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they were meant to represent, they might announce to us that they had looked down upon an administration of justice, advancing progressively, from the days of our Henries, at least, in correctness, liberality, purity, and independence, till it has arrived at a degree of perfection, never before witnessed upon earth, and such as the children of Adam are not likely ever to surpass.

This blessing, the fairest offspring of freedom, or rather its purest essence, may like all other advantages, be undervalued by those who have always enjoyed it, and know only by report the evils of a different lot. But those Englishmen who have travelled far enough, to see ignorance, prejudice, servility, and oppression, in the seat of justice, know how to appreciate and admire the tribunals of their native land.

Nor is the protecting power of our superior courts less distinguished than their purity. In what other realm can an independent judge, deliver him whom the government has consigned to the darkness of a dungeon? Where else is the sword of the state chained to its scabbard, till drawn by the sentence of the law? And who but an Englishman can defy, while judges are incorrupt, the proudest minister, or most insidious minion of a court!

The unique and inestimable institution of trial by jury, is an item only, though a proud and precious one, of this glorious account. The Englishman's life, his honour, and, with some reasonable exceptions, his property too, are placed not only under the protection of the laws, but under the further safeguard of his neighbours and equals in private life, without whose sanction, solemnly given upon oath, he cannot be condemned.

Such, my countrymen, are some of the blessings of our freeborn jurisprudence; and these, I need not tell you, would all cease to exist, if we fell under the dominion of France.

None of you can be so ignorant as to suppose, that Buonaparte would allow a habeas corpus, a jury, or a gaol-delivery, to the victims of his state-craft or revenge. He has replaced by a hundred bastilles, the one which he has assisted to destroy. A thousand miserable prisoners groan in his dungeons for one that met that fate under the unfortunate Bourbons. He has found the secret also, of obtaining from civil as well as military tribunals, a blind obedience to his will.

It cannct be supposed that he will submit to the restraint of laws in a province, while he rejects it in imperial France. We must bid farewell therefore, should he become our master, to protecting laws, to independent and upright judges, to trial by jury, and to all those

privileges which now constitute our security from civil or military oppression. The innocent will no longer be able to lie down in peace, secure that they shall not be torn from their families ere morning, to be examined by tortures, or perish in the gloom of a dungeon.

From that time, integrity will retire from the seat of justice, and corruption take its place. Judgments, in civil cases, will be sold; in criminal, will be dictated by the ruthless voice of oppression. Fraud and violence will every where prevail, and cunning servility be the only path to safety. If any of our laws remain unaltered, they will be such only as may serve, when no longer guarded by the checks of a free constitution, to multiply the modes, and aggravate the weight of despotism.

Let us look next to the infallible and total suppression of the liberty of our press.

While any portion of this privilege remains in any country, there is, if not a hope of deliverance, at least some consolation for the oppressed.

The minions of power may be kept in check, by the publicity of transactions which, though not directly arraigned, would speak their own condemnation. But if not, the victim of despotism will at least know that he is pitied, perhaps admired and applauded, by his virtuous fellow citizens; and that reflection will make his chains sit lighter.

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But no such consolation remains where the power of Buonaparte prevails. He has made a league with darkness. He has declared war against the mutual intelligence and sympathy, as well as the happiness of mankind. He has not indeed destroyed the organs of public information; but he has done infinitely worse: he has appropriated them all to his own tyrannic use, compelled them to utter all his falsehoods and calumnies, and forbad them to speak or whisper with any breath but his own.

The government of the press by the French Bourbons, or even by the Spanish Inquisition, was wholly of a negative kind. Robespierre, his associates, and successors, imposed no restraints on the press, unless through the unavoidable terror of their power; and we learned, even from the Parisian journals, the worst crimes of those sanguinary rulers.

But Buonaparte, more crafty, though not less cruel, than his predecessors, suppresses every act of government that he wishes to conceal, as well as every adverse remark on his conduct; while he obliges every vehicle of public intelligence to circulate, as on its own

authority, whatever impostures or forgeries he chuses to propagate. The victims of his tyranny, if not plunged in oblivion, are defamed in their characters, and misrepresented in their conduct; yet find no possible means of reply. They are not only deprived of liberty and life, but defrauded of the sympathy of their friends, of their families, and mankind.

Fancy not then, Englishmen, that under the oppression of this unparalleled tyrant, you would have the consolation of knowing that your most cruel wrongs, or the honourable fortitude with which you might sustain them, were known and pitied by your country. You might be tortured to death, like Pichegru, and accused of suicide; you might be murdered, like D'Enghien, and represented as convicted assassins. You might be buried in a dungeon, like Toussaint, and libelled as perfidious traitors. Nay, you might, like his unfortunate family, be hidden for ever from the world, or secretly destroyed. in prison, without a voice that could convey to the public, or even to your anxiously inquiring friends, the cause or nature of your fate.

It would be edless to enumerate the various and peculiar miseries which the sudden subversion of our liberties would produce, among a generous and high spirited people.

