom of peace. In order to be convinced of this truth, it will suffice to recall the past, to contemplate the present, to look forward to the future, and to listen to the words of Buonaparte himself.

"I have ascended the first throne in the world; I summons to the foot of that throne twenty sovereigns of my own creation, in order to assert my superiority over them; and yet I have done too much, not to dare to do more. If Europe, apprized of my designs, by this excess of pride and audacity, unite, I may still be exposed to dangers; but, if I succeed in deceiving her, or only in lulling her asleep for two years, I hope to be able, in that time, to put myself in a situation to brave her utmost efforts. Let a peace be offered to her on any terms, let a snare be laid for all her Cabinets, and let the conductors of the public prints have an opportunity for celebrating my clemency. Peace has two significations, which my Ministers and myself can understand and distinguish ; for my enemies, it means an absolute cessation of all negotiations; for me, the most active augmentation of all my pretensions, and the accom plishment of all my designs. I have enlarged my fortune by war, and want to consolidate it by peace. If I wage war, I shall advance more slowly in my progress towards the attainment of my ends; my conquests will be disputed, and I shall be forced to buy my successes; if I make peace, without risking the fate of battles, I shall, by my counsels, unite whole provinces to my states.

"In order to dazzle the eyes of my people, I will assemble around me every thing which is destined to constitute my empire; what I possess I will consign to the care of my first subjects, with the delusive title of Sovereign; that which I do not possess I will covet, and will reserve to myself, by the projects which I have in view, the means of securing. ... Since I must have superintendants, since I cannot repose confidence in people whom I subdue by my good fortune, but whom I crush with my taxes, I will revive those fiefs, those barons whom, during ten years I assisted in destroying, and will make the philosophy of the 18th century bring back the feudal times. Not being able to rely on the friendship of any, I will interest the ambition of all. I will partake, in order to preserve; I will give, from the very love of possessing; I will be prodigal, from avarice. My empire being already, from my insatiate ambition, out of all that proportion, in which I could hope to govern it, I will place at all its extremities, under different titles, guards for the purpose of keep. ing

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ing my subjects within due bounds, who, as soon as they shall have for, gotten their wounds, will become my enemies.

"I will make peace with those nations which I have not yet sufficiently deceived, in order to complete the subjection of those whom I am now employed in deceiving. Let England, whose new Administration I have already sounded, remain in possession of all her Colonies; let her retain Malta, if it be necessary, and that empire of the seas which war only tends to confirm. Let the Russians continue, for a few years, to protect Turkey; I consent to leave the Sound open to the Powers of the North, the Straits of Gibraltar to the English fleets, and the Dardanelles to the ships of Russia; my family are not yet seated on all the thrones which I destine for them; I must have, at least, two years of peace to conquer those States which I govern already, but the subjection of which I intend to complete. What advantage have I derived from the most fortunate, and the most brilliant war which I have waged?—the right of conceiving that gigantic plan which peace will enable me to execute.

I have no longer any thing to fear from the grand armies of Eu rope; I have placed between me and the only one which I had any reason to dread, two vast States, which I have subjugated by my policy, and by my good luck. I have nothing to do but to remove the fleets of my enemies, and can only fight them by peace.

"With the aid of peace I shall take possession of all Italy, for, by ceding to me Naples, in order to make me renounce Sicily, they will only fa. cilitate the conquest of that Island. With the aid of peace I will give a Stad holder, or a King to Holland, Electors to Germany, and a Sovereign my own family to Switzerland.

of

"With the aid of peace, I will avail myself of my ascendancy at Madrid, in order to conquer Portugal; and I will afterwards make use of the forces, and the situation of Portugal, in order to complete the annihilation of the House of Bourbon.

"My Federal Empire, once placed entire in my hands, I will seriously direct my attention to India; and will, at last, begin to realize the only dream that is worthy of such ambition as mine.

I have lost by war the Navy which Republican France entrusted to my care; I will recover it by peace. From Embden to Ragusa, on the Coasts of Holland, Flanders, France, Spain, Italy, and Dalmatia, I have fifty dock-yards, in which I can build a hundred ships every year; if England will let me breathe for two or three years twenty squadrons shell sail from my ports at once; I shall, indeed, exhaust the forests which I have, but trade will come to my assistance; the merchants, those pretended citizens of the world, who are never citizens of their own country, never looking beyond the interest of the moment, will sell me all the means of destroying, at a future day, the source of their fortune. With the tears of the South, I will purchase iron of the North; with that iron I will gain the gold which I want; and I will, at last, play all the wealth of Europe against all the riches of the East.

