excessive, or even adequate; and yet Toussaint's subsequent conduct, added greatly to his former glory. Incorruptible, disinterested, intrepid, and humane, he performed, in his last contest for freedom, actions that would bear comparison with the most brilliant traits of ancient heroism and virtue; and they were crowned by a triumph over the conquerors of Europe. We know too well the Circumvented by the foulest fraud, he fell into the power of his unprincipled enemy.

rest.

Here, however, it might have been supposed, hostility would have ended, and generosity begun to act. Delivered from the opposition of his arms, the usurper might have been expected to honour this extraordinary character, and take pride in rewarding his merit. The interesting singularity of his fortunes and extraction, as well as his worth, would have led a mind of any liberality to treat him with tenderness and respect. Though depressed in early life below the level of manhood, he had risen to the rank of heroes. Before he mounted into the region of illustrious deeds, he had to cleanse his wings from the filth of a brutalizing bondage: Yet he became a victorious general, a wise legislator, an enlightened statesman, and the chief of a people, formed by his own genius, from slaves and barbarians, into citizens and soldiers. He was never conquered; and what is far higher praise, never faithless, cruel, or unjust. In all the relations of private life, he was truly amiable; and to crown all, a pious Christian.

Who, that ever pretended to the appellation of Great, except the vile Buonaparte, could have torn such a captive from his beloved family, and thrown him into a dungeon to perish!! A Cæsar or Alexander, would have honoured, a Timur or an Attila, would have spared, him; but it was his hard lot to fall into the hands of an enemy, who adds to the ferocity of a savage, the apathy of a sceptic, and the baseness of a sham renegado.

When we add to this want of every generous and elevated sentiment, the numberless positive crimes against humanity, justice, and honour, by which Napoleon is disgraced, it seems astonishing, and is truly opprobrious to the moral taste of the age, that he should still find any admirers.

There may, I admit, be a dignity even in the most vicious characters. When Satan is represented rising from the lake of fire, haranguing the fallen angels, or steering his adventurous course through chaos, to wage new wars against the Almighty, in a new created world, we conceive of him with fear and hatred indeed, but there is a majesty in his crimes, which screens him from contempt.

K

Not so, when he meanly lies to the archangel; and still less, when, in the shape of a loathsome reptile, he sits at the ear of our first mother, practising detestable frauds and falsehoods upon her fancy, for the ruin of her innocence and peace. His dignity now vanishes, and admiration is lost in abhorrence. Yet the fiend still sins in the ⚫ prosecution of a public purpose: he is serving the state of Hell, and not merely the individual Satan. The heroism of Buonaparte, on the contrary, is sunk in selfishness, as well as in despicable crimes. His private personal feelings are ever predominant: it is the opposition to, or the libel against Napoleon, that provokes his bitterest vengeance-it is for little self, and its connections, that he murders, deceives, insults, oppresses, and betrays.

The extreme elevation to which talents and success have raised him, makes these mean and loathsome qualities only the more opprobrious and disgusting. How abject must be the constitution of that mind, which such fortunes could not ennoble! Antichristian philosophy, behold thy work! See here the difference between thy godless heroism, and the dignity, I will not say of Christian, but even of Pagan, greatness. The majesty of the Temple it ruined, because there was no sense of a present Divinity to guard it from pollution. It is as if the sublime dome of St. Paul's were lined, and its lofty pillars covered, with the rags of Chick-lane, and the offals of Newgatemarket.

If the irreligious character of the age has generated this spurious greatness, let us distinguish and revere the appropriate justice of Heaven. We would have morals without religion; and God has sent us ambition without dignity in return. We admire talents more than morals; and he has chastised us by means of a mind born to illustrate the pestilent effects of their disunion. We have rebelled against him, by opposing publicly to his laws the idolatrous worship of expediency; and he has put the scourge into a hand which dishonours, while it chastises, our proud and boastful age. It is like the punishment of a noble traitor, whose bodily indignities and pains are aggravated, by the sentence that he shall receive them from the vile hands of a common executioner.

Should this man, however, become our master, his vices will no longer be objects of censure, but rather themes for applause, and patterns for imitation. The moral taste of the country, and of Europe, will be corrupted by the example of their mighty lord, as well as by the debasing effects of his oppression, and the licentious manners of his soldiers. I repeat, therefore, that should perseverance in war fail to produce our final deliverance from the power of France,

it will be still an effect of great value if it secures us from that of

Buonaparte.

Sect. 3. The military force of the country ought to be greatly

encreased.

Having thus cursorily shewn that a treaty of peace would be a source of new dangers, rather than of security to the country, against the power of France, I proceed to point out the means by which such security may be effectually attained.

They are, in general, MILITARY VIGOUR, PATIENCE, UNANIMITY, and REFORMATION; means, the first and last of which I propose, distinctly, but briefly, to consider.

And first, a much greater proportion of military vigour, than now exists, must be infused into our defensive preparations; or the nation will very probably be lost.