When Buonaparte bade Frenchmen resume their chains, it was little more than a change from one form of slavery to another. Even in their short-lived zeal for liberty and equality, they never for a moment tasted the rich fruit of genuine freedom. But Englishmen have enjoyed for ages that inestimable blessing; and how shall we be able to bear its sad reverse? How shall we endure the contemptuous despotism of office, the exactions of rapacious commissaries, and the harsh controul of a military police ?

We must lay aside, my countrymen, that indignation at injustice in the exercise of power, which is so natural to the free born mind, when stung by the sense of oppression. We must also suppress that generous sympathy for the wrongs of others, which is so easily excited in the breasts of an English populace. That amiable feeling, now too often abused with tales of imaginary oppression, must then be suppressed, even on the most real and extreme provocation. Fatal would it then be to murmur, when we saw our innocent countrymen, our friends, or dearest connections, dragged away by the rude hand of power, at the mandate of some angry despot, to imprisonment or death.

The foulest corruption, the basest perfidy, the most savage cruelty, when clothed with the authority of our new masters, must

pass without reprehension, or audible complaint; nay, must be treat ed by us with lowly submission and respect.

We must lay aside also that proud sense of personal inviolability, which we now cherish so fondly; and what is justly prized still more, the civil sanctity of our homes. The Englishman's house must be his castle no more.

Instead of our humble watchmen to wish us respectfully goodnight when returning to our abodes in the evening, we shall be challenged at every turning by military patroles; and shall be fortunate, if we meet no pert boy in commission, or ill-natured trooper, to rebuke us with the back of his sword, or with a lodging in the guardhouse, for a heedless or tardy reply. Perhaps, after all, when we ar rive at our homes, instead of that quiet fire-side at which we expected to sit in domestic privacy with our wives and children, and relieve our burthened hearts by sighing with them over the sorrows of our country, we shall find some ruffian familiars of the police on a domici liary visit; or some insolent young officers, who have stepped in unasked to relieve their tedium while on guard, by the conversation of our wives and daughters. It would be dangerous, however, to offend such unwelcome guests; or even not to treat them with all the respect due to brave warriors who have served under Napoleon the Great.

But should we escape such intruders for the evening, still we must lie down uncertain whether our dwellings will be left unviolated till the morning. A tremendous noise will often at midnight rouse the father of a family from his sleep, and he will hear a harsh voice commanding to open the gate, through which its hapless master will soon pass to return no more.

These are but a small part of those intolerable reverses in point of civil government to which Englishmen would be doomed to submit. I will however pursue no further their odious detail; but proceed to another consequence of the supposed conquest-the transi tion from opulence to ruin.

Sect. 5. Destruction of the Funds, and ruin of Property

in general.

It cannot be necessary to prove, that the rapid decline, if not the immediate ruin, of our manufactures and commerce, would be a certain effect of subjection to a foreign power.

These envied possessions of England, would be the favourite spoils of the conqueror; and though he might not find it easy to re

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move, it would be perfectly so to destroy them. Indeed his utmost efforts to preserve them to us, could we expect such a benevolent attempt, would certainly be fruitless. They are the creatures of general confidence and credit, of legal security, and of the peculiar excitements which have been held forth to commercial industry and enterprise, by the genius of our happy constitution. Still more do they owe their extent and prosperity to that maritime greatness, which they reciprocally nourish and sustain. They depend much also, on what would of course immediately vanish, the confidence and respect of foreign nations, and those treaties which give us a preference in their markets. Need I add, that another of their grand supports, the commerce of the East, would no longer be ours; nor those colonies which we value too much.

But it is idle to dwell on such remarks. As well might we expect the tree to flourish after its roots are cut off, as our commerce or manufactures to survive the loss of our power, independency, and freedom.

A still more awful view of the effects of conquest, will be found in the contemplation of our public funds.

Is any man absurd enough to expect, that the annuities of the stock-holders, will be paid under the government of Buonaparte? I fear there are at least many who have not thought seriously upon the question, or reflected on the certainty of the opposite event, and its truly dreadful consequences: for otherwise we should certainly never hear of the weight of taxes, or of financial dangers from the war, when the security of the country is at stake.

The speedy wreck of the funds is demonstrated, the moment it is ascertained that commerce and manufactures must be ruined: for the whole current of the revenue has now barely force enough to keep the immense wheels of our finances in motion, and carry them smoothly through their annual revolutions. The loss of commerce and manufactures, let it be remembered, is not merely the loss of an equal portion of duties in the customs and excise; though that alone would be fatal. It involves also the decline of various collateral branches of revenue; of the duties on income, of assessed taxes, and all the various direct and indirect contributions, of the merchant, the manufacturer, their families and dependents. It leads also to a more than proportionate increase of parochial contributions, those great drawbacks on the national resources.

But if our funds could possibly survive the loss of commerce and manufactures, their vitality would certainly not be proof against the grasp of a rapacious government. Buonaparte would assuredly find