Already in possession of Dalmatia, I will, during peace, seize upon Greece, which Russia might, at this moment, dispute with me to advantage. Kept in check by her squadrons in the Mediterranean, I will profit by their return to their ports, to take the Morea by surprize. Master

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of Albania, protector of Ali Pacha, and of all the Turkish insurgents, I will invade the Republic of the Seven Islands, and will again repair to Egypt, which will open a passage, by the Red Sea, to Bombay, and to that important peninsula, where I will destroy the very root of the fortune and the power of the English.

"Lastly, if any ships ever reach Bengal, whither I can also penetrate by Syria and Persia; if my Lieutenants can one day treat the con- \ querors of the kingdom of Mysore, as those treated Tippoo Saib, Eu rope shall be in chains, for she will have no more gold, and I shall have a million of soldiers. England, once deprived of her trade, her navy once annihilated, the sceptre of the ocean once placed in my hands, my squadrons shall reduce the Baltic and the Black Sea to the state of vast galphs without an issue; and Russia, by having too soon yielded to my fortune, actually retiring before my genius, will leave me in quiet posses sion of that Europe, which she alone has, at this moment, the power to contest with me *›››

Gigantic and preposterous as the projects here imputed to the Corsican Usurper may appear, let any man cast his eye over the transactions of the last fourteen years and say, whether schemes as gigantic and as preposte rous have not been carried into effect. Yet with this prospect before them, our Ministers condescended to sue for peace, at the Palace of the Thuille ries. Indeed, it was naturally to be expected that Mr. Fox, who had at all times, and under all circumstances, been the avowed advocate of peace, would eagerly embrace the first opportunity for making overtures for that purpose; and it was equally to be expected that he would send Lord Lau derdale to propose them. But that Lord Grenville and Mr. Windhamthe constant opposers of peace, who had, on all occasions, reprobated, loudly and justly, the peace of Amiens, should consent to such a measure, was well calculated to excite surprize. Nor was it less surprizing that they should consent to the choice of such a Plenipotentiary. It has, indeed, been affirmed, that Lord Grenville was persuaded that Buonaparic would not accede to the terms proposed by the Cabinet, and that while his colleagues would be gratified by the experiment, the national honour and interest would be exposed to no danger. If this were so whatever opi. Bion may be entertained of the wisdom of such a concession, no one will be disposed to impeach the political foresight of the Minister. Yet, if the terms- were, as has been stated, nothing less than the uti possidetis, he who could build on the rejection of them by Buonaparte, must have enter tained such notions of the insatiate ambition of the Usurper, as to be con vinced of the impracticability of concluding a peace with him upon any terms. By the uti possidetis, the continental territory of our Neapolitan Ally, whose fidelity to us occasioned the loss of his kingdom, together with all the usurpations in Germany and Italy, would have been sanc. tioned and confirmed by us; while, on our part, the retention of Malta, Saint Lucia, and Tobago, would have constituted the sum of our acqui

*Tableau Politique de L'Europe, Sc. This able pamphlet was reviewed at length in our last Appendix. It has since, we believe, been translated into English; and we earnestly recommend it as a production worthy of general attention.

sitions,

sitions. With what propriety the opposers of the peace of Amiens could support such terms as these, which, considering the relative situa. tion and power of the contracting parties, were infinitely more advantageous to France, than the conditions of the former treaty, the public must be left to decide. We shall offer no opinion on the subject, until the publication of those authentic documents, which can alone supply the materials on which to ground a just decision. As to the choice of Lord Lauderdale, who openly boasted in the British Senate of his friendship for Brissor-(that Hero of the moderate party, who proclaimed their design ** to set fire to the four corners of Europe"), who sold his patrimoniai estate in order to purchase the property of the church, and of the nobility in France, of which the Brissotines had plundered the lawful proprietors, and who opposed, with violence, every measure of that administration of which Lord Grenville and Mr. Windham were members;—it was an act that will put the credulity of future times to the test, while there can be but one opinion of it among all impartial men of the present day. The uneasiness displayed during the whole period of that lingering nego. tiation (terminated, at last, by the dismission of our Minister by the insolent Usurper), and the satisfaction universally expressed at its rupture, were sufficient indications of the state of the public mind, on the question of peace, at the present joncture. At no period, whatever, was there manifested such a harmony and unanirnity of sentiment, on such an occasion-excepting only the Ministers themselves, their immediate adherents, and partizans, there was scarcely a man in the kingdom who did not condemn the measure of opening a negotiation at such a period; and, stilf more, the prolongation of it, after all hopes of a successful termination, most, we should think, have been lost; and, after the rising spirit of the Continental Powers, imperatively required, on our part, the manifestation of a determined and decisive line of conduct. The excuse which was offered, on a former occasion, could not be urged on the present, for there existed no difference of opinion in the kingdom, respecting, not only the justice, but the necessity of the war, the rooted and implacable hatred of the Corsican Usurper towards this Country, and his consequent resolu tion to make no peace with us that would be compatible with our honour, our interest, or our safety. On these subjects there was a rare, and almost anexampled uniformity of sentiment.