1

I have already offered some observations, tending to shew, that the conquest, as well as the invasion, of our country, is by no means an impossible event; though we may, like the unhappy and infatuated Prussians, proudly believe the reverse. We are at present in peculiar danger of a fatal self-deception on this point; because the enemy, occupied with the conquest of other nations, or engaged in treacherous negociations for peace, has long discontinued his threats of an immediate invasion. The danger had before been lessened in our eyes by familiarity, and is now still more diminished by imaginary distance. We may fondly suppose, perhaps, that Buonaparte seriously expects to vanquish us by a commercial war; or that, having easier conquests in view, he has ceased to be intent upon the speedy subjugation of England.

It is true that he has for the moment other work on hand; and it is possible that he may not again directly employ himself in that of our destruction by arms, till he has finished the defeat of his continental enemies, and found that we are not to be ensnared into a ruinous peace. Hence we have a happy, and I trust a providential opportunity, of better preparing for our defence.

But that this season of apparent security will last long, cannot be supposed by those who reflect on the present situation of affairs, unless they expect that Russia will still be able to turn the tide of war, and find long employment for all the armies of France. May such be the event; but the contrary is much rather to be feared. While I write, it is not improbable that a new treaty of peace for the continent, has been extorted by the threat of restoring the throne of Po

land; and that French columns have begun their march from the Vistula, which may soon be on the coast of the channel. Besides, the immense armies now advancing towards the seat of war, occupy already all the intermediate space; and as soon as the command to halt is given in the front, the rear divisions will be ready to throw themselves into the now vacant camp at Boulogne.

Those innumerable hosts, will then have no object worthy of their arms, but the conquest of Great Britain. We shall employ the undivided attention of an enemy, who adds to the insatiable ambition, the military talents, and the fortune of an Alexander, the multitudinous forces of a Xerxes. If half a million of French soldiers, elated with victory, were not sufficient for our destruction, he could reinforce them with near as many more of the vassals whom he calls allies; while France herself is ready at his call, to supply him every year with eighty thousand new conscripts, in the prime of youthful manhood.

His means of wafting armies to our shores, are indeed at present limited and precarious. If they were not, our situation would be desperate indeed. But those means have encreased, and are rapidly encreasing, and we may not be able to find, by rencounters with his fleets on the ocean, opportunities of checking their growth. When we look at the geographical range of the territories now at the devotion of France, and the maritime resources they furnish, it would be irrational to hope that the hostile navies will remain in their present state of depression; though we may, by perseverance in the war, maintain a decisive superiority over them, such as to prevent their openly contesting with us the dominion of the sea. The mind of Buonaparte will soon direct all its energies towards their restitution. Ships and seamen will be the only acceptable tribute which a fawning world can bring to him. He will invite, or exact them, from every province, from every conquered country, from every ally, and even perhaps from countries which he yet allows to be nominally neutral. In short, "all the resources of his empire” (to quote his own words) "will be again employed in constructing fleets, forming his marine, and improving his ports."*

Though his threats of invasion have been suspended, not so his naval preparations. He has not discontinued the building of that great number of ships of the line, the keels of which were long since laid at Antwerp, at Brest, and in various other ports of his dominions; and the dock yards of Venice, are now fully employed, as well as

*M. Bacher's Address to the Diet of Ratisbon, Sept. 1805.

those of Spain and Holland, in preparing for him a regular marine. Meantime, the Buologne flotilla, has been carefully maintained upon that extensive scale, and in that fitness for immediate service, to which he had raised it before his march for the Rhine. It is, if public and general report may be credited, capable of transporting by a single embarkation, 150,000 men, to our shores. Nor is that flotilla to be despised, as an instrument of invasion, when in the hands of a man prodigal of the lives of his troops, and inexorably bent on the accomplishment of his purpose: more especially now, when he has gained renown enough, and strength enough, both at home and abroad, to be in no danger, from the discontent that might he excited by the loss of an army.

We had some security perhaps till now, from the dilemma in which Napoleon was placed, by the necessity of either risquing his own person in the passage, or resigning to another commander the glory of the expedition, in the event of its success. But now he can afford to spare, to Murat, to Massena, Davoust, or some other distinguished general, the renown of conquering Great Britain; nor feel any apprehension that such a delegate will use the large force to be committed to him, either at Boulogne, or on this side the channel so as to triumph with safety, and avoid the fate of Mereau. The usurper will therefore most probably not expose himself to the inconvenience of leading the army of England, nor rashly re-engage himself to do so; but will yield to the prayers of his anxiously affectionate subjects, and devolve on some favourite chief, that hazardous command.

But the Boulogne flotilla will not be relied upon, as the only mean of invasion. In other ports of the channel, in the German ocean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Adriatic, regular and powerful armaments will be prepared, so as to distract our attention, and divide our naval force; nor would it be possible for us to blockade them all, through every season, and with fleets and squadrons sufficiently strong, if our navy were three times as large and potent as it actually is. It would be preposterous therefore to suppose, that from no part of his immense maritime regions, will the enemy be able to send expeditions to sea; and not less so, to rely that his fleets and transports will all be met with by British squadrons, before they can land troops on our shores.-Even the vigilance and energy of Nelson, could not prevent the powerful invasion of Egypt; and if prior to 1805, any man believed that it is impossible for the hostile fleets to steal from their harbours, to perform voyages, and to land forces in distant parts, without being ar