While, however, these tardy, discouraging, and paralytic negotiations were going on, to damp the reviving ardour of the Continent, fortunately the little band of British heroes, who had been withdrawn from the Nea politan territory, and were now stationed in the Island of Sicily, set an example of vigour well calculated to increase that ardour, and to excite a spirit of emulation in all the people oppressed by France, and in all the armies about to be opposed to her. The battle of Maida, in which seven thousand British, fighting hand to hand, and foot to foot with the enemy, defeated, with great slaughter, nearly double the number of the French, thereby conferring immortal honour on themselves and on their country, and giving the lie to the boasting assertion, that the French are invinci. bie an assertion propagated with inconceivable industry, and producing as inconceivable an effect upon the Continent, dispelled a charm that had proved but too powerful, and shewed how these vain.boasting assassins might not only be fought, but conquered. It showed, however, still

more.

more-for it proved that the recovery of the kingdom of Naples was practicable, and that if only ten thousand more British troops had been sent to Sicily, when the present Ministers came into power, our faithful Ally, the King of the Two Sicilies, might have been restored to his throne. The remote effects of such a restoration would have been of much greater consequence than its immediate effects, important as these would have certainly been. It would have established our national superiority by land, as well as by sea; it would have discouraged the French; fo would have inspirited their enemies, and it would have holden out a strong temptation to other subjugated people to rise against them, and to throw off their disgraceful yoke. But the recovery of this kingdom, either by arms, or by negotiation, appears to have formed no part of the designs of our Ministers, who, neglecting even the most obvious policy, of prepar ing for war while negotiating for a peace-ad utrumque paratus-evidently made their warlike operations wholly dependent on the issue of the nego tiation; for, as long as the latter continued, not a single expedition was undertaken, not a regiment was dispatched, for any military purpose whatever. The whole summer has been suffered to pass away, and winter is rapidly approaching, without a single hostile measure of any kind having been undertaken.

The capture of the Cape, and the reduction of Buenos Ayres, the mose important of all our conquests, were the works of that Cabinet at which the commanding genius of Mr. Pitt presided. The present Ministers can claim no more merit from these successful enterprizes, than from the restorative system of the Sinking Fund, or from the expiration of the Short Annuities. Indeed, it is pretty well understood that orders had been issued by the Admiralty, no doubt at the suggestion of that amiable offi cer Lord St. Vincent, for the recal of Sir Home Popham, who, fortu nately for the country, had sailed from the Cape before those orders reached him, and had assisted in achieving the reduction of Buenos Aytes. In deed, Mr. Fox was always unfortunate in the selection of his naval commanders. We are old enough to remember, that, at the latter end of the American war, when that gentleman was in power for a short time, Admiral Pigott, whom he had frequently met at that celebrated school for naval tactics, Brookes's, was sent out to supersede Sir George Rod. ney, who contrived, however, to defeat the French fleet under De Grasse, before his successor arrived. That every attempt will be made, both by France and Spain, to recover that interesting portion of the American Continent, is most certain; and indeed as, while the comman der of the Channel fleet was enjoying himself at Lisbon, a French squa dron slipt out of Brest, there is good reason to believe that force has already been dispatched for that purpose. It is true, that the reinforce ment sent by our Government, since the dismission of Lord Lauderdale by the Corsican Usurper, sailed some three or four days before; but it is, we fear, far from improbable, that the French may overtake them. Not a week should have passed, after the receipt of the intelligence of the ture of that settlement, without the adoption of the necessary means for securing the possession of it to the country. But we apprehend it will be found, that the delay in this instance, as in many others, was occasioned by a strange reliance placed upon the success of the negotiations at Paris That Ministers should select this period for the dissolution of that Par

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